On the road to the North, the end

After an itchy night in Jokkmokk, we turned south to travel to Luleå and the Baltic Sea coast and found out that a nordic city, the sea, beaches, warm weather and midnight sun are a very good combination.

The next morning it was time to part ways, Marco was flying back to Munich from Luleå.

I drove back to Stockholm over the course of the next three days. One evening, on a sandy shore near Umeå, my Olympus XA, having behaved capriciously since Jokkmokk, decided to part as well. This leaves the following east coast stops unrecorded and I hope to report back from the north some time next january, documenting aurora borealis and polar bears.

Roadtrip to the North, 5

Continuing north, we saw our first reindeers the next morning. From the moment we passed the sign "polar circle 30 km" we became super excited... as soon as we arrived, we rushed out of the car to hop across the polar circle several times, and then we jumped into the lake and crossed it swimming.

We arrived at the northernmost point of our journey, the city of Jokkmokk.

Here we try to see the midnight sun (you know, the moment it turns) on a hill next to Jokkmokk. We read it´s where you have the best view (true) and a nice café opened into the night (false). Yes there was a house though. We just sat down on the porch and started watching, when suddenly an Irish guy with swallow tattoes on his arms came out and was just as surprised to see us as we were to encounter him. He informed us that sometimes it takes him up to 10 minutes to be able to open the house's door from inside, then he vanished again.

Meanwhile, the sun was moving unbelievably slow and clouds of mosquitos were trying to eat us alive. So, general advice. Go much later than you think you should... the first picture is taken around 11 pm. The sun moves so flatly above the horizon that it constantly looks like "any time now. Any time!"

Roadtrip to the North, part 4

The next morning we set out early to go hiking in the moory fjäll landscape. We picked a six hours tour, but already needed two hours to find the correct way. After another two, we were shooed back by a thunderstorm. Nevertheless, it was great and we encountered several animal species we had never met before, like strange kinds of birds and lemmings, which tried to hide but failed.

We had the usual lunch but since we had run out of real bread we had to eat Swedish Knäckebröd, which neither of us loves and I had in fact just bought because it came in a pretty box.

At a fleamarket in Stockholm I had once asked a guy about nice spots to visit in Sweden, and he very enthusiastically told me about Vilhelmina, "the most beautiful town he had ever been to in his life". Since then I naturally always wanted to visit. So when we returned from the Fjälls and continued north, I was thrilled to be finally passing through. It sure was nice. The round café you see was originally meant to be spinning to provide a good view over the area.

We continued to drive until before Arvidsjaur, passing wild rivers, and everything smelled like pine cone sauna aroma.

On the road to the North, 3

It was Swedish National Day and we google-maps-planned our further trip connected to the sole socket in the sole open café in Östersund over breakfast. We turned west and drove towards Norway into the Fjäll area. Both used to the Bavarian Alps, we were beyond excited about the flat, snow-covered mountains we were looking into since Östersund.

We visited two awesome waterfalls (Tännforsen and Handöl), had our usual lunch and went for several little walks throughout the area, seeing 2 rabbits and 1 fox, as I extract from Marco's travel diary, where he noted down the animals we encountered. For the night, we decided to stay at a camping site, the first and only time during our trip. I guess after the world's coldest bath in Storsjön the other day we just really craved a hot shower...

On the road to the North, 2

On day 2 we visited Carl Larsson's house, one of my favourite things in Sweden, so wonderful. We drove on along the shore of lake Siljan, which is famous enough for its blue color to have, well, a color named after it. Lunch was in Rättvik on a really long jetty that went far into the lake. It was the food we would consume 95% of the time. Bread, creme cheese & sliced cheese, topped with dried tomatos. Bread, creme cheese & orange jam for dessert. Oh yeah, and then we got ourselves cinnamon buns for second dessert. I took a photograph of the hill on one side of the lake and after a while, a house there catched fire. I was so excited that the picture I took of it came out all blurry.

We loved this part of the trip. We drove all the way to Östersund through magnificent landscape. The photographs are taken late in the evening, the sunshine felt unreal.

Our place for the night! Storsjön, a little south of Östersund. Definitely the coldest water I ever had a bath in, and that means something. This was also the darkest it ever got.

On the road to the North, 1

My friend and former classmate Marco came to visit me from Munich in the beginning of June, right after Konstfack ended. We spent a few days in Stockholm and then we set out on a week-long roadtrip to the north of Sweden. Our route was vague in the beginning, we just picked things throughout the country that we thought would be fun and decided to make up our way accordingly. The first stop was Falun in Dalarna, home of a famous old copper mine. A side product of this copper mining is the red color so many Swedish houses have, as seen in the second picture.

Does one have to write The North with capitals? It feels like it. I wanted to travel there ever since I moved to Stockholm!