northern lights & swedish meatballs

What comes to mind when you think of Sweden?

I know, right?

Welp, there's more to it in case you were wondering. 

For example, Stockholm is supposedly really great. 

Unfortunately, we wouldn't really know, because we arrived on Christmas day and everything was closed. Meandering through the old part of town rewarded us with a delicious dinner of expensive fish & chips at a cool hipster brewery. But that's about all I can say, because early the next morning we were on a plane headed towards Kiruna, a tiny town above the arctic circle in northern Sweden.

beautiful sunset at noon

 View from our hostel's porch, the bulldozers working tirelessly to clear the streets of snow

We were hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive northern lights, experience frigid below-zero temperatures (we could have just gone to the US for that- ha!) and play in snow, lots of snow.

The snow part was a success, at least!

The first night promised clear skies, so we walked for a while up to a ski slope and stood staring at the sky praying to see the lights. To no avail. It could have been the unseasonably warm weather (only 15 degrees instead of negative-whatever!) but oh well. Gives us an excuse to try again one day. 

The small mining town of Kiruna was on the radar initially not only because of the lights, but also it's proximity to the largest ice hotel in the world. We didn't stay (too expensive!) but you could tour its many rooms, half of them designed with different themes. 

 I don't know why this picture turned out like this? Bad editing, I suppose-- doesn't it look like I cut us out of a newspaper clipping and pasted it to the picture??

The guests don't arrive until the evening, meaning we could go in and out of the room as we please. Hopefully they change the bedding. 

I was getting a bit tired of pictures at this point...

It had an ice bar. Didn't feel like paying the outrageous amount for a shot, so we borrowed someone's glasses after they left. They were made of ice!

That pose isn't awkward at all, Bryan

The highlight of our stay was a snowmobile tour into the wilderness (initially to seek the lights, but we gave up on that and just enjoyed the ride.)

It was amazing, albeit slightly 'interesting'-- a woman, (who was hesitant from the get-go) ran into a tree and injured herself to the point of needing to be taken to the hospital. So we sat in the quiet of the trees and snow for the better part of an hour as our guide abandoned us to wrap her up in a sled.

not easy pictures to take, seeing as we were in utter darkness...

When she was all wrapped up and ready to go, the guide driving the snowmobile got stuck in the not-completely-frozen lake. So then we had to pull her out tug-of-war style. 

Then our other guide got stuck.

Our 4 hour tour turned into a 7 hour one, after midnight by the time we arrived back at the starting point! Good thing they fed us halfway through, a delicious reindeer stew...

Even though Kiruna wasn't quite the adventure we'd imagined, it was still a beautiful, quiet place that afforded us the experience of tons of snow and enjoying the beauty of God's creation! 

Kiruna had a cool church. The end.