Looking in both directions

Greetings everyone! These past few days have been eventful, but since I don't have a ton of pictures from them I have been hesitant to write anything. However, as I said, we have been doing quite a bit here in Mora. Three days ago, I took another one of my long walks around town in order to get to know Mora better. There's actually a whole lot of town here, even if my initial impression was to say it was a little on the small side of 'city.' Outside of the main city center with the ski races, church, and shops there are interesting things to see, some more unusual than others. For instance, I found a goth club housed in the middle of an old brick building (didn't go in), lots of quintessentially Swedish houses (yellow or red-brown, wood houses with painted shudders and a stick fence) and this really out of place cement pagoda (at least, that's what I call it). I watched some of the racers come in, but I think I'll wait to post videos and pictures of that until the big Vasaloppet race on March 1st. There are other races going on this week, like the half-loppet, and tjejoppet (all-womens' vasaloppet), but the big one is the 90k vasaloppet race. Personally, the only skiing I will be doing is on long skates on the big lake next week, once the crowds leave.

Yesterday, the entire group took a trip to Mora Sjukhuset- the Mora hospital- to learn about the Swedish health care system. Outside of the introductory information given to us by the General Practitioner Doctor friend of our main contact here in Mora, we got to learn about the Atkins diet for an hour. Although it was interesting to learn that in Sweden doctors can now recommend this diet to patients without reprimand, it's not interesting to learn about a diet that we all learned about 6 years ago in the US as if it's a cure to all health problems, and has since been debunked by actual science. The view was nice from the 8th floor, and there was an odd mural depicting the path one takes in life from spinning the thread of life to facing life's demons to the cutting of the thread. After that, we went back to Anna's house (she's our main contact here) who lives in a little village just outside of Mora. The village is in the old Daralana Style; that is, the houses are arranged around one big street, and would have been one self-sustaining community. Anna's house is built right over the old steel smelting place, and still had a lot of the original wood construction and furnishings as it would have 100 years ago. She told us a lot about the area, served us some traditional Swedish cooking (a stew), had an impromptu Swedish lesson, and then we left back home via a Maxi store (which is like a super target, and not at all related to feminine hygiene products).

Today we had a trip to the Mora town hall, where we met a woman named Ulla Israelsson who was the director of education and quality control for primary school and preschool throughout the district. We learned a lot about the Swedish school system from preschool through 9th grade, and the philosophy behind it. Every 6-year old has the 'right' in Sweden to go to preschool, as well as 'play-school,' or after-school activity places while their parents are still working. Some of the more interesting points of the discussion was that basically it's impossible to home-school children in Sweden unless they have disabilities, and that unlike the USA, Sweden has a standardized ciricullum for preschools. Also, children don't being to recieve grades until 8th grade, although they are tested on a national system in 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th grade. Apparently who we would call the Secretary of Education has three words in his vocabulary right now: read, write, count. Ulla was telling us all the reasons why just these three standards have lowered achievement in Sweden; as many of my friends, advisors, and family who work in education would tell you, there needs to be some sort of meta-learning going on as well, that is, children also need to be able to relate one subject to another and ask questions like "what does zero mean?" and "Why does a one and a zero represent 10?" The philosophy major in me really enjoyed the conversation.

Afterwords, we went to the Zorn manor and museum, where we saw and learned a lot about Anders Zorn and his work. For those like me who are not familiar with Anders Zorn, I can tell you that he was a prolific artist during the beginning of the 20th and early 19th centuries who did the presidential portraits of Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, and Cleveland, as well as numerous watercolor paintings and bronze sculptures thought Europe, but predominately in Sweden. He established his estate in Mora (his hometown) after gaining fame in his 30s, and also founded the folk school I am staying at in the 1910s. His wife (not a looker by any standards, even with the 'artistic lisence' he was known to take with younger women models) dedicated the estate they built together to become a museum following her death (26 years after Anders; he was an avid smoker and alcoholic) and is still furnished with the same objects that occupied their house in 1946. Some of the most interesting objects in the house were the 'Gustavian' or Empire furnishings shipped in from Stockholm, as well as the rather large collection of Medieval stained glass and tapestries. Personally, I thought some of the best artwork on the manor was outside, which is why the pictures of the ice hanging down from the roofs are featured in this blog post. There were also stone sculptures from the Roman Empire and numerous gifts and paintings from the Renaissance that decorated the vaulted Viking-style rooms and hallways throughout the residence.

In the Museum, we were able to see more of Zorn's work (his house was filled with other artist's work he had collected in his lifetime) as well as get entertained by Anna, who, among her many professions and interests, is a very well accomplished folk musician. She played the cow horn, a long pine horn, a Darlana recorder-like instrument, and also fiddled with a colleague from her local folk group. They were all nice to her, and I was impressed by the wide sound of the cow horn she was able to produce, as well as the traditional folk styles of Mora. Traditionally the cow horn was used to call your cattle towards you, and many families had their own melodies that they taught to their cows. The long pine horn was used to scare animails like bears, elk, and wolves away from cattle, and the fiddle was used mostly for social dances. Unlike the Norwegian fiddle, there isn't a particular instrument or physically different playing style than the common violin, but the music itself is particular to every town. I noticed that music typically played in the 3-1 style, or that the music is played in 3/4 time, but that the 3rd and 1st beat gets the emphasis. Once they played their first song, I just wanted to hambo around the gallery, but I''m fairly sure I was they only one in the gallery that knew how to, so I had to confine myself to tapping my foot.

In other news, I have booked my spring break trip: London, here I come! With the Kronor hitting 9kr-1USD today, I decided to book all my flight and rooming information. I will be staying in a youth hostel that's also a castle for the first four days, then traveling north to Norwich to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan in Waiting for Godot in Norwich, then staying the last 3 days of spring break in South Kensington in the heart of the Museum district in London. For anyone that is thinking about traveling, now is definitley the time to book flights to anywhere in Sweden or London because both the Pound and the Kronor have been falling like rocks and have just about hit 'ocean' bottom: my flight from Gothenburg to London cost me $82, and the return flight cost me $71. All in all, I expect this excursion to cost me less than $700, even after factoring in food, lodging, and travel through both London, Norwich, and Sweden during the spring break time, which is great considering that most people anticipate spending almost double that in their travels to places like Oslo, Norway. Hopefully I will update again soon- we're going to Falun tomorrow, and then the races really begin!

Testing

Hopefully things will appear on the page now...

Adjusting to a new town: Mora

Greetings, everyone! Today is Tuesday, and also my third day here in Mora. We left Jokkmokk Friday night, took a bus to Boden, and then hitched a night train down to Gavle. The train car we were staying in didn't have any room for our luggage, so we had quite the tetris experience in trying to get all 14 people's luggage into 2 sleeper rooms and a ski closet. We ended up with luggage under tables, on the floor, stacked to the celing, and shoved in nooks not even Madam Conductor had known of. De-boarding was a totally different issue...

When we got to Mora via a train from Bolinger we had a 5-minute walk to our Folkhogskolan, Skeriol. The school has three dormitories, one main building with library, classrooms, gym, ceramics department, library, auditorium, and a labyrinth of underground tunnels (among other things I have yet to discover) and other outlying buildings that house other 'profiles' like the textile building that was one a nunnery. It's a great place, and the food is delicious. Three meals a day, plus a few fikas here and there; even if we have to get up at 7 to make sure we get breakfast and eat dinner at 4:30pm, the quality is worth it. Of course, we have already started classes too: Lennart Sacredeus is teaching his Nordic/European Politics class Mondays and Fridays, and we have many meetings and lectures to attend daily and also our regular Swedish lessons. The politics class is really interesting, even though I have taken a similar version of the course before. A few of us are more familiar with the political and historical traditions in Sweden, but the setting allows us to ask questions that expand upon our previous knowledge while incorporating much of what we have learned in the past few weeks about Swedish and Sami politics in order to get a more complete picture of how the government and politics functions here. I also look forward to the field trips we will be making to the local seat of power in Mora as well as local hospitals, and in March, trips to the Riksdag in Stockholm.

As you have been seeing in these pictures, Mora is a very beautiful town in itself. Whereas Jokkmokk had a lot of hilly woods to go hiking through, Mora has a larger downtown area, and lies next to a large lake where people ski, walk, and skate. They have these giant river skis here, which have very long blades and boots that attach to them that people use to skate along the really long lake. The town has more than two resturants, which is a welcome change. It has many shops and lots of outdoor art. This is St. George slaying the dragon right outside the largest church in Mora, built in the late 1600s. The Zorn house and museum are right downtown, which we will be touring later during our 1-month stay here in Mora. Gustav Vasa on the rock was sculpted by Zorn, and is on the spot where Gustav Vasa gave a speech to rally the local farmers against Danish King Christopher following the Stockholm bloodbath (The King invited all the nobility to a party in Stockholm, and then beheaded everyone who came). Although he was initially unsuccessful, the people of Mora sent two of their fastest skiers after him, on the route that is now the Vasaloppet. The Vasaloppet will be held here on the first of March, and the picture below is of the arch under which the skiers will breach at the finish. Hopefully we will be able to watch that, as well as some of the qualifing that begins next Friday. Roland is going to race as well- not in the 90km race, but one of the other races that goes on here. I hope all of us can get out of class to go cheer him on.


The past few days I have been making excursions out to Mora, as well as to the gym, playing innebandie and getting exercise indoors and out. One of these days I hope to walk around the other parts of the city accross the lake, and mabe explore a little on the lake with xc skis that we can rent for pretty cheap. Outside of the temporarily cramped conditions inside the dorms here, everything is great here in Mora!

Roadtrip!

For the past two days, I have been on a road trip throughout northern Sweden, and even sauntered into Finland for about 10 minutes. Our trip took us about 600km, from Jokkmokk to Porjus, then to Gallevarje, Pajala, Jukkasjarvie, Kiruna, and back home. I'll have pictures from the Ice Hotel throught the post, but don't be confused by them. I'll try to explain that later. But let us begin at the beginning!

Yesterday, we left Jokkmokk early in the morning, and saw the hydroelectric dam built right outside of Jokkmokk that has been painted over by Sami artists. I didn't take a picture because snow was covering most of it, and really, although it was cool to see, I just wasn't quite awake enough to enjoy standing in the cold.

After the dam, we made our way north to Porjus, to see the Northern Lights Museum/ observatory. A photographer had given a talk at Ajtte museum last week, and a few of our group made contact with her and told her we'd be very interested in seeing her home/museum in Porjus. She had marvelous still photos, slide shows, and time lapse photography of the northern lights, nature, and what she calls 'polar atmospheric clouds,' which she said have only been observed in the last 50 years due to ozone erosion. They are quite beautiful- exteremly high clouds that reflect the full spectrum of light- but are a sign of global warming and pollution. The most interesting thing she told us was that you can see live videos outside her house from 5 cameras, as well as their archived footage from 2005, online. Since she takes most of her photographs outside of her house, it seems like they'd be worth checking out some time. The web address is: http://www.arctic-color.com/frame-eng.htm

From there we drove right to Pajala, the setting of the novel "Popular Music from Vittula," a novel that we all had to read for the class, and see the movie of. It's a town of about 5,000 located right near the border with Finland, which we also had to go to. Outside of the fossilized chicken most of us had for lunch, we found the town to be pleasnt, but it's also hard to appreciate a town when you're only there for one day/night and it's too cold to go explore the town. I did get to start driving the new Volvo XC70 that we had rented, and was the only person who can say they drove in Finland on the trip. It's a nice car... but I shouldn't get started about it.

We spent the night together in a nice apartment-style lodging in Pajala, and made our way to Jukkasjarvie this morning. The drive was absoloutely gorgeous: wide brush stroke clouds against a blue-pastel sky with feet of snow on both sides and only 1 car every 10 minutes or so. It was about 200km, so we certainly saw a lot of it. We got to the Ice Hotel around lunchtime (which, in retrospect, was a mistake) and most of us purchased passes to go inside the main building, while others chose to stay outside and look around the visitor's center and shop. I personally went in, and it was absolutely worth the money (about $20 for students). We had a guided tour in English around the ice chapel and the ice hotel itself. The chapel weds approx. 150 couples per week and also does baptisms and confessions, but all end up being fairly short because, as the guide said, they don't like the babies turning too blue. The chapel was Sami-inspired, with antlers inside the chapel as column spport and other Sami symbols and artwork inside.

Oh! Did I mention we got to wear the really warm blue jumpsuits? They were free with the tour, but I opted out of the facemask and hat because it wasn't that cold, and if we weren't able to take them home, why bother? The inside of the hotel was amazing. They don't lie when they say the whole thing is made of ice (and sn-ice that they get from the lake and spray on giant forms to make the hallways and rooms). Every year they hire artists to make about 40 gallery rooms and 30 'master art bedrooms' from a pool of a couple hundred. The rooms themselves are truely amazing. The variety of subjects and themes is really astounding: we were in ice-tree houses, zen gardens, submarines chasing penguins, space ships, artillery shells, meteors... I think some of my favorite were the geometrical rooms that had crystal-palace inspired beds and cool cube designs running through the room (think orchestra hall).

There were also the main hallway, giant ice tabel, and of course, the Absolut Ice Bar. Did you know that the ice bar was rated one of the top ten coolest bars in the world by the NY Times before the ice bar had served its first drink? Apparently, Absolut initially denied sponsorship, but then the Ice Hotel told a few media sources about it, and a week after the article was published, Absolut signed on. I didn't drink though- the bar doesn't open until 1pm, and even so, didn't eat breakfast. The grand hallway was really cool, "literally!" as a Finnish tourist told us. There were massive ice-block columns that had been spiraled up to give the optical impression of a concave space. The grand table was also really really cool, especially since the sun was out today and illuminated the whole thing (it was just one giant ice table with one circular bench around it, about 20 feet in diameter). The theme of the whole place was the roaring 20s, which we found to be ironic initically because of the predominance of the cubist style, and then realizing that it was prohibition and most of that artwork was located in the Ice Bar.

After we got the suits off, we looked for lunch in town, but only found a nice old church and a reindeer pen, so we drove to Kiruna. We saw the sign for the ESA Spaceport (ES-Range) that was only 18km away, but our stomachs spoke louder than the three people who wanted to go. Once we got to Kiruna, I was driving the car that got to choose where we eat, and I couldn't for the life of me find any place, so I just parked outside the historic church, and then realized it was next to a resturant. The other van told me I had missed 3 resturants on the way, but they probably sucked anyways. Besides, we would have missed yet another Iranian-run resturant, which was connected to a swimming pool/gym and had awkwardly placed windows into it right next to the tables.

That church I mentioned was really cool too- I posted a video of it below, just so you could get the magnitude of it. The smell of an all-wood church was really nice, and the architecture wasn't that shabby either. It was a huge space, and get this- they want to chop it up and move it 5km NE because they have to move the whole town of 28,000. Wait, what? Yeah, the largest Iron deposit in the world runs right below the town, and it's going to be a problem soon, so the company, LKAB, and the Swedish government, are trying to move what they can and rebuild a little NE of their current location by 2030. The company has been mining there for 70 years, but they still don't know how big the vein of Iron is, but know it's big enough to have it be economically sound to move the whole town. After seeing the church, I drove back to Jokkmokk (another 200k) at night on lovely Swedish one-lane highways. I'm safe now, and looking ahead to moving on Friday to Mora (staying in a folk school) and finishing our final essay about the Sami.

"The Cultural Tasting Experience of a Lifetime"

Apparently, I have had it.

The Museum Ajtte here in Jokkmokk hosted this all-night dinner party with the above name, and, although it was expensive, I had probably the best assortment of foods this side of the Arctic Circle. A friend and I went last night with probably 75 seats at candle-lit tables and got to meet some very interesting people (although everyone except for us were probably above 40) and practice our Swedish. It was quite the lavish get up (but only three sets of silverware) and we had a three course dinner with coffee and a little appitizer. As we walked in, we got to try a drink called Jokk made with lingon berrys and some excellent Reindeer meet served out of a traditional Sami hand-crafted bowl.

After we got seated, we were served our first course: a Salmon with sikrom & gahkko, which are made from fish eggs. It was quite a delicate fish, a little on the salty side, but very delicious. We also had traditional flat bread that was also quite good.

The main course came next, and I apologize for the picture quality on some of these but I didn't want to distract people with flashes, but this was the reindeer meat. It was actually the reindeer thigh, which is the most delictable part of the meat (or so I hear from the people who don't like to eat the liver, heart, and eyes) with a root Purée and red wine sauce. It was from everyone sitting around us the best reindeer they ever had, and they would know, because they were all over 60 and have had it before. It was rare, but the flavors were amazing. We had thought we were eating mashed potatoes with it, but the root Purée was lighter and better paired with the stronger flavors of the reindeer and red wine sauce. I think the best part was that the reindeer didn't taste like 'reindeer' in that it didn't have that blood taste that can overpower the meat nor the greasy-fatty taste that comes with other parts of the reindeer.

After the reindeer we were entertained by two yoikers. They sang some melodic yoiks, which was a nice compliment to the yoiks we heard last night at the big church in Jokkmokk, sang by three men. The yoik can be syncopated, and most of the performers last night sung in a less melodic, more repetitive style, which is the more traditional style. Christor Stoor, in the video below, was the one who helped us back in Umea get in touch with a lot of the university people, and gave us a shout out at the concert Friday night. But the dinner was not over, and I digress.

The dessert course was amazing. Hjorton, or what we would call cloudberrys, only grow in northern scandinavia and are some of the most delicious berrys, and they're orange. We had great vanilla ice cream with cloudberry sauce and chocolate sprinked over it- absolutely to die for. Lingonberry can be sweet but it also can have a tartness to it, but the cloudbeery doesn't ever have a bitterness or tartness to it. The flavor was very intense, very sweet, but oh so delicious.

Then the evening finshed up with an after dinner drink and coffee- good coffee too- and we realized that we had made a lot of work for whomever had to do dishes over the course of the evening. It was well worth the expense to experience a great dinner, and I'm glad it wasn't too traditional with reindeer bone marrow and blood pancakes or anything like that, because I would try them, but I'm sure my stomach wouldn't have felt as good afterward.

I had a few other interesting things happen during the end of the Winter Market. Looking back this week has been super busy and filled with a lot of things, and it's been kind of a sensory overload. My conversational Swedish has been getting better, mostly because of all the people I met this week and all the interactions with the shops and sellers around town. One of the most fun things happened yesterday when a friend and I went to the reindeer race out on the lake. I posted a little video of it just so you can see what I'm talking about. The track is shaped like a horseshoe, and the reindeer pull sleds with people desperately hanging on to them around it once. Basically, the race is decided in the first 10 feet and then you get to laugh at the people as they come taring around the turn. It was great to see the huge reindeer too and how tired they get.

Lastly, this morning I went for a long walk just to get some exercise and see the trails with fresh snow on them. I met some Danes who were cross country skiing, and got to see some wildlife, but when I was walking back at noon I noticed this rather odd coincidence of time and space- I think I'd call it a sun-sicle. I just glanced over the lake and noticed it and was only able to take this picture before my camera ran out of battery. I now have to get back to real life and buy some food for the next few days at the grocery store and do my laundry, but I'm feeling really good about how much I was able to do and see during the winter market but also look forward to a regular schedule again.

Marknad/Winter Conference

Greetings everyone!

Sorry I've not updated this week's activities on my blog, but I haven't been able to take pictures in a lot of the places I've been, and I've been so busy with other things that it totally slipped my mind. But enough talk...

As I said, Sunday was the beginning of the Historic Winter Market, but it also was the beginning of the annual winter conference. The title this year was "Leadership in the age of Uncertainty," and I was able to attend a few lectures on microbiology, horticulture, soil erosion, and, of course, global warming. After hearing the first speaker say the America is the "Evil Empire" and the GW Bush is "Darth Vader" because of our country's environmental policies, I wanted to show up the next day in my Sith Robe. I knew I should have brought it! Actually, the conference seemed very well put together, and it culminated in delegates from Norway, Canada, Finland, Sweden, Sapmi, and the USA discussing policies in their own country and as a collective group of nordic nations. I got to meet the head of HR at the Stockholm embassy, which was cool to do because I was going to be the alternate to work there this summer (which I turned town- long story).

The market itself is in part really interesting, but there are some parts that are not so fun. What is fun is to see these horse-drawn sleds always coming through town carrying people, goods, and whatever else. There are all kinds of things to buy from jams and breads to traditional Sami knives and crafts. Actually, today I saw some 'handicraft' that looked a lot like the birds and ibis we make at danebod...

Well, besides all the streets being crowded with vendors and people, art openings and performances every day, and more things to do than I can keep track of, I'm getting pretty tired. I've learned a lot this week- attended lectures, watched old films from the 30s and 40s, met new friends, and learned what öl tält means in Swedish, and it's starting to take it's toll. We're travelling to Kiruna and Pajala next week, so I'll be even more north than I am now seeing things like the Ice Hotel and Northern Lights Museum. If I don't write before then, it's because I'm 'recovering.'

Oops, I may have done it again.

If yesterday I took a hike, today I took a hike with a climb. To the left, you can see the route I decided to 'explore' today, but had I known that this map existed when I was hiking, I wouldn't have gone the route I ended up going. Today's hike involved trudging through snow 3-4 feet deep, seeing reindeer, and stumbling upon other extremely unexpected things.

First on the hike this morning was the climb Bryan showed me. He had discovered a huge rock face, which was surprising for both of us. The terrain seemed pretty tame yesterday, but today totally changed my opinion on that. I did try to climb it outright, but after not finding footing on what would be half way up this picture on the right side, I decided to head up less-steep grades farther around the mountain. The view from the top was pretty cool, but it was only half way up the hill. Naturally, we had to climb the rest of it. I won't post all the pictures I've been taking because I have been taking a lot. If you're really itching for all the good 'Alex in Nature' pictures you'll just have to wait until I get back. After climbing this hill, we proceeded down a Snowmobile trail until we came across a herd of Reindeer, who were surprised to see us that they ran off before we could get good pictures of them. After coming to the top of another hill, Bryan decided to head back and I felt the need to charge forward. Our break point would be at the lower red path on the map, where it makes a 90-degree angle.

From there, I was being me, and blazing my own trail to what I had seen yesterday: a mast of a ship. It was some of the hardest trekking I've done yet, and I've got a short video to prove it:

Usually I can follow trails of reindeer or skis, but today I was totally on my own. I came to a much larger rock face that went up about 200 feet and had to take it apart piece by piece. I have lots of little videos from this trip that I won't upload because looking back on it, although I was doing some pretty adventureous stuff, I don't think the videos are of that good quality. I did, however, have one video that I want to upload, which shows me half way up this larger hill, right after I spotted some pretty weird stuff:

What you should be seeing is a wooden ladder, and then a shelter-like structure. I did actually end up going closer and checking it out, and it seemed to be a dumping pile, as if someone had chucked TONS of chairs, desks, garbage cans, and picnic tables off down the rock face. Kinda freaky at the time, but since there were no tracks in the snow, I wasn't worried about stumbling on anything weird. By the time I shimmied up the side of the large hill, I came across some fencing so close to this mast thing I thought it was intended to keep animals out, but thanks to Swedish common-land law I had no moral qualms about climbing over the fence and reaching my goal. When I did, however, I felt really stupid. What I had been climbing through feet of snow for is actually accessible by snowmobile trail, and is an information center in the summer. I could have done a l0t less work to get there, but I'm happy I did what I did. The result was even more spectacular:


The quality on this reduced panorama isn't that great, but I promise the full one is incredible. I ended up eating lunch here, totally isolated, yet at the same time feeling so connected to the world around me. It was after having this experience, on top of so many others on this trip, that I was truly glad I chose to go on this study abroad program. I know there are more 'exotic' places I could go on this earth, but I have had experiences I guarantee could not be replicated in those more 'exotic' places. Could I wrangle reindeer in Morocco? Feel safe on my own exploring the mountains of Vietnam or India? I don't think so. After I had those blue-marble feelings, I looked right and found another oddity:


Yep, I did pick up a broom and posed playing air-guitar in a bandstand in the arctic circle's middle-of-nowhere venue. I then turned down the Snowmobile path towards Jokkmokk, but was again led astray by the prospect of more exploring. I came across this odd grotto on top of a hill overlooking a different river valley, in which was this odd tree which had snow on it like a tree would usually have lichen. I stood upon a rock, looked out over the southern river valley, did a little yoga, had a couple 'deep thoughts' and then continued. You know, for the amount of times I've done this, it still doesn't seem any less amazing or awe-inspiring each time I reach the top of a new climb. Yep, I'm really glad I'm here.

When I got back, I saunaed, then got groceries in a sweatshirt and sandals because I was still really warm. When I was coming back, I saw that the procession for the beginning of the historic market was just about underway, and so with groceries in hand I marched towards the lake where the ceremony was to be held. I quick dashed back up to my room as we passed to get my camera, and I'm glad I did. These pictures/video is of the procession with our torches approaching this snow-built church, constructed on the site of the oldest church in Jokkmokk, which was constructed around 1600. I stayed there for a while, but we were all getting very cold. I have about a minute's worth of the beginning of the church service, but since so few of us can understand Swedish and/or Sami, and the mic level is bad, I won't post it. it was really cool to see the stained glass made of ice, and with all the torches around the exterior snow wall, it was rather beautiful. About 5 minutes in, after the first hymn, I had to go back because I was still wearing sandals and my toes were freezing off. I still got to see it though, and I'm happy I didn't miss the procession, because there were quite a few Sami in full reindeer coats, and to see the horses pulling sleds of beautiful Swedish children was worth the burning pain of warming cold feet. This next week holds lots of fun activities, and I hope I can make it around to everything I want to see. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of Sami art exhibitions, films about Samis from both the past and present, and hearing the Joiking concert on Friday. Hopefully I will see the northern lights soon too.