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.