The day after we saw The Lights, we had a play with the kick-sleds we’d borrowed from our host, Benko. He advised Greg that they worked best on an icy surface and told him that we should take them down to the road. So yeah, we went and played on the road. Cool.

It’s quite easy to get a good speed up with those things, it’s just that stopping can be a problem. I didn’t need to resort to throwing myself into the snow banks by the side of the road, thankfully. Benko lit the fire in his BBQ hut for us, so we went and sat in there for a while, on the benches lined with reindeer skins around the hut. A bit later in the day, he gave us some moose steak that his wife had shot a few months ago and we had it for dinner, sauteed in butter. By then, we were also watching more Aurora, so we cooked the steak in the cottage rather than down in the BBQ hut.

We went for a walk along one of the cross country ski trails near the cottage. Benko zapped past on skis with his dog Huma, part Husky, part Siberian Laika, to see how his wife was going with her moose hunting. Huma is a good hunting dog, but apparently they had a lot of trouble with her mother, who killed 3 reindeer near their house. The reindeer all belong to the Sami people, and each dead reindeer cost Benko at least AUD$1000. I think that dog has now gone to the big reindeer hunting ground in the sky.

The Aurora on that second night were even better than the previous night. Really vivid and active and amazing. They started just after 5pm, by which time it was completely dark and the moon was just setting, and lasted a couple of hours. Then it got cloudy and while we knew there were probably some spectacular lights happening, we couldn’t see them for the clouds. So that was it, we’ve been lucky enough to see some great Aurora on this trip.

Next day, Wednesday, we drove south towards Lulea. Stopped for lunch at Ikea at Haparanda on the Swedish side of the border with Finland. Ikea is currently renovating their restaurant kitchen, so they were offering a buffet lunch with meatballs, chicken balls and vegie balls plus potato bake & salad. We took a short side-trip back into Finland and south to Kemi, to look at the Snow Castle. We’re too frugal to pay the 15 euros per person to look inside it, let alone stay in the accommodation which starts at 600 euros per night, and we’d already seen its Swedish sister hotel at  Jukkasjarvi on our last trip, so we walked around the outside and past the north-ish facing cabins, er, Seaside Glass Villas,  with huge glass fronts that have obviously been talked-up as being good for viewing aurora. I still have a problem with places that claim it’s possible to see aurora from behind glass. I wouldn’t accuse them of outright lying, but they’re definitely stretching the truth.

And then back to The Old House at Palange, where we stayed for a couple of nights when we first arrived. We like it there, we like Petr the owner and we knew the place and the procedure, so it all worked well for us, with just an hour’s drive to Lulea to return the car and fly south on Thursday afternoon. We were lucky that we could stay there again, as Petr is flying to Czech Republic today to visit his family.

We had some spare time in Lulea so we drove to have a look at the outside of the Facebook Data Centre, just because we could. I was disappointed that there isn’t a huge ‘thumbs-up’ sign at the entrance, just a small sign that said ‘Facebook Entrance’, but we got a photo of Greg standing beside it. As he pointed out, Lulea is the perfect spot for a data centre with all those thousands of computers … no need for airconditioning, just let the outside air in to keep it all cool.

Returning the Volvo at the airport went smoothly – in the 2 weeks we had the car, we drove just over 1000kms, and used less than a full tank of diesel. It cost us just over AUD $100 to fill the car with 51 litres before we returned it, but that was the first time we’d visited a servo on this trip. Great fuel economy

Our flights to Stockholm and then on to Amsterdam were good. We flew Norwegian and got exit row seats to Stockholm, and then seats 1A and 1B on the flight to to Amsterdam. Which is possibly about as close to the pointy end of a plane as we’re going to get. Norwegian offers free wifi, so Greg had a lovely time watching TV shows and surfing the ‘net and seeing where we were flying, all on his phone.

We stayed at the Tulip Inn last night and had a lovely time at their buffet breakfast this morning. Greg wants to move to The Netherlands because they have chocolate sprinkles on bread for breakfast. And he hasn’t even tried the stroopwafels or appelstroop yet!

The sign to the Facebook data centre

Facebook data centre – lots of cool air around to cool those computers

The ice walls of the Snow Castle

The glass villas near the snow castle

Watching the Lights is both greater and lesser than looking at photos of them. Lesser because our eyes can’t pick up the incredible colours that a camera can, or at least, our old short-sighted peepers can’t see those vivid greens or pinks or reds or purples, it all just looks like lighter bands, mostly towards the north, but sometimes stretching across the sky.

And greater because we can see the 3 dimensionality of them much better than the camera can: the curtains of light that really do shimmer or ripple when you know what to look for, and the way the lights bloom across the sky and shift while you’re watching them.

We spent a couple of hours standing and sitting just outside the front door of the cottage we’re staying in, occasionally nipping back inside to warm up when the Lights weren’t putting on much of a show. And then by 1am it was all over and the sky went back to its usual moonless darkness. We set the alarm to wake up every couple of hours, but there was no more action, although there is more predicted for this afternoon and tonight.

So, we’ve really seen them properly now. It’s taken a couple of trips and a lot of waiting around, but those couple of hours last night made it all worth it!

the BBQ house down by the river Muonio

the frozen river Muonio

walking on the frozen river Muonio

standing on the frozen river Muonio

inside the BBQ hut

looking into the cottage

inside the cottage

The last 8 days in our Finnish cabin in the snow seem to have gone past in a white blur of doing nothing much at all, and having a lovely time doing it. It’s the longest we have ever spent in one place, in the 16 years we’ve been travelling together. We weren’t lucky enough to see any more Lights, but we’re now staying just across the border in Sweden for a few more days, so we might get to see them again. The place we’re staying in now doesn’t have quite the same rustic charm of the previous place, but it is very comfortable and has a great view over the frozen Muonio River, which marks the Swedish/Finnish border. We can see across to Finland from the dining room windows.

While we were at Yllasjarvi, we did a bit of snowshoeing in the partly cleared area behind the cabin. It’s easier than just walking in snow boots, but I still kept managing to get stuck in thigh-deep snow occasionally. Greg gave up on his igloo-building and devoted some of his energy to making time-lapse videos of sunrises, sunsets and other goings-on around the cabin. They are beautiful to watch.

We called in to a Swedish supermarket on our way here to stock up on essentials that we couldn’t find in Finland – creamed rice and little hot dog buns – and learnt that older Swedish banknotes and coins are no longer legal tender. Some were phased out in the middle of last year, and others will be phased out in the middle of this year. I’d brought about 170 SEK (AUD $25 ) that I’d had left over from when we were here 3 years ago, and 2 x 20 kroner notes are now obsolete. The young woman at the checkout offered to exchange the rest of the notes and coins for me but I’ll just make sure we spend it all before we leave. I guess we’ll add the 20 kroner notes to Greg’s Zimbabwean 1 trillion dollar note, which is also no longer accepted as legal tender. There seems to be a move towards a cashless economy in Sweden – when we had brunch at Ikea last weekend, it was not possible to pay with cash, only with a plastic card as the checkout operator didn’t have a cash drawer.

In the afternoon we went out for a drive around the area and as I was scraping ice off the windscreen, our host Petr came out for a chat. He’s a night-shift worker at a nursing home in the next town. Works 5 nights a week, and also runs his Airbnb accommodation & the attached campground (summertime only). There seems to be quite a lot of summer accommodation in the area as it’s close to an inlet, so there are lots of water-related and outdoor activities for locals and visitors. There’s some agriculture, but we’re not sure what else the locals do for work … maybe like Petr, they work in the larger towns around.

Petr recommended that we drive, then walk, to the highest point in the area, so that we could see the inlet and the surrounding countryside. We drove a couple of kms, then turned off and went down a road which is maintained by the military – there were radar towers and a few closed-up buildings, and lots of snow plough tracks. We walked a km or so to get to the top of the hill. Great view from the top, and the walk warmed us up.

Yesterday we were up and away by just after 8am, to head to Finnish Lapland and our next Airbnb accommodation, where we’re staying for the next week. We stopped for a smorgasbord brunch at Ikea at Haparanda, on the Swedish-Finnish border. And yes, we drove our Volvo there. The only thing missing was some Abba music to really remind us of where we are. Then across the border to Tornio to buy a local Sim card for internet data, which was the best deal we’ve ever had – EU25 for unlimited data for 30 days. Greg is in heaven!

We drove up the border on the Finnish side on the E8, which follows the mostly frozen Torne River for quite a few kms. Stopped for the obligatory photo at the Arctic Circle and kept on going to our Airbnb cabin in the woods & snow at Yllasjarvi. We had the usual minor hassles finding it in the dark and with minimal signage, but we eventually found it and were all settled in by 6pm. Really lovely place, we’re delighted with it all and very happy to be spending a week here.

Scrapping the Ice of the windscreen

Walking up the lookout

Stopping for the Reindeer

Sunset near the Arctic circle

Crossing the Arctic circle again

The river bordering Finland and Sweden

1kg of creamed rice for $2.50

When we were here 3 years ago, we drove the 900kms each way, and the drive north was nice because we camped in a forest and woke up to snow everywhere the next morning. The drive south was horrible though, with the sun sitting on the horizon and limiting visibility, snow flurries making it even harder to see and getting to the airport with the bare minimum of time to catch our flight to Dubai.

Anyway, that was last time. This time we’re doing it differently. For a start, we have brought hardly anything with us – no camping gear, hardly any electronics, just warm clothes and a couple of other things. My checked bag weighed 12kg, and my carry-on weighed about 4kg; Greg’s checked bag weighed 15kg, but he is also carrying a couple of  very lightweight Helinox folding chairs and a folding table, because we might need them for sitting out and looking at lights (we hope!), and they can useful in hotel rooms as there is often only one chair and space for just one laptop. Greg’s carry-on weighed around 7kg as he carried both laptops and various other bits of electrical equipment. Compared with our usual combined 60kgs of checked baggage and 14+kgs of carry-on, wrangling such a small amount of baggage is a breeze.

We picked up our rental car at Lulea airport and to my great delight and amusement, it’s a Volvo! With heated seats (we call them ‘pizza warmers’, not that we have ever used them to keep a pizza warm, but we could) and very smart headlights which automatically dim from high beam when they detect an oncoming vehicle, then go back up to high beam when we’ve passed it. We’d actually booked something else, but when I looked at all the rental cars in the Hertz parking area, there only seemed to be Volvos. So Swedish!

Our Airbnb is a 100 year old timber house which is set up to offer group accommodation for at least 12 people, and is part of a campground in summer. It’s warm and very well insulated. We can see cars drive past on the road a few metres away, but can’t hear them because of the snow on the road and the triple-glazed windows. We’re spending a couple of nights here, then tomorrow we’re heading across the border and further north to Kolari in Finnish Lapland, and we’ll spend a week there. At the moment, sunrise there is at 10:30, sunset is 2:30, so there are plenty of night-time hours for watching Northern Lights. Greg is keeping an eye on the SpaceWeather website for information about solar activity.

Oh! And I’ve  just remembered one other thing that Greg brought in his checked bag … a pruning saw. To build an igloo. As one does. Watch this space!

Old Timber House in Palang Sweden

Camping in summer but accommodation in winter

Yes its a Volvo!

The rental Volvo came with the usual studded winter tyres

The local school with sleds parked outside. Kids outside during recess playing with their toboggans in the mild -4C

11 am and the Sun is just above the horizon as we are still south of the Arctic circle

So this is Attempt No 2 to find the Northern Lights, and hopefully we’ll have better luck this time. Or at least, this time if there’s even a tiny glimmer of green in the sky, we’ll make darn sure we hang around and watch them, unlike last time where we made the classic newbies’ error of seeing them and thinking we’d see them again.

We’re flying to Stockholm, and then north to Lulea. Spending a couple of nights in an Airbnb  house at Kalix, which is north east of Lulea. Then we’re heading across the border and 200kms north to Kolari in Finland and spending a week there. We’re going to spend second half of the trip in The Netherlands, but don’t have many plans on what we’ll do there, other than hopefully catch up with our Dutch friends Mickey and Jaap.

Here’s something I learnt recently – you know how the plane cabin lights are dimmed for take-off and landing? I never really thought about why they did that, but it’s to get everyone’s eyes used to seeing in dimmer light in case of an emergency. Window shades are raised so that flight attendants can see if there’s a fire in one of the engines, or any debris that could affect an evacuation. And while it won’t be offered on any list of movies to watch on in-flight entertainment, ‘Sully’ is a really great movie, with a happy ending!