BWAAFUCKIMSTILLALIVE...or, the Icehotel Experience

We thought we were having fun in Stockholm, but man, that was nothing! The Icehotel was possibly the most fun I've ever had in my life. How come? Well, partly a mixture of snow, alcohol and gravity which I had never before realized went so well together…

When we arrived in Kiruna (200 clicks north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden) we had arranged a husky sled ride from the airport to the hotel itself, situated on the banks of the expansive frozen river Torne 14 kilometers distant, driven by a pixie-ish Indonesian-Dutch-Chinese girl who had spent most of her life in the tropics before falling in love with the dogs and deciding to stay up there. Kiruna seems to be one of those sticky places on the Earth that strange adventurers are drawn to and find themselves unable to leave. (Bea, Nick – you would love it up here!) The ride was pure magic, although the stench of dog-shit pervaded the trail and Vince - sitting in the front - had to dodge a few poops that flew out of the dogs as they ran ;) But the dogs were friendly and very smart, and we were surprised that they were actually no bigger than normal house dogs.

That night we braved “sleep” in the Icehotel. Some of the brochures we read said that “most people find one night in an ice room sufficient.” Well, yeah. Once-in-a-lifetime by dint of the fact that it is FUCKING FREEZING and not really possible to sleep very well because every hour and a half you wake up with a jolt and a “BWAAFUUUCKIMSTILLALIVE.” I also had to check Vince was still breathing every few hours. So, beautiful room, great ‘experience’ but we didn’t have to be prodded out of the room when morning came.

The next day we took a tour of the raison-d’etre of the town – the LKAB iron ore mine in Kiruna, the largest and most-advanced underground iron ore mine in the world. It is always astounding to see these massive feats of engineering and terraforming. As I said, the town exists because of this mine, and in fact most of Sweden’s wealth in the 19^th century came from it. So the townspeople take the small inconveniences in stride, such as the fact that the entire town shakes every night between 1:15 and 1:30 am as the blasting caps in the mountain are detonated, and also that they have mined out so much ore that the town has to be relocated in the next 3 years because it is sinking (not to worry though, the Dutch have offered to move it for them, probably in trade for the mountain of slag they have created!) Anyway, to get some sense of the scale of the operation, the mine makes a profit of 1 million euros every 70 minutes round the clock every single day, yet one TON of processed iron pellets costs only 80 euros. Bargain, I just can’t think what I’d do with it. Obviously, I’m alone in that.

When we got back to the hotel we had a warm cabin for the night- thank god! If you want to come up and just see the place (it is fantastic, it really is) but you don’t want to tempt the cold grip of death, these cabins are very comfortable and spacious. It seems like maybe they overcompensate for the ice rooms by super-heating the cabins, as it was so warm we actually had to crack a window.

At 7pm we got on our ski-doos with a group of about 10 people to chase down the Northern Lights….

More on that to come. ;)

PS: Still can’t upload pictures because finding a USB port has proved difficult. Too bad… so far we have taken over 600 snaps! The more to bore you with at a future date.