Hey everybody,
This was by far the most expensive vacation I've ever planned. By. Far. First off, it's Sweden. Secondly, it'd been almost 3 years since Dawn and I took a vacation together so budget went out the window in favor of checking every box on the wishlist. Dog sledding and snowmobiling? Yes. Fancy spa hotel? Of course. One night in a designer treehouse? Why not? And of course we'll be able to see the northern lights, right? Right?
Well it didn't work out quite as planned.
- According to my calculations, during our 19 days in Sweden and Italy we spent approximately 22 unnecessary hours in various airports due to flight delays or cancellations.
- I jumped through hoops to make reservations and spent a large chunk of change on a fancy dinner in Stockholm that seemed to consist of 96.4832% salt. Dawn and I must have drunk a gallon of water each that night and we both felt sick.
- There was not enough snow in northern Sweden in December for us to go snowshoeing, or snowmobiling, or dogsledding, or even to visit reindeer since the herders require a certain snow depth before they can round them up for their winter grazing. Most of the activities we had booked were cancelled. Thanks a lot climate change!
- It did, however, decide to snow fairly heavily the entire week that we were in the north which gave us approximately a 0% chance of seeing any semblance of any lights, much less the northern ones.
- Dawn got sick with some kind of flu or sinus infection on day 3 of the trip and was unable to shake it until well after we got home.
- We never got fully over the jetlag. We kept waking up between 4 and 5 AM every damn night for almost two weeks regardless of when we went to sleep. I have no idea why... maybe because it got dark at 2PM.
What's there to write about then? Did we actually do anything while we were there? Why am I even writing this? Well, the aforementioned climate change was a hot topic. That was the subject that was top of mind with everyone we spoke with in northern Sweden. We flew from Stockholm to Gallivare in the heart of "Lapland" which is a name given by the Swedes to the area but known as Sapmi to the indigenous Sami people. When we landed, Dawn said to me that it looked like we were "North of the Wall" which if you're a Game of Thrones fan you'll understand.
The impact of a later snowfall on a populace that is so closely tied both directly and indirectly to seasonal cycles and the environment is the first thing anyone wants to talk to you about. Most years they would have expected half a meter of snow by the time we were there. Late snow means late herding of reindeer, which means less winter grazing time. Lennart (our host at Sapmi Nature camp) explained that for many Sami people reindeer are like currency and any threat to reindeer wellbeing directly affects their livelihood and primary food source. Add the impact of other human enterprises like hydroelectric dams and extensive forestry on top of that and it's been putting the Sami way of life at risk for decades. The old growth forests are dwindling, and the efforts of the forestry industry to replace them with new growth does nothing for the ecosystem. Reindeer and moose need mature forest for foraging, so the moose actually end up eating the newly planted trees for sustenance. What's the forestry industry's answer to that? Shoot the moose, of course! If you happen to lease your land from the forestry industry, they give you quotas for how many moose you have to shoot depending on how many acres you have. So you shoot the moose because the forestry people tell you to and then what happens? The moose become endangered and, on top of that, the bears now start eating your reindeer (the aforementioned currency and Sami man's best friend) because there aren't enough moose to feed the bear population.
Lennart also talked to us about the more direct threats to their culture, things like forced assimilation (Lennart's dad was forcibly sent to a Swedish boarding school), no political representation for the Sami people (a Sami parliament with no real legislative authority), and a lot of other anecdotes that sounded very familiar to anyone who's familiar with how indigenous cultures are treated by dominant cultures. If any of you have been following the stories out of Canada about the religious schools that were forced upon the indigenous people you'll find many parallels.
We stayed in a "glamping"
lavvu, which is a large teepee tent with a pellet stove, comfortable bed and an incinerating toilet named Cinderella. It was light at 9AM and dark by 2PM although we never got to really see the sun, just shades of gray. I went for a hike on a frozen river which is something I'd never done before. We ate gooseberries, smoked trout, moose that had been killed and butchered by Lennart himself, and some really, really salty reindeer meat that Lennart assured me was delicious when dipped in your coffee. Ugh.
After Gallivare we headed to Harads where we stayed at Arctic Bath for a few nights, a fancy spa/hotel with fancy fine dining and fancy cabins directly on the Lule river. They immediately informed us that all our planned activities for each day had been cancelled except for one. I suppose that was a sort of blessing in disguise since Dawn spent most of the next few days sick in bed. Luckily, we had downloaded the full season of Great British Baking Show. This is the week where it decided to start snowing, of course, which meant a 0% chance of clear skies or anything resembling night-time lights. The highlight of the stay for me was the chance to have a 0° C plunge in the cold water pool in the center of the spa. They keep the water from freezing by using hydro jets to keep it moving around. I did the whole hot/cold sauna-to-cold plunge three times and it felt like thousands of tiny needles piercing your skin at the same time but in a good way. 5 stars, would recommend. We did stay one night at the famous Treehotel in a treehouse called "The Cube" which required a 15 minute walk in a snowstorm to reach. Thanks to my expert planning we arrived at 5PM and had to leave at 8AM to catch a flight so we never got to see our treehouse in the daylight.
During the approximately three hours of clear sky and good health we enjoyed in the north we managed to go ice fishing with Micke Suorra. Micke is a
wilderness guide and expert moose caller who owns a private lake he uses for ice fishing. He also thought I was
Randy Couture, which of course I am. Micke is a talker and he likes to laugh which helped make this outing the most pleasant few hours of our time in the north. Dawn and I caught 12 arctic char between us, one of which we kept to bring back to the hotel restaurant so they could make it for our lunch. After fishing, we sat in Micke's lakeside cabin by a fire where he made us grilled cheese and reindeer sandwiches and told us a lot of stories. Like Lennart, Micke is of Sami descent and has a lot of "feelings" about the forestry industry. He has a minimum number of five moose that he is supposed to kill every year to continue to keep the lease on his land, and that number is determined by the forestry officials. Micke told them that he would kill one moose because that is sufficient to feed his family over the winter and he would kill no more than that and that was that. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
We bookended our trip to northern Sweden with a few days in Stockholm, mostly staying in Gamla Stan (Old Town). The Christmas market was in full swing on Saturdays right in front of the Nobel museum, with stalls selling all sorts of Xmas goodies from Glogg to bear jerky to cloudberry jam. We got a recipe for delicious beet soup, ate Swedish pastries with hot chocolate, tried Swedish meatballs at a small café, and had yet another fancy dinner at a Michelin star place where every plate was beautiful but extremely salty. After spending that kind of dough you don't want to be lying awake in bed feeling thirsty and bloated for 4 hours. I may be off the fancy dinners for a while.
The last part of the trip was visiting family in Italy. I hadn't seen my dad in three years since I brought Covid back from Italy to the United States "12 Monkeys" style. He's looking pretty good for an old man although he's still eating too much. My stepmom told us that they had to take him to the emergency room because he got sick after eating too many mushrooms at a dinner party. She said something something "two kilos" which is 4.5 pounds but that seems almost impossible. My dad's rebuttal: "They were fresh porcini." Then he shrugged and went back to reading his newspaper. Enough said.
Our last couple of nights in Italy were spent with my cousin Andrea and his wife Caterina at their
Casapaletti Country House B&B about an hour outside of Torino in northwest Italy. They have a beautiful villa with a fantastic view of the surrounding valley. And a hot tub. It had snowed the day before we arrived so everything was covered in a light layer of white. The way Andrea operates when he takes you on a tour is that everything he does is an excuse for either eating or drinking something interesting. We visited several local wineries where he buys wine for his B&B, usually featuring the local specialty of Grignolino as well as other favorites from Piemonte (like Barolo). We ate fresh pasta with goat ragu and rare Piemontese beef at a truck stop. We sampled cheeses that Andrea picked up from a local farm. We visited a winery that featured a several hundred year old wine cellar called an "
Infernot" that has been carved out of stone. It was the only sunny day that we enjoyed in our almost three week vacation and it was not a bad way to end things.
Nobody is going to feel sorry for you when you take five weeks off work and spend three weeks traveling in Europe. Nevertheless, I don't think either one of us would say this was the most enjoyable or most relaxing vacation we've taken. As time passes, though, the difficulties will turn into good stories. Everything sounds more hilarious in a two-sentence quip versus when you're actually living it. I do remember discovering the beauty of the stark contrast of grays and whites on display in the grim north of Sweden. I got to take my frozen plunge. We learned about the Sami people while staying in a cozy fancy tent. We ate a lot of good food. I caught fish for the first time ever and got to eat it. I saw my family for the first time in three years. It was also the first time in three years that Dawn and I took a vacation together. What's to complain about?
Here's a link to the photo album: North of the Wall
Take 'er easy,
Dave
