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last updated 17-Sep-2023 was 28-Feb-2009
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2009 Kiruna, Sapmi (Northern Sweden)
Every year we try to write "Holiday" and the year in the sand, dirt or snow in honour of my late father who used to do the same when we were kids.
Husky ride to the hotel
We were taken to the hotel from the airport on a Husky sledge. It was really enjoyable (if a little smelly sometimes) and it was fun to watch them biting lumps of snow to eat as they ran along.
Eight huskies pulled four people, this was their second 19km trip of the day !
Restaurant
The main road outside the Ice Hotel
There was a restaurant over the road, although some of the food was good quality it was nouvelle cuisine so extremely small portions for very high prices, we did get a complimentary mushroom soup and I thought the size was small ...
... until I saw the size of my starter. One small potato cut into three and a crisp with some butter sauce. It was about 120SEK or £10 ! We can get a huge bag of chips at our local takeaway for £1.60. We vowed not to go there again ... There's a buffet place called "The Homestead" that is only 1km walk away. It's about £32 a head for an eat as much as you like buffet of good quality food.
S.'s main course was a bit more filling for her
Snowmobiles/Moose safari
We hired three snowmobiles so that Di and S. could drive their own even though they don't (yet) even have driving licenses in the UK.
Our instructor had this one, much faster than ours and more manoueverable. He could drive it over fresh snow as if he was on a jet ski.
In the 3 hour drive we saw a few Mooses (meece ?) but mostly they just lay in the snow behind trees, we were given lunch at a Swedish home along with other people who had been horse riding.
Sami Reindeer Excursion
We went on a Sami and reindeer excursion - I had to drive a snowmobile to pull some of the other guests along. Here our guide explains the safety to my and the other driver
It started off OK over a frozen lake (nothing much to hit) ...
... but soon we were in little winding passages between trees that seemed scarred from collisions with snowmobiles
The reindeer are semi domesticated and are being fed lichen. It looked like how we imagined Narnia to be
We could have a go at racing them, here's S. starting off by the Sami guide
Off she goes into the distance. The reindeer came back alone, she'd crashed into two other sledges and fallen off and limped home with a bruised knee
The guide told us all about Sami culture (that's their real name, the word Lapp isn't liked very much) and cooked a reindeer stew and a coffee over a fire in a tent. For the vegetarian (me !) he cooked some vegetable soup
Around the Ice Hotel
You can spend warm nights in little log cabins at the ice hotel if you don't fancy the cold - we did 2 warm nights then one in the ice room
Someone appears to have got married there
Apparently this means "finished"
An ice sculpture in the reception area
Sami art
Many ice sculptures outside the hotel
A lot of the blocks of ice pulled from the river contain plant material
One day had brilliant blue skies but it was still -4C/.
Ice Hotel - the cold parts
The main entrance to the Ice Hotel
There are reindeer skins on the door " to keep the heat in"
This is the reception desk
and a receptionist
The main hallway has pillars of ice supporting the ceiling
Almost everything is made of snow and ice, even the chandeliers which had little LEDs and optical fibre lights !
The corridors are very long
This was a semi circular ice settee
The Church
There was a church where they have regular services, Apparently it's popular for weddings.
Blocks of ice had been cut ...
... and any broken ones were discarded in a pile.
The Rooms
You could pay extra and get a designer room ... we made do with a cheaper room (see later). The hotel rooms were open from 10:00 to 18:00 for any visitor to look at, though there was one "secret" room we couldn't get into.
The Ice Bar
Even the cups at the ice bar were made of ice, see the 2nd picture below this one
We met a lot of nice people again and again, this is Santi (who drove another snowmobile) and his parents
Hola Santi y sus padres ! Mandenme un e-mail si quieren Uds un foto original
The main settee in the Ice bar
Sleeping in the Ice room
Our room in the Ice Hotel. It was -17C outside and a toasty warm -5C inside. It wasn't cold inside the sleeping bag, just our faces at -5C and my eyes felt frozen shut in the morning. You weren't supposed to leave any clothes out of the bag as they'd freeze solid overnight.
Northern lights.
One of the main reasons we came here was to see this, it didn't get dark enough when we were in Iceland, Finland or Spitzbergen in 2007 and 2008.The first signs - I couldn't see it by eye so took a long exposure then upped the light levels to see some of the lights
The view from the Coop. It moved slowly and kept brightening and darkening every ten seconds or so
Then it got brighter - here most of the dark or missing patches are clouds
Lights illuminating clouds (orange, left) over the city of Kiruna and Northern Lights (green, right). The blue lights are from the ice hotel.
Every few minutes it would change and the stars shone brightly too as there was no moon.
We saw a few of the "curtains" of light (bottom centre) but no other colours apart from green.
The flight home
There were only a handful of flights a day from the Airport and two took off 5 minutes apart.
The view from the plane over northern Sweden
It was an exhausting holiday
Kiruna Ice Hotel
