The Icehotel, its taken me a while to be able to blog about this one, even composing it in my head its hard to know what to say. Bare with me, there may be metaphors. The Icehotel had been something the rest of my trip formed around, something I'd planned for a bit more than a year really.
When I first started planning it it seemed like a fantastical idea, kind of a pie in the sky dream.
I'm gonna go to the Icehotel, sure, and while you're at it why not drop in on mars and venus.
When you've thought about something that much, daydreamed about it, reassured yourself with it to get through less pleasant tasks, worked your arse off for it and told everyone who even caught your eye in passing about it, there can be the danger of the reality not matching up to the imaginary.
This did not happen in my case. I went to the fucking Icehotel! And its made of ice! And I slept in it and didn't die!
Gah, I can only start from the beginning and hope I don't miss things.
So we flew in from Stockholm after spending the day wandering around there, love Stockholm, want to go back there, muchos pretty, read the last post.
I was exhausted by this point though, lots of wandering around and travelling in a very short frame of time for me and it really wore me out, I couldn't remember the last time I had a full nights sleep and I think the excitement of all this stuff happening made it even harder to try and sleep when I could so for the most part when I got to the icehotel I was running on fumes. That and how long I've been waiting for this made everything feel somewhat surreal.
As we flew into Kiruna airport we couldn't really see anything because of the clouds. Once we got below them Katie started excitedly pointing out the snow “where, where!” was my reply “Dude, the white stuff, on the ground” I still couldn't see it, deranged I was I tell you.
We land on a tarmac which is covered in ice and snow, it doesn't seem possible, and if it is possible it seems highly dangerous, but our skilful Swedish pilots managed it with no fuss, actually they might have been Norwegian. Kiruna is a tiny airport, the closest one to Jukkasjarvi where the icehotel is, and is about 200km inside the arctic circle. For those of you who are in Melbourne, its like Moorabbin airport but covered in snow.
They unfold these rickety little stairs and off we totter on the icy tarmac, now me, I do not have a reputation of being sure footed, a few months back when reminiscing with some childhood friends we couldn't help but notice how many of our anecdotes involved me falling over, into or on something. This phenomena only recently seems to have abated and I am falldowno free for 2008 so far but knowing this fact about myself always makes me a little extra cautious, the maternal voice inside my head berates me slightly “remember not to fall on your arse” it says “I wont” is my internal sing song reply, usually given right before I fall on my arse. Trying out my new sturdier legs on ice was going to be quite the challenge I thought but I can report, quite proudly I might add, that for the entire time I was at the icehotel surrounded by all that slippy stuff I never landed on my arse once, nor my face either. Apart from one tiny little almost slip in front of the webcam out the front of the icehotel, which I rapidly recovered from and made some gesture of turning around to look at something so it would appear as though I meant it, I was sure-footed as a mountain goat.
We shuffle into the arrivals hall at Kiruna which was, well, a hall, and then into the waiting taxi to the icehotel. We shared our cab with an Irish couple, and did the usual traveller banter. Where are you from Ireland Oh I've been there blah, where are you from Melbourne oh I've been there blah. Then everyone started freaking out a little at the speed the driver was going, but me, pah I was fine, speed, I laugh at your speed, I have been on the road in the UAE, everything after that is like a pleasure cruise.
It was actually no where near as cold as I thought it was going to be, it was somewhere around -4 to -10 C while we were there, the week before it was -30 apparently so we missed the worst of the cold snap. It was so dry that the cold just felt brisk and kinda clean really. We dragged our suitcases through the snow to the warm reception area to check in and get our snow gear. After dumping our stuff into our locker the icehotel chick hooked us up with the most amazing snow boots, they were so light but so warm, I didn't want to give them back. Snowbooted, we went off to explore our new surrounds. It was so silent there apart from the crunching of our feet in the snow, occasionally you heard some of the huskies howling but that was mostly it. We went through every room we could get into in the icehotel, some people had already retired to bed that night and the curtain pulled across the entrance to the room was our warning to stay out.
A lot of them were empty though, one of the benefits of going right at the start of the season.
My favourite room was one that was built to look like a tree house. You walked in the entrance and then followed these steps around and up into the branches of this tree that cradled your bed for the evening.
I have to say having slept in the snow room, which is a bit cheaper and essentially just a bed in an iceroom without all the sculpture, I don't really feel like I missed out on much not staying in an art suite. Its too cold to just hang out there not doing anything and when the lights go out you cant see any of it. Being a guest we got free access to all the rooms before and after the public was let in and out each day so we got to see every room relatively undisturbed anyway.
The icebar this year was Art Deco themed with these fabulous club lounges sculpted from ice and covered in reindeer skins so that you could sit on them. Incredibly warm those reindeer skins though I kept getting stray reindeer hairs on me which was a little creepy. A tip, remember to bring your gloves when drinking in the icebar. The drinks are served in ice glasses and I had a little moment of panic when I got mine as I thought I'd forgotten my gloves. I cannot for the life of me remember what my drink was but it was vodka and it was red and I wanted 12 of them. Such amazing drinks at the icehotel, I could have returned with Larry Hagman's first liver had they not cost the deficit of a south american country.
After we had drunk all we could afford and wander all we were able we decided to bite the bullet and turn in for the night. You go to the reception and they give you your thoughtfully prewarmed sleeping bag, then you are told to remove all your nice warm clothing and make a dash for it in your thermals, but you are advised to wear a hat. So off we went, me in thermal leggings, tracksuit pants and a long sleeved t-shirt, and my hat, cant forget that. I think Katie wore her PJ bottoms and a jumper. When they give you your thoughtfully prewarmed sleeping bag they also give you this sheet thing which its kind of like an envelope that you are supposed to stuff inside the sleeping bag somehow and then crawl inside the sheety envelope, inside the sleeping bag. I'm sure the reception staff just do this to give themselves a laugh seeing how long we will attempt to get one thing inside the other. Me I gave up in about 2 mins and used my sheety thing as a pillow, You do get pillows at the icehotel but they leave them in the room so they end up frozen. So we make our dash from the warm of the reception outside into the cold and then through the reindeer skin clad outside door of the icehotel and shuffle down to our room. The bed is essentially this unreassuring wooden board propped up on these bricks of ice, covered in a thick mattress and reindeer skins, the trick is to take off your boots without putting your feet down on the floor (its covered in ice and snow) then get your self inside the sleeping bag without falling off the bed onto the floor (still covered in ice and snow) and then find a way to stay inside it while you fumble for the lightswitch at the base of the bed (not by the door, coz the floor is covered in..you guessed it, bees, no, I'm kidding its ice and snow). This should be an Olympic sport. The first few minutes of our night went like this, I was really tired and kinda worn out from both all my travelling and the sheer effort of trying to get the boots off and the sleeping bag on, part of me hoped that I would fall into a hypothermic state of unconsciousness so for the first ten minutes I just lay there, mean while Katie was performing all kinds of gymnastics trying to get herself comfortable and silently resenting me for looking like I was comfortable. This took her about ten minutes, it was at this point that I realised death would not take me, and I would not fall asleep unless I could get myself into a better position but now I thought Katie was asleep and everytime you moved in one of those sleeping bags they rustled loudly which seemed amplified by the snow somehow and made me feel like I was carrying a squealing pig through a market place, you know how they make that horrible panic driven squeal but then the second you put them down wander off like nothing at all happened, that's exactly like those fucking sleeping bags, rustle, rustle, rustle that could wake the dead then nothing. Also the sleeping bag was kinda slippy, and I was trying to make sure that Katie had enough room so I was perched on the edge of an unsturdy feeling thing in a slippy feeling thing surrounded by ice. I would gather the sleeping bag up around my head like it was a cocoon and then try and gently relax into sleep but the sleeping bag would fall away and the cold would whisper in my ear like an unwanted lover. Then my hat fell off. Then I thought fuck it, and just fell asleep. Next thing I know a Swedish woman wearing a miners helmet with a lamp on it was handing me a cup of hot lingonberry juice (which by the way is delicious) and telling me its morning.
All we could think of was getting into the warmth so we downed that juice and ran with our sleeping bags, which now felt heavier than dead weights, into the warm changing area an our lockers. Both of us decided we were not up for the Swedish communal showers and headed straight to breakfast which was across the road from the icehotel and buffet style. Lovely.
We had a bit of a wait til we got into our warm cabin after breakfast, I nearly cried when the lady at the check in desk told me that, all I wanted in the world at that moment was a shower and a nap. But we both killed time in our own ways, Katie shopped and I wandered around behind the icehotel on the river and meditated to try and pull myself together and suck it up til our cabin was ready.
A brief moment to talk about the water. The do go on a bit about the water at the icehotel and its entirely deserved, it was beautiful, I gulped it down, it was the nicest water I've ever had in my life, so clean and pure it tasted of nothing but made you feel like you were drinking the finest wine, without the getting drunk part of course. I took a bottle home smuggled in my suitcase and treated myself to mouthfuls of it til it ran out. I have to go back if for nothing else than the water, everything else tastes like it came from somewhere stagnant and diseased.
Eventually reception woman took pity on me and let us into our room early. Ohh such a comfortable bed, I was never happier than when laying on it staring up at the sky through the window in the ceiling. I napped for a bit and then had a shower and then Katie and I pottered around until dinner time. I'd booked us in at this place called the Old homestead restaurant which was...well an old homestead actually, made from logs and all nice and toasty. They were serving a traditional Swedish Christmas dinner buffet style. All the names of the dishes were in Swedish but I know I ate reindeer and I think I ate wild boar, both were delicious but I wont tell the kids I ate reindeer, they would think their Aunty Jane cruel and unfeeling.
We had mulled wine seeing as it was Christmas and invited this woman over to our table who had come to stay at the icehotel on her own, turned out she was mad as a hatter but a good conversationalist and we ended up chatting til the place cleared.
Then we all wandered up to the old Jukkasjarvi church which is about 300 years old and took some pictures which were a bit blurry from my being buffeted by arctic winds. I had hoped to see the Northern Lights but it was a bit too cloudy while we were there. I shall find another way, might have to go a bit later in the season maybe. We wandered back in the snow for the last time taking pictures of anything we hadn't yet recorded, said good night to our crazy dinner companion and then wandered out the back of the icehotel to stare at the sky one last time in the hopes of seeing something northern lighty. When I went to bed I kept waking myself up having dreamt that they were waving at me like a glowing green curtain through the sky light in my roof.
Wish I was there for longer really. Will absolutely go again come hell or high water before its all melted away from global warming and a distant memory. I did manage to get some pretty sunrise pics on the plane on the way back though. If I die and it turns out there is a god, I'm gonna tell him, dude, nice job on the sunrises.
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