Kiruna is a town in Sweden that lies 90 miles north of the Arctic Circle, making Kiruna the northernmost town in Sweden.
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| The red bubble on this map is where Kiruna is located. |
This week, I went on a four day trip to Kiruna organized by Rotary with 40 other exchange students from all over the world who live in different areas of Sweden. On the trip there were exchange students from India, Japan, South Korea, Italy, France, Argentina, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA.
Kiruna is about a 16 hour train ride north from where I live, but it's only a 1.5 hour flight from the Stockholm Arlanda airport, so I booked a roundtrip flight for this trip. I'm really glad that I booked a flight because traveling to and from Kiruna was quick and simple, and I got to fly with about 20 exchange students.
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| Kiruna, facing the iron ore mine. |
Day 1:
On Monday morning, I took the commuter train from Uppsala to the Stockholm Arlanda airport. I met up with all of the exchange students who had booked the same flight, we bought coffee and later boarded the flight together. I sat towards the back of the plane with Emily (Canada), Hamish (Australia), Aakanksha (India), Madie (USA), and Tanner (USA). The flight went by super quickly and before I knew it we were in Kiruna.
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| On the plane. |
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| Kiruna Airport. |
We were met at the airport by a group of Year 3 students in the Tourism Program. Their responsibility was to be our tour guides for the week. They organized every activity and excursion for us and they were great hosts. After lunch at their school, we walked down the hill from the school to our accomodation. We didn't stay at a hotel, but I guess it was sort of like an apartment/hostel. Our room had a bathroom, kitchen, living room and bedroom. I shared a room with Paula (Argentina), Jessie (Canada), Bronte (New Zealand), and Nicole (New Zealand). I had so much fun hanging out with these girls and getting to know them better.
We spent the afternoon at the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi (the world's first ice hotel). The Ice Hotel as you might imagine is built entirely out of snow and ice taken from the Torne River. The Ice Hotel has been built annually since 1994, and each year the Ice Hotel is built with a completely new design. We had a guided tour of the Ice Hotel and then free time to take photos.
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| Ice Hotel. |
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| Entrance to the Ice Hotel. |
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| Ice chandelier. |
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| Fish. |
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| Unicorn. |
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| Origami Crane. |
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| Ice Hotel Wall. |
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| Looking into the wishing well with Emily (Canada). |
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| One of the hotel rooms in the Ice Hotel. |
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| From the left: Daniel (Texas), Kate (Wisconsin), me, and Jessie (Canada). |
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| The Americans. |
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From the left: Shane (Minnesota), Jesse (New York), Sam (Florida), Milo (Oregon), Madie (Colorado), me, Tanner (Kansas), Kate (Wisconsin), Ly (Florida), Daniel (Texas), Bridget (Ohio), and Ashley (California).
After our afternoon at the Ice Hotel, we walked a little ways up the road to Nutti Sámi Siida which is an outdoor musem about the culture of the Sámi people, and it is also a place where some of their retired reindeer live. We had a knowledgeable guide who told us about reindeer herding and Sámi history, and then we all got to opportunity to pet the reindeer and take photos with them. Immediately after visiting the reindeer we went inside a teepee and ate smoked reindeer meat for dinner. It was a bit unsettling to go directly from petting cute reindeer to eating them, but the meat was actually quite good.
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| Reindeer pasture. |
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| Reindeer without antlers. |
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| Reindeer with antlers. |
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| Smoked reindeer meat with potatoes. |
Day 2:
Since there were 40 exchange students on the trip, we were split into six smaller color groups: green, pink, orange, yellow, blue, and purple. Tuesday morning: the yellow, blue, and purple groups headed off to the LKAB Iron Ore Mine, and the green, pink, and orange groups took a charter bus to Jukkasjärvi for some winter outdoor activities.
We rode in an open sled behind a snowmobile out onto this lake to get to a few cabins where we would be having lunch. The sled ride was a lot of fun and we spent the ride singing Miley Cyrus songs to distract ourselves from how cold our faces were. Once there,we split into our color groups. The snow activities planned for us were snowmobiling, playing soccer/ pulling each other around on sleds whilst wearing drunk goggles, and ice fishing. I was in the green color group with Patrick (Australia), Adam (Australia), Kirsten (Canada), Miyeon (South Korea), Karine (Canada), and Fanny (France). I had a great morning laughing and hanging out with my group. For lunch we had soup and coffee inside a small cabin with a fireplace in the middle of the room, cozy.
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| Snowmobile sled. Front row (from the left): Adam (Australia), Jesse (New York), Milo (Oregon). Middle: Miyeon (South Korea, Kirsten (Canada), me. Back row: Fanny (France), Ashley (California), Sam (Florida). |
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| Outdoor activities cabin, where we ate lunch on Tuesday. |
After lunch, we rode in the large sled behind the snowmobile back to Jukkasjärvi. We got stuck on the way back and had to get out of the sled a few times and push the sled to get the snowmobile unstuck. We briefly saw the yellow, purple, and blue groups as they got into the sleds and went to do outdoor activities and then we took a bus to the mine.
The LKAB mine is the world's largest underground iron ore mine, but they only have a 2% share of the world's iron ore market. At least I think that's what our tour guide said. We rode in the bus downhill into the mine and we got off at the visitor's center/museum which is 540 meters (1,772 feet...I think) underground. We watched a 15 minute promotional video for the mine which was very informative, but I honestly didn't know enough about iron ore mining to find the video very interesting. After the video, we took a tour, learned about the iron ore pellets that are produced from this mine, had fika, and then took photos in the mine museum. The mine tour was a unique experience and it was nice to be inside after a cold morning spent outside.
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| Map of the iron ore mine. |
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| The iron ore pellets. |
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Mine tour group.
On Tuesday night, we walked to the school and had a pizza night with ice cream. After dinner, we had activities. We split into groups. Our first activity was to run to a baseball bat, bend over and spin around 10 times and run back to the group. Our second activity was the human knot. My group tried unsuccessfully to solve the human knot. When I've done the human knot before, my group has always solved it, but I think it's possible that we had too many people, or our group was just too tangled. After the human knot, we had to pass a tennis ball down a line of people without using our hands, so we all held the tennis ball under our chins and got up close and personal with the other exchange students.
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Day 3:
Wednesday morning we got up early and took the charter bus to a ski resort called Björkliden which was about a 1.5 hour drive from Kiruna. We started the morning right: with coffee and cinnamon rolls. Then we split into our groups and my group (green, orange, and pink) headed off for unspecified outdoor activities. We walked to a large hill and went sledding down the hill on butt-sleds. After sledding, we played rugby in the snow, I can't say that I made any contribution to my team, but my team played rugby quite well. After rugby, we went inside to a lodge and had lunch as a large group.
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| These are the kind of butt-sleds that we used. |
In the afternoon, we went snowshoeing. It took us all quite awhile to get the snowshoes on our feet, but eventually we snowshoed with our guides Michael and Anders to Torneträsk, the 7th largest lake in Sweden. We actually snowshoed on top of the lake and it was really cool. The snowshoeing was all downhill up to this point, so when we turned around the entire path was uphill. And it wasn't only uphill, it was a really steep uphill. Our guide Michael kept saying that there was only one more hill, but the "one more hill" that he mentioned was definitely more than one hill, and I was exhausted by the time we made it back to the lodge where we had had fika that morning.
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| Michael, our snowshoeing guide. |
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| Scenery at Björkliden. |
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| Snowshoeing across train tracks. |
After leaving Björkliden, we stopped at Abisko National Park and watched a 15 minute slideshow about the eight national parks in northern Sweden. We were all pretty exhausted by this point, so I'm not sure how many of us were even awake during this presentation. The photos were beautiful and maybe I'll visit some of Sweden's national parks someday. Lapporten is a U-shaped valley near Abisko. Because of the unique position of this valley and the surrounding mountains, there often appears to be a blue hole in the sky. For example there can be a winter storm in Björkliden, but the sky can be blue over the village of Abisko.
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| Lapporten. |
Once back at our hostel, we all changed into our fancy clothes for our last night dinner with all of the exchange students and our guides. I had actually forgottten to pack fancy clothes, so I changed into jeans, a white tanktop, and my Rotary blazer...fancy enough. We all walked up the hill to the school for dinner. The school's Catering program prepared dinner for us and after dinner, we all performed our national anthems. I got to listen to national anthems from: Sweden, Canada, Australia, Argentina, France, South Korea, Japan, India, and the USA. It was a very cool experience to hear everyone else's national anthems because I am really only familiar with The Star Spangled Banner.
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| The Americans (except for Jesse). From the left: Kate (WI), Milo (OR), me (CO), Madie (CO), Tanner (KS), Sam (FL), Ashley (CA), Ly (FL), Bridget (OH), Shane (MN), and Daniel (TX). |
Day 4:
Thursday was the last day of the trip and we spent the morning on a walking tour of Kiruna. We were not in our color groups today because we all had booked different trains and flights, so we were re-grouped according to the time of travel. We saw the first two buildings built in Kiruna, the city hall, and the church. Something interesting I learned about Kiruna this week is that they are currently in the process of moving the entire town. The town has to be moved because the mining operations at the LKAB mine will begin encroaching on the town center in the coming years, so the hostel we stayed at, the city hall, and the church will not be where they are in a few years. It was kind of unclear when they will begin moving and rebuilding the town, but sometime in the next few years, Kiruna will look very different than how it looks today.
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| The church. |
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| The city hall. |
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| The clocktower on top of the city hall. |
We left for the airport and said goodbye to our guides. I got patted down at airport security, and then I was on my way back to Uppsala. Once back at the Stockholm Arlanda airport, I said goodbye to everyone and took the commuter train back to Uppsala. I can't believe the Kiruna trip is already over.
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| Boarding the plane on the runway in Kiruna. |
We had four very busy days north of the Arctic Circle in Kiruna. I had an absolute blast getting to know new people and making new friends, no matter how cheesy that sounds. I am incredibly glad that I decided go on Rotary's 1st Kiruna trip. Being in Kiruna was the furthest north that I'd ever been before, I saw reindeer for the first time, visited the Ice Hotel, went snowmobiling, visited a mine, and so much more. Special thanks to: the Tourism Program ladies who were our trip guides, Rotary in Sweden, LKAB Mine, Björkliden Fjällby, Nutti Sámi Siida, The Ice Hotel, the internet, Miyeon, Kirsten, Ashley, Bronte, Kate, and anyone else's whose photos I borrowed for my blog, and thank you to all 40 0f you exchange students who made this trip to Kiruna an unforgettable adventure.
<3 Kiruna Trip # 1 2014 <3
