Going to the North of Sweden is a trip typically taken by many foreign students. As March is one of the best months for going to Swedish Lapland it happened, that two of the current International Student Ambassadors went at almost the same time – Rebecca and me. In part 1 and 2 we want to give you an insight into what you can experience!

Going there by Airplane

My friends and I chose to fly to Kiruna airport from Stockholm. Therefore, we took a train from Linköping to Stockholm Arlanda and boarded a train from SAS. Pro Tip: Book your tickets directly over SAS and get a student discount! The tickets are almost half the price, so flying there and back from Stockholm costs around € 150 (or SEK 1 500). We did not think about this, so we had to pay almost double the price!

In general, the journey took us around 6 hours (1-2 hours in the train, 1 h 40 m in the plane and a lot of down time in-between) and was quite pleasant.

Dog Sledding

With Kiruna being our home station, my friends and I went on daily adventures during our 4-day stay. One of which being a dog sledding adventure at Arctic Dogsled Adventure AB.

Dressed marshmallow-like with several layers of clothing, we headed out with our team. One team consisted in our case of 5 dogs and 2 humans and it’s safe to say, that our team was the most adorable!

Getting the hang of stirring the sled was actually quite easy, although, it seemed impossible at first. The dogs know the way and are following the tour guide and his team. You just have to use the break (a simple metal hoop) at times (especially when we encountered half-domesticated reindeers!) and sometimes you need to push the sled (I feel like the last uphill part I pushed the sled more than the dogs pulled).

On our trip around and over (!) the Torne River we could gasp over the astounding nature of Lapland and bond with our team. We got to experience what it could have been like to live here a hundred years ago (plus a lot of thermo-clothing). During our lunch break we got to play and cuddle our adorable and amazingly strong team members. We also learned some incredible facts: sled dogs need to run 20-30 km every day and eat around 6 000 kcal!!! So after our adventure they earned a little snack!

Ice Hotel

Alongside the Torne River, which is one of the last untouched rivers in Europe, there is a small village called Jukkasjärvi. In 1989 the founder Yngve Bergqvist built the first ice hotel out of the clear, natural ice and since then it became a well-known tourist attraction. Every year creatives, engineers, graphic designers and architects come together and design a suite made out of ice. In a competition the best 15 to 20 are selected to build their design in November.

We had the chance to go through the astounding exhibition and marvel at the amazing designs. I was not expecting it to be this extraordinary! It seemed out of this world and I definitely recommend this adventure!

But until then you can watch a film about the circle of ice and the ice hotel on their homepage!

Source: https://www.icehotel.com/story-icehotel