Ice Hotel (Kiruna) and Harstad

Installment two of our Scandinavia trip.

Ice Hotel

We left Stockholm by night train heading towards Kiruna.  Luckily it was just one train the whole way and we didn't have to change trains.  My friends, husband and I spent the evening having a picnic and playing card games.  It was a great time.

In the morning we looked outside to see what a change the night made.  We had arrived in the arctic circle and there was snow everywhere, and not in small amounts.  We were on the train for another couple of hours just enjoying the scenery and talking to a Swedish guy in our compartment.  He was volunteering as a warden in one of the national parks about one hour north of Kiruna.  He was really interesting and told us how he tried to volunteer every year since it meant he got to spend a number of weeks in the northern part of Sweden for little cost.  He helps tourists and keeps track of hikers and generally has a great time skiing and watching the northern lights.  Sounds like a good holiday to me.

We arrived in Kiruna and took a taxi to the Ice Hotel.  There are no words for the ice hotel, just pictures attempting to show how beautiful and amazing it is.

Ice Church

Ice Hotel Entrance

Into the Ice

Reindeer skin door to the bathrooms (which are inside thankfully)

Ice bed

all made of ice and snow

One of the "luxury" rooms

The Ice Hotel really is an amazing feat of engineering.  They (whoever owns or runs the hotel I have no idea) make the hotel every year.  Every May the snow and ice begin to melt and they can no longer have guests - so the ice hotel goes back into the lake that is frozen over behind it.  Unlike on James Bond, the Ice Hotel is actually on land. Even though the lake is frozen very well, it still can't handle the weight of the ice and snow required to build this hotel.  I think it houses something like 192 in one night (or can handle that amount).

It also has some hundreds and hundreds of winter weddings every season while it is open. In the Ice Church of course.  Because many people want to wear traditional clothing (wedding dresses and regular suits) our guide told us that most of the weddings don't last more than 15 minutes - which sounds like a great wedding to me.  Just as we were leaving we actually saw a woman all dressed up to get married - with a white fur shawl to match her dress, it was really romantic. Would have been nice to get married there. No way hubby and I could have afforded that though!

After Kiruna we got back on the train and headed to Harstad.

Harstad

Lights in Harstad

Harstad is in Norway and required a train journey then two buses to get there.  It could have taken less time if there were more bridges across the many fjords - but alas there were not so it took most of a day to get there.  While there we didn't expect to see any northern lights (since the city lights were soo bright) but actually that was the best light show we got to see our whole trip. The lights were bright greens and had yellow and purple and little bits of red. It was amazing and even though the town was just like any town, I really wish we could have stayed one more night.

Instead we headed to Tromso - by boat.  It took most of a day (again) to get there, but a much more comfortable day than getting to Harstad since we were just on a cruise boat (with about 1,000 retired people) the whole time and got to see a lot of landscape in northern Norway.

Next part to come- Tromso and Oslo!

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