Frozen

In the Arctic Wilderness of Swedish Lapland,  an Otherworldly Communion With Nature Awaits Anyone Willing to Brave the Cold.
 

- Peter Heller

Our plane nosed down through a layer of ice fog and shuddered hard, as if at the sudden view: a mist shredded scrap of forest, all but buried in snow. “Welcome to the Arctic,” the pilot said, as we bumped along a runway of ice and packed powder.

It was the end of January, and we had arrived in Kiruna, the northernmost town in Sweden, 100 miles above the Arctic Circle. Around us, snow-clad forest spread away for 150,000 square miles. Squalls shook the cabin as we taxied. The storm was out of the north-northeast, and I tried to picture where that wind had recently been: a strip of Finland, a ribbon of Norway, the Barents Sea, and, before that, probably the polar ice cap. Brrr.

We had been traveling from Denver for 18 hours. “Tell me again,” I said to my wife, Kim. “Why are we coming to the Arctic in the winter? I mean, when there are places in the world like, say, Barbados?”

“To see the aurora borealis,” she answered cheerfully. Kim loves the cold, she says—it wakes her up.

Minutes later we were escorted out of the squat airport building toward a pack of dogs that stood, yelping, just yards from the runway. An apple cheeked guide named Espen Hamnvik, who wore a fur-trimmed parka, handed us each a coat, heavy snow pants, a hat, and boots. “There is your sled, Kim. Peter, this is yours,” he said. “There are your dogs.” After showing us how to use the brakes on our sleds, he gave a mittened thumbs-up and mushed off into the snowy woods. The Alaskan huskies were ready to run, and they barked and yowled and strained against their ropes. Another guide yanked the lines loose, the sleds jerked, and we were off, running free over the fresh snow. Into the heart of Swedish Lapland.