Heading north

September 19, 2021

Looking out at the grey, blustery weather here in Stockholm, I think it’s safe to say that summer is done for this year and it’s time to bring my cosy jumpers out of storage, dust off my candles and cook up some big vats of chunky soup. Before I get settled into the new autumn routine, I thought now was a good opportunity to look back over the last few months and update this blog. So here it is, a brief look at Summer 2021.

Over the past two and a half months, I’ve mostly been getting up to the usual work, dinner parties, sports and fikas, with the addition of three trips northwards to mix things up. The first of these northern trips was back in July, when I bobbed up to Skellefteå for a few days to join Emil in visiting his family. Emil headed up the week before then I took the night train up to join him for four days. Amongst a lot of walking around the town and Skellefteå’s surroundings, we went for scrumptious pizzas at a local gem and prawn sandwiches along the coast with Emil’s parents, Steffan and Siv, and we met up with Emil’s university friends for a BBQ out at someone’s summer cottage. It was great to put faces to all of these names I’d heard mentioned so often and I was given a proper introduction as Emil was forced to go around and share his favourite memory of all 14 friends – I’m not sure I’d have managed to think quite so quickly on my feet!

Two weeks after our return from Skellefteå, we were heading north again, just not quite so far this time. The plan was to go for a three day hike around Höga Kusten, a picturesque coastal area about 5 hours north of Stockholm. A look at the weather forecast for the Saturday night however, forced us to shorten our trip a bit and drive back down to Stockholm on Saturday evening rather than battling through a night of camping in torrential rain and squally winds. Instead we had a sunny two days of hiking with one night in our cosy new tent, down by the water. Despite being a really lovely trip, I’m not sure recommend ten hours of driving for two half day hikes!

My final northern adventure was just a few weeks ago, at the beginning of September. We got the go ahead to take the new Master’s students out into the field for seven days to see the polar environments of northern Sweden and learn about the various glacial and periglacial processes that have occurred there and the marks they’ve left on the landscape. Given my little knowledge of permafrost processes and palaeoglaciology, my main role on this trip was driver. To conform to the covid-restrictions, we had four minibuses for the 15 students, one of which I had to drive along numerous bumpy, overgrown tracks and gravel roads to access remote moraines and boulder fields. Most of the days involved some sort of hiking, which was such a great change from months at my desk, attempting to make something out of my very limited data. We were generally very lucky with the weather, but on the day we were hiking up to a mountain lake, it absolutely chucked it down. Over lunch some of the students got a bit cold, so as we waited for the Arjen and Britta, the other two teachers, to finish eating, I got them doing the very Swedish little frog dance to get their blood pumping – it certainly seemed to do the trick (video blow)! Unfortunately, near the end of the trip one of the students got a cough and cold. Having presented numerous clear covid tests, she was allowed to come with us for the final hike, but as both she and one other student weren’t up to the full mountain climb, I was given the task of taking them for a short stroll through the valley instead and them driving them back to our hotel in Kiruna. Being stuck in a car for eight hours with a coughing student of course led to my first cold of the year, so I spent the first half of this week sipping on lemsips and working my way through piles of tissues. Luckily Emil managed to avoid picking that one up so we were able to have our second cocktail evening with Eva and Nelson last night. They cooked us a very substantial Portuguese dish called Francesinha (a baked steak, sausage and salami sandwich topped with cheese, a fried egg and a good helping of a delectable tomatoey sauce) and informed us that they’ll soon be leaving Sweden to start new jobs in Paris and Zurich. Very exciting opportunities but I’m really going to miss having them around.

You may have noticed my blog post frequency and length has reduced a bit this past year; as I’m now in my fourth year over here in Sweden, things are less of an ’adventure’ and many activities aren't quite so noteworthy, it’s more like normal life. I’ve decided I’ll just post every few months to keep up with some of the main events. So that’s it on summer 2021, I’ll leave you with a selection of photos showing some of the highlights from the past few months and all being well, my next post should include an account of 3 weeks in the UK!