Jack and Maisie

August is the time for the Fjällraven Classic. That’s the name of an organised long distance walk in the fjäll from Nikkaluokta to Abisko. People sign up and pay to take part, so there are hundreds of people walking the route over about five days. They all camp, and are provided withfood at set points, and then when they get to the end they get a medal.

Maisie likes the idea of being part of something whichsounds like a racing car (and she wouldn’t say no to a fancy medal) but she isn’t so sure she fancies camping out overnight. Or walking for five days. All those people striding up hills at the same time does not appeal, because she knows she’d be way behind. Furthermore, her idea of a good day’s walk is one that ends up back at home on the sofa with your feet up, admiring your photographs and enjoying a spaghetti bolognese.

She and Jack decide that instead they’ll drive out to Abisko and a bit beyond, and take a short walk there in the opposite direction to the walk, just to be sure they have the place to themselves.

They’ve been on this walk a couple of times before, and they call it ‘the bear poo walk’. This is because one spring they found some (bear poo, that is). The one time a bear might be in a bad mood is the spring, when you’ve just fallen over her winter hidey-hole and woken her up. On that occasion they walked quite fast back to the car. But it’s summer, so no sleepy bears now which is a lot more relaxing.

They park the car by the roadside and then it’s only about 15 minutes along a rocky path, strewn with summer flowers. A short detour from the walking path up the hill takes them away from the road into peace and quiet. They could have kept walking on the path – it continues on for an hour or so to a bridge over an inlet of the lake, and then beyond, if you’re really fit. But 30 mins is a long enough walk for Jack and Maisie, so they soon find somewhere to lie down on an inflatable mat with a view right over Lake Torneträsk with the famous ‘Lapporten’ mountain on the other side.

After lunch, Maisie stretches out and reads a book. Jack does a suduko. The blue water sparkles, the snow on the mountain tops beckons,the birds fly silently by. Not a person in sight, all afternoon. The only sound is the distant screeching of the iron ore trucks, trundling through the mountains on their way from Kiruna to Narvik.

Details

June – September, and possibly October
Car, then walk
Free
Directions from Lynne and Rolf

‘It makes me feel quite exhausted,’ said Maisie, ‘thinking
of all these people out there in the mountains, climbing up all that way, just
for a good view and a cup of coffee.’

She’s looking at some photos of the fjäll (pronounced,
‘fiyell’, meaning the mountains) beyond Kiruna.

‘They don’t go there for the coffee,’ says Jack.

‘Well whatever the reason. I expect you need a cup of coffee
once you get up there, in that cold wind and after all that unnecessary
exercise. They must go for the view then. They always take a photo when they
get there. After their long walk.’

‘If it’s snow there you can’t walk Maisie, you have to ski.’

‘Oh don’t you start, about those ski things! If God had
intended us to ski he’d have given us longer feet.’

Maisie has her own idea about getting somewhere with a good
view of the fjäll. And just to prove a point, although she could walk there she
decides not to. Outings don’t have to include lots of exercise you know. She
takes the car key and beckons to Jack and begins to get dressed for the
great outdoors. Five minutes later Jack and Maisie have all their outdoor
clothes on and they waddle out the door down to the car.

‘I don’t know how you think you’re going to drive up a
mountain,’ says Jack. Maisie smiles. ‘Just belt up,’ she says, putting on her seat belt. They drive across to the other side of town. Maisie knows
the way.

They pass the ‘Midnight Cruisers’ club (Maisie isn’t sure
what this is, something to do with vintage cars and cowboy boots) and the road
becomes a bit bumpy. Very soon they’re skirting around the foot of the downhill
ski slope. They can see Kiruna town and the mine spread out beneath them.

Above them is the ski slope. It’s on a ‘fjäll’ that was once
an open cast mine, but that was long ago. Now there are chair lifts and
children on skis, risking life and limb – really, you’d think their parents
would know better.

Along the side of the road are stacks of concrete building
material. It’s stuff that was delivered when they started building the hotel on
the top, many years ago now. Damn stupid idea
that was. They wanted to build a hotel for visitors to admire the midnight sun!
Did they forget – hotels are for sleeping in! Maisie spends all summer trying
to keep the sun out of their bedroom in the middle of the night – why would
anyone pay to stay somewhere it shone straight in your face? Well she must have
been right, because the hotel never got further than the first floor before the
whole idea was abandoned. She chuckles to herself. Then tuts.

‘It’s a disgrace, dumping all this stuff here,’ she says.
‘They ought to be prosecuted.’

Between the piles of building materials they can see the distant mountains. Further along they park, and
look.

Maisie pours them some coffee. They think about getting out the car, but don’t. After five
minutes or so Maisie puts her belt on again, and nods at Jack to do the same.

‘There’s not too much snow,’ she says, ‘- we’re going up!’. She
drives the car wildly (Jack thinks) round the corner and bumps up the
bending dirt road on the side of the slope. As they climb higher, the views get
better.

Jack is looking a bit pale. He’s seen ‘Thelma and Louise’
and is hoping Maisie isn’t planning on going over the edge.

Very near the top, the snow doesn’t seem to have been
cleared at all, so they come to a halt.

‘Now if it was summer we could have gone all the way,’ says
Maisie. ‘Still the views from here aren’t at all bad, are they?’

She pours herself some more coffee.
It’s peaceful, looking out into the far distance. She can almost understand why
people climb mountains.

‘Now, that wasn’t too exhausting, was it?’

She turns to look at Jack, who has fallen asleep.

Details

All year round activity to the lower level.
June – November to the top of the hill.
Walking, or car
Free
Directions from Lynne and Rolf

Jack thinks Maisie is getting a bit grumpy these days. She’s
always looking for something bad about to happen. She needs to look around her,
‘needs to see what’s cookin’!’ he says.

He drags her out the door. She says she doesn’t
need a walk and he says, yes she does. They cross the road and walk up a
residential street. It’s peaceful, the sun shines on Maisie’s face. Jack
notices that Maisie’s smiling. ‘You
see,’ says Jack.

‘Now what I wanted to show you was this. You see all these
lovely wooden houses? You see what a peaceful neighbourhood this is? These
houses have been around for nearly a hundred years, and – you know what? –
they’ll probably be around for another hundred!’

Maisie looks doubtful. ‘Well for quite while then…’ says Jack. ‘This is
outside the immediate area of subsidence isn’t it? At least for the forseeable future. These
lovely streets won’t be knocked down, this part of Kiruna will stay just the
same, at least, for a while…’

The area is known as ‘Thule’,
and was built in the 1920s. Right from Kiruna’s earliest days there was a town
plan, and these streets were planned right back then in 1907. (68 degrees is from
the same period.) They were houses for a several families, with space for large
backyards and outhouses, in those days for horses and other animals. Some of
the old wooden buildings were designed as flats. All the buildings have a
simple elegance. It’s all very calm.

He’s right, thinks Maisie, it isn’t all bad here.

Jack then leads them into a very different area where there are
blocks of ‘modern’ flats, probably from the 60s. She recognises this. It’s where a few years ago they knocked down a couple of old tower blocks because
they’d been empty so long and no-one thought they would be needed. Now there’s
a shortage of flats, and they’re building them up again.

There’s a huge crane hanging over the edge of the hill –
building work has begun on the new tower blocks. The view is breathtaking, with views of Jukkasjärvi in the distance, and far
below them between here and there they can see the area where they plan to build ‘the new Kiruna’.

Round the other side of where they’re building there are
views out over Luossavaara, the mountain which a long time ago was a mine too.
Now it’s a downhill skiing slope, an area for cross country skiing, and a place
you can walk with distant mountain views.

‘You see, ‘ beams Jack, ‘lots of good things are happening
in Kiruna, you just have to look for them’. Maisie has to admit he’s right.
Perhaps she’s been too gloomy about it all.

Details

All year round activity
Walking, or Spark
Free
Walking directions from Lynne and Rolf

All this talk of parts of the ground under the town
collapsing is making Maisie’s head spin. She knows there’s no danger, and the
moving of the town will be slow, and long before any ground collapses, but
still. When you can hear the nightly blasting in the mine (01.23 hrs) you don’t
forget what’s underneath you.

‘Gruvstads Parken’ (‘The Mining Town’s Park’) is the area
nearest the mine which is about to be emptied of people. Over the years the
buildings will be demolished, or moved elsewhere, and the land will be a park.
Parts of it will be fenced off as the ground begins to shift, and more land in
the town will be absorbed into the park further away. That’s the plan. ‘A
Moving Oasis’ the sign calls it. ‘Sounds like a nice name for the town falling
into the pit,’ says Maisie.

It upsets Maisie a bit, but Jack’s more philosophical about
it. She wants to go and see the buildings, before they’re gone. Some of them
are already empty. It sounds a bit creepy to her, like a town in the wild west
after the shoot-out, the bar doors swinging in the wind. Jack says he isn’t
interested in a load of old buildings.

She takes her trusty Spark (that’s a kick sled for use on
snow). She could just as easily walk, but if she’s going to go nosing about she
thinks she’ll look more innocent with a Spark. Not that she’s planning on being
up to no good.

Actually it’s not easy to control the speed of the Spark
downhill, so she keeps her foot on the ground to slow herself down. She turns
down before the church, crosses the main road, and then turns left into the
old housing area and begins her walk towards the mine. These houses are brick
built – must have been quite posh when they were built, probably in the 1920s
or 30s. Others are all wood. Many of them have two or even four entrances, as
they would have been lived in by more than one family, or a family with
lodgers. Some wooden buildings are quite grand.

In the near distance she can see and hear the mine. This
area is not yet inside the ‘park’ area, but, she muses, it’s only a matter of
time. As she walks through she notices the occasional measuring device, looking
like giant weather vanes, measuring ground movement. And there other mysterious
underground mounds, no doubt also something to do with measuring subsidence.

She approaches an area of blocks of more modern flats. These
look mostly empty. It’s quiet. If there’s been a shoot-out there’s no sign of
it here. These flats will be the first to go, she reads.

Further on she reaches ‘Hjalmar Lundbohms Gård’, the home of
the first director of the mine. In theory this is open daily, and you pay to
look around, or have a coffee and a waffle. In practice opening hours are a bit
loose, she finds, so instead Maisie has brought a flask of coffee and some
biscuits. She heads over to ‘B1’, that romantically named building that is
believed to be Kiruna’s first. It’s always locked, but you can sit on the steps
among the snow covered birch trees, and listen to the gentle hum of the mine.
Maisie imagines Lundbohm at his desk back then, puffing away at his pipe, while
his men hack away risking life and limb at the rock nearby.

Over the way is the mine’s large hotel – where the company
entertained some of Sweden’s
high society from 1910 onwards, and where they held annual parties for the
children of their workers. Sadly, this hotel will be demolished, though
Lundbohm’s house will be moved elsewhere.

Continuing into the park there are information boards and a
few pictures, and a very useful loo. There’s a small ice rink, and a place to
make a fire, if you’re a boy scout. Which she isn’t, so she
isn’t the least bit tempted, and presses on back up to the road and over to
Kiruna’s town hall. There she parks her Spark in the ‘Spark Park’.

She’ll be very sorry when all this goes. The clock tower
plays tunes, and the door handles are made from reindeer – it’s a magical
building. Inside there’s a large warm welcoming space with lots of nice
paintings to look at on the walls on all the floors above. You can climb up the stairs to the
other floors and look down on whatever is happening on the ground floor.
‘Kiruna’s front room’ they call it. Today it’s laid out with tables and chairs
and places for a lot of people to eat. You can wander pretty much wherever you
like, which must be a nuisance for people who work there. She peers through an
open door. It’s the council chamber, and a meeting is about to restart after a
coffee break. She spots a few local politicians. ‘You can run, but you can’t
hide,’ she thinks.

She goes back down to look at the scale model of the town,
and the exhibition about the plans for the new one. There’s a children’s play
area right next to it, and for all she can see the plans for the new town might
have been drawn up by some of those children. Good that Jack isn’t with her –
he’d tell her she ought to be more positive. Well she is positive. She’s really
positive about the idea of a coffee and bun in the cafe.

Details

All year round activity
Walking, or Spark
Free
Walking directions from Lynne and Rolf

‘I don’t know,’ says Jack, ‘there’s supposed to be lots of
animals up here, but all I ever see are dogs’.

‘That’s not true Jack,’ says Maisie, ‘there’s that charming
white hare that leaps around the garden in the evenings. And there were plenty of
insects here in the summer. Anyway, personally I think I’d rather not meet a
bear.’

Jack’s been reading some local tourist brochures. There’s a
‘Moose Farm’ in Vittangi – but he’s heard there aren’t many ‘moose’ (or as he
calls them, ‘elk’) there. Then there’s a tour company that’ll take you out on
safari, and on top of the fee you also pay them for every animal you see. Be a
bit of a mixed blessing, then, seeing animals. Perhaps after the second or
third sighting you might be asking to go home.

Jack decides he’s going to arrange his own safari. He looks
on the map for a place where he’s heard
rumours that reindeer and elk are frequently seen. Maisie agrees to go too but only
if he promises not to pack a gun or a silly hat.

‘Right, left or straight on?’ asks Maisie. (There are only
three ways out of town.) ‘Straight on,’ says Jack. They drive out past the mine on their right, and on until there
are distant views of the snow-covered ‘fjäll’ (or ‘hills’). It’s peaceful. They
stop by a river and have some coffee out of a thermos. Ravens fly overhead.

About half an hour down the road they have their first
sighting of reindeer. Just there by the roadside. Well actually, on
the road itself. They aren’t in any hurry it seems. And they were worried they
would scare them away! These reindeer road hogs just look at them, and then
amble slowly ahead down the middle of the road. They’re beautiful animals. Jack
and Maisie have read that you should never drive close behind reindeer on the
road – all they will do is run ahead of you and this will be very stressful for them, and for you. You must wait for them to move to
the side of the road before you drive on. Eventually they move over, and Jack
and Maisie are hanging out the car window taking photos.

(Somehow these photos
were all of reindeer bottoms, they discovered afterwards.)

The reindeer weren’t nearly as timid as they were
expecting. But then, that would explain why they were by the roadside. Someone
must be feeding them, so they must be more ‘domesticated’ than the herds out in
the fjäll. But that doesn’t matter to Jack and Maisie.

They continue down this road a little way until they reach
a car park with a view. There isn’t much here except somewhere to admire the wonderful mountain views in the distance. In the real winter there’s
a road across the river here, and a sign warning people not to fish in the
road.

After eating their packed lunch they drive slowly home. Elk
are harder to spot it seems. They have delayed their return until dusk in
the hope of spotting one, but they are not in luck this time. But they’re happy
enough. They’ll return another day for the elk.

Details

Year round activity
Free
Hire car needed – a journey of 40 mins in either direction
Directions from Lynne and Rolf

Maisie isn’t so keen on cold weather. That’s a shame, since
she’s living in Kiruna. Jack complains she doesn’t wear enough clothes, but
Maisie can’t help feeling that a good holiday means wearing as few clothes as
possible. Here it takes her ten minutes to struggle into her outdoor clothes, arms going into the wrong holes and zips getting stuck.
‘I need a personal manservant to help me get dressed,’ she says. Jack looks the other way.

Recently, though, she’s found an activity which suits her
rather well. She goes off on her own into town to admire the sunset, or the
colour of the sky during the twilight hours. Kiruna’s buildings create an
interesting skyline, but it isn’t always so easy to see it – where you look
there are often other, less interesting buildings in the way.

Maisie’s found somewhere in town where you can see the
outline of the town hall and its famous clock, the top of Kirunavaara, the
mine, and the tower of Kiruna’s old church – all this silhouetted against the
sky, which at sunset can be a changing spectrum of colours, pinks and blues, or
fiery orange. She likes to lie back and relax and just watch the show.

Jack’s puzzled when she comes home and describes this,
because he can’t think Maisie would lie down on a cold snowy bench. He can’t
even see her standing still long enough to be able to admire a changing sky.
But she comes home with a warm glow, cheeks all red and her face beaming with
pleasure.

One day she agrees to take him with her. She leads him into
the entrance of the swimming baths. While she goes off to change he goes
through to the seating area, front row seats for the evening show. Maisie lies on her
back and paddles up and down in warm water, enjoying the view.

Afterwards she uses the sauna, which explains the red
cheeks.

Details

All year round activity.

Walking distance from 68 degrees bed and breakfast (5-10
mins).

Cost, 65 SEK per adult swim (including use of sauna), 25 SEK hire of swimming costume.