Oh, this has been a long time coming! I finally bought some Icelandic chocolate and I’m comparing it to its Nordic brothers and sisters for the first time so this is the first of four battles coming over the next few months. In the red corner we have Sirius, the Iceland contender. Sirius is a … More Icelandic chocolate vs Swedish chocolate
Kiruna, in northern Sweden, is one of the oddest places and I have no idea why I haven’t written about it sooner. In theory, it’s one of these places that just lights up with tourism in the winter. It’s just up the road from the famous ICEHOTEL (which from now on I’ll be spelling in … More Kiruna in the snow
I hate packing. I will always hate packing. I packed badly for Sweden and that’s for two reasons. As far as clothes went, I took my light ski jacket. It’s warm but it also fits properly (which, to be honest, I don’t like). If I’d known how cold it was going to be, I’d have … More Packing for Sweden
It’s almost always worth getting out of the centre of a big city – it’s where the people live, it’s where real life rather than tourist life happens. I went out to the Stockholm suburbs because that’s where I was staying. We did spend most of our time in central Stockholm – Esther likes playing … More Getting out into the Stockholm suburbs
It’s just too easy to title this “Art on the T-bana” or something along those lines. But it’s true, some of the stations on Stockholm’s metro system, the Tunnelbana or T-bana, are indeed works of art. I didn’t notice them at first. The green line, which I used on my first couple of days, is … More Cave paintings in the Stockholm metro
Without my native guide (read: best friend from school who moved there last spring), I would have totally overlooked Skansen. It was certainly mentioned in my guidebook but it wouldn’t have caught my attention and even if it had, I probably wouldn’t have gone there. But Esther, who has three children under ten, has a … More I saw a moose in central Stockholm!
It’s December now so it’s past time to be thinking about winter trips – to Lapland, to the Arctic, to the cold and the snow and the Northern Lights. I like cold places and cold trips and I’ve made a little list of things you might want to take with you. 1) A hat with … More 10 Things to Take to the Arctic
In March 2014, I went off on a whistlestop tour of Lapland; that is, I had about forty-eight hours in northern Sweden followed by about forty-eight hours in northern Norway, because I wanted to go to Lapland and for some reason, I was finding it difficult to access the more remote parts of northern Finland. I … More The Iron Ore Line: the train from Sweden to Norway
I Am A Polar Bear 