How to Warm a Soul

Utterly exhausting. There is no complete way to describe the eyelash-curling cold found in the far north of Sweden. Necessity demanded that I ignore my toes, however this was an easy choice because they had stopped communicating with me hours ago. To be honest this wasn’t a surprise, I had failed to sufficiently protect them from temperatures plummeting below -20°C. A word of advice for those of you considering a trek into the land where dog sleds are one of the most efficient modes of transportation - if you can still be confident that there are feet in your socks, then you aren’t wearing enough pairs of socks.

Curled around the guiding rail of my dog sled I remembered, vaguely in amongst the haze of agonising pain, that I may have got my inner pair of gloves wet. Imagine dropping a chimney on your hand, and lets say that this chimney still has a roaring fire contained within. Sounds excruciating right? Well that’s about half of the vomit-worthy, blackout-inducing experience which you are missing out on by having fingers with liquid blood.

Suffice to say I was having some regrets about declaring that dog-sledding was an experience I had to have. For the small segment of the readers who are concerned about how my fingers fared I can summarise by saying that whatever was in the tea our exuberant guide poured for me was magically medicinal. Equally panacean was the scenery, as we perched precariously beside what must have been a frozen copy of the Grand Canyon.

The Blue Hole above Sweden is what the next somewhat dramatic guide called Abisko. A hopelessly beautiful hamlet which I had managed to tour in its entirety using cross country skis to navigate the one looping road. Took me an hour and a half, but this was spent mostly on my backside. I was rapidly falling in love with the shred of civilisation hidden at the top of the world.

Trekking through snow littered with reindeer tracks, our chilly group was guarded by a zealous husky - just in case we needed a warning about a quarter ton bear lumbering along nearby. As we climbed higher the blue halo which lends the town it’s beautiful name became more obvious, it was as if clouds did not know this idyllic settlement existed. Suddenly the channel in the sky shifted, and the sky exploded in magical hues of green and blue. Aurora Borealis. The name is too clinical. I will never forget that night. Mammoth green fire rippling across the sky warming my soul, my bones, I could feel my toes again.