Well, the outline of this year's winter vacation looks similar to that of previous years.
A visit to an ice hotel, a dogsledding tour and some days spent in northern Sweden after that.
Except...
...it was a bit different this time.
The ice hotel wasn't the icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, but the snowhotel in Kirkenes.
The dogsledding was in Norway instead of Sweden.
The days after the tour were not spent in Umnäs, but going snowmobiling near Kiruna.
But, yes, except for those small details, it was the same as always.
As a shortcut, here are the links to the main parts of the trip:
The airport closest to the start of the dogsledding tour was in Kirkenes,
Kirkenes is in northeastern Norway and pretty much on the outer edge of the country. It's an 1800 km drive down to Oslo, about as far as it is from Rome to London. And that's if you take the shortest route, via Sweden. (From Kirkenes to Oslo, obviously. Sweden is obviously not on the shortest route from Rome to London...)
If you try to drive from Kirkenes to Oslo, using only roads in Norway, the distance is closer to 2400 km.
Kirkenes is as northeast in Norway as towns go.
It's 400 km north of the Arctic Circle, only seven kilometers from the Russian border.
Which, due to a quirky borderline, is to the south of Kirkenes. If you go to the east, where you would expect the border to be, it's another 35 km until you reach Russia, as there's a big 'dent' in the border. (Or, if you interpret it from the Russian side, there's a big 'finger' of Russia reaching towards Kirkenes.)
As far as geographical superlatives go, there's little that distinguishes Kirkenes. It's not the easternmost inhabited place in Norway and not the northernmost place either. It's not even the place farthest away from Oslo by road (that's Grense Jakobselv, located inside the 'dent' of the border, directly at the eastern border to Russia).
But, ignoring the small irregularities of coastlines and borders that give the geographical extremes to other places, Kirkenes is at the remote end of Europe.
On the other hand, for somewhere that remote, it has a lot of annual visitors.
Most don't go to Kirkenes because they want to see the town (or because they want to go on a long dogsledding tour). But Kirkenes is the end of the line of the Hurtigruten, a ship route along the Norwegian coast, with a daily fixed schedule. (And some additional 'expedition' ships, which take a more scenic route.)
And tourists, who want to go around the North Cape are likely to go all the way to Kirkenes. (They could stop at Vardø or Vadsø, I suppose, but as there aren't any good connections from there and people going that far are likely to go all the way to the end of the line, most of them end up in Kirkenes.)
As few people seem to be interested in using Hurtigruten in both directions, Kirkenes sees many visitors arriving by ship, with a flight home on the next day or the day after, with little to do.
Since Kirkenes doesn't offer many attractions as a town, they built a snowhotel there, which serves as a focus for tourist activities.
While I didn't go to Kirkenes by ship, my situation as a tourist was similar.
I didn't want to miss the dogsledding tour due to some potentially cancelled flights or lost luggage. So, I went to Kirkenes a few day earlier than needed, to have some 'buffer time'.
And I found myself in Kirkenes with spare time and little to do. So, I went to the snowhotel.
(Also, I wouldn't be visiting the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi this year. I would be passing by later during the vacation, but by then the annual icehotel would have already been closed for the season.)
The snowhotel in Kirkenes differs significantly from the icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, although both offer an all-year-round experience.
In Jukkasjärvi, there are two icehotels. The annual one, which is newly built each winter, closes at the beginning of April and is then left to melt. And the Icehotel 365, which is a permanent building. Essentially a giant refrigerator that actively keeps the rooms inside at sub-freezing temperatures all year round.
In Kirkenes, they put isolating materials on top of the icehotel in the warmer periods, as it doesn't get that warm in the summer months and the hotel (more or less) stays in shape until the next winter without additional cooling.
Which is, of course, energy efficient, but it also means that the snowhotel doesn't look like much from the outside.
As far as the rooms are concerned, they have much simpler decorations than the ones in Jukkasjärvi. (But then again, staying in the snowhotel is much cheaper than staying in the icehotel.)
While Jukkasjärvi has artists designing each individual 'suite' (usually based on a common annual theme) and often decorations and sculptures all around the room, sometimes creating interesting environments, Kirkenes has mostly identical rooms with one 'ice image' or snow carving at one of the walls.
Ice sculptures are rare and only in the public areas, like the entrance room, the corridor and the ice bar.
And while it's somewhat appropriate for a frozen environment, using imagery from the Disney movie seemed a bit too obvious for the room decorations.
Somewhat less snow and ice related was a room featuring Bambi characters.
There was one more room featuring an image scratched into ice, showing some sort of husky.
I'm not sure whether this is a specific cartoon character or simply a representation of a sled dog. I thought it might be from Balto, Snow Dogs or Eighty Below, but I didn't find any poster art or screen shot matching the pose and look.
It is usually difficult to see patterns scratched into ice, unless the light comes from exactly the right direction. But they avoided the issue here by hanging some black cloth behind the ice walls to provide contrast between the sheer ice and the roughened ice.
Another cartoonish character was represented as a snow carving.
I thought at first that it would be Link (from the Zelda games), but the axe seems atypical.
Two other rooms seemed to have some sort of fairy tale characters, but I have no idea who they are supposed to represent (assuming they are a specific person and not simply a person in peasant garb).
Another figure was easier to identify, as there was some writing and a symbol next to it, hinting that the figure was representing Beaivi, the Sami Sun-deity.
Four rooms were decorated with local animals often associated with the Arctic.
Another room had a depiction of animals not usually associated with the Arctic, but often seen in northern regions as a sign of spring arriving - swans.
Though, presumably, these were more likely to represent the 'honeymoon suite' than Arctic animals.
The last two rooms differed a bit from the others, as they were more 'designed environments' than 'rooms with artwork on one wall'.
One was made in the form of an ice castle or keep, with towers at the corners of the bed and a wall with 'lookout windows' behind the bed.
The other looked like the (snowy) interior of a log cabin somewhere, with a frozen fireplace, an ice chair and a frosted over window.
And that's it for the regular rooms.
There were two slightly larger rooms at both ends of the building.
At the entrance, there was Santa's Grotto, complete with a Santa Claus sculpture, an ice sledge, and a comfy fireplace with a chair on the side. There was even a little Christmas Tree.
While Santa's Grotto is more aimed at kids, the other end was more for adults - the ice bar.
Featuring a large reindeer head on one side and countertop with some ice bar stools on the other.
Along the corridor are two more ice sculptures. One of Ellisif Wessel, a local writer who documented Sami culture around 1900, the other is a polar bear manning (bearing?) the reception.
And that's pretty much the snowhotel part of the place.
A door from the bar (more like an airlock) leads directly into a building. It used to be a barn, but now it contains the Snowhotel restaurant on the main level. At basement level, there's the 'support area' for snowhotel guests. Here, overnight visitors can leave stuff that prefers to be in a heated place. It's also the place to collect the sleeping bags and other warm gear and there are also toilets and showers.
On the top floor, there's a second restaurant (one is for larger tour groups, the other for individual or small group travellers) and a comfortable lounge. The latter intended for people who want to sleep in the snowhotel, but decide during the night that it might not be the right thing for them. So there's coffee and tee available all night and comfortable chairs and couches. Ideally only for someone to come in, warm up a little and then return to the room in the snowhotel. But, if needed, overnight guest can also spend the rest of the night on a couch in the lounge.
The night I was staying there, there wasn't much interest in staying at the snowhotel.
There was only me and one other couple having booked the overnight at the snowhotel.
(Though it is not like we were the only people staying nearby. In addition to the snowhotel, there are also a number of nice looking cabins around, each with one large panorama window for watching northern lights. And it seemed that those were well booked.)
As there were only two rooms to be used at the snowhotel, we had a free choice in which room we wanted to stay.
The couple selected the room with the polar bear on the wall.
I opted for the room with the snow owl.
As I have slept in cold places before (and it's not that cold in the snowhotel - sleeping in a tent outside can often be colder) I didn't encounter any problems. And the other couple, who hadn't done anything like that before and had been a bit apprehensive the previous evening, made it through the night without any issues (like having to 'escape' to the lounge).
While things were calm the previous day, with only a few day visitors and the people staying at the snowhotel and the cabins overnight, things got busy next morning.
A Hurtigruten ship must have arrived and three or four busses stopped at the snowhotel.
Suddenly the place was teeming with visitors.
Everything was well organized. Guides were carrying numbered signs and led the guests to different areas, depending on what activities they had booked. Whether it was snowmobiling, meet the reindeer, a guided tour of the snowhotel, a dogsled ride, going king crab fishing or simply having lunch.
The large mass of people quickly split into more manageable groups, which then were taken (for most activities) to dress up in warm clothing (snowmobile suits) and then left for their activity.
As my ride back to 'downtown Kirkenes' (the snowhotel is a bit 'out of town') wasn't until noon, I had nothing much to do, so I watched the group on their dogsledding experience and cuddled some of the dogs.
They have a lot of dogs at the snowhotel (I think someone mentioned that there are about 140 of them) and while some of them are in larger kennels (and off-limits to visitors) a fair number (probably 50) are in individual dog houses and can be approached. (As long as you don't annoy the dogs who want to be left alone. Essentially the rule was to pet the dogs that come out and seem happy to see you and ignore the dogs that ignore you or shy away.)
The puppy pens were clearly off-limits, even though the young dogs seemed eager about everything.
Which is the main reason why they are off limits. With young, overexcited dogs accidents can happen. And the dogs can pick up unwanted behavior as well. So best to leave them to the professional dog handlers.
I don't want to comment too much about the dogsledding activity at the snowhotel.
It's quite a different activity from the dogsledding I was going to do and it's too easy to be snotty and arrogant about it.
Guests weren't allowed to drive the dog sleds at all.
The sleds were driven by the guides with two guests sitting in each sled and eight dogs (good number :-) in front of each sled.
They are doing a 30 minute ride of about 6 km length.
Which is probably quite a fun experience if you've never been on a dog sled before. After all, my first time of dogsledding, back in 2000. also was as a guest sitting on a sled (well, actually my first dog'sled' ride was in 1998 as a passenger in a car).
And while the sled dogs in Kirkenes were the least enthusiastic sled dogs I've ever seen on the start of a run, I don't want to put that too much in a negative light.
Usually, when sled dogs get going, they are excited about that and are going fast. (One of the main things you need to do at the start of a dogsledding day is to stay on the brake and slow the dogs down a bit.)
Here, the dogs started their 'run' at a walking pace.
And with that I don't mean sled dog walking pace (which is about 12-15 km/h), but human walking pace.
I could have walked along with the dogs if I had wanted to.
And while the first team had a bit of a pee when starting (not unusual), the dogs of the second team stopped to have a sniff and pee over it (which is unusual when starting - generally the dogs are too exciting about running to stop).
But I have to acknowledge that the situation is different here.
A six kilometer loop is, for these dogs, not really a dogsled run. It's more like going walkies.
And if you have a dog and go walking the same route daily, that's the behavior your dog will show.
Walking around, sniffing things, relieving itself and marking territory. And not being in a hurry, as they've seen it all before. Many times.
Comparing that to going on tour with a sled dog, while it might look superficially similar, seems unfair.
And the dogs must have walked faster after a while, as otherwise they won't make the 6 km in half an hour.
Let's leave it at that.
The guests seemed to be having a good time.
And I went back to Kirkenes to start on a longer dogsledding tour the next day.
And more about that here.
