I've got exciting days ahead as I fly to Stockholm tonight and continue on Sunday to Kiruna in Swedish Lapland, Sweden's northernmost province. It will be my first time inside the Arctic Circle! I've spent magical summer days and cozy winter nights visiting Stockholm in the past, but this is my first time venturing to Kiruna, a place also known for Sweden's Icehotel, the "coolest" hotel in the world. Part art exhibition and part hotel, it's built entirely of natural snow and ice.
As you think about the upcoming holiday season (here before you know it), haven't you always been a little curious how to include the Icehotel in your plans someday? Maybe this is the year!
Excerpt below from 12/14/2023 article by Marika Cain can found here.
A family trip starring Christmas markets, the northern lights, and ABBA.
The plan bubbled up midsummer. When I suggested a Swedish Christmas, Oliver not only agreed but insisted. He loved the idea of spending the holiday in a place where the sun rose at 10 and set not long after lunch. Yes, my son said, he absolutely wanted to ride a dogsled and sleep in a hotel made of ice. Buoyed by this rare burst of ninth-grade enthusiasm, I started planning.
We’d bookend a few days in the Arctic Circle – staying at the Icehotel – with time in Stockholm, shopping the Christmas markets, strolling the Old Town, snacking on saffron buns, and toasting each other with glogg and cocoa. We’d bond over dogsledding and seeing the northern lights and exploring a faraway place together. He’d uncover a newfound admiration for his cool mom. In hindsight, it was a lot to ask of the country of Sweden.
On the heels of garden-variety but exhausting holiday travel snafus (flight canceled, second flight delayed, connection missed), we arrived in Stockholm at 1:30 a.m. Our checked bag was not so lucky. We hauled Oliver’s small carry-on to the waiting car that whisked us through the long northern night to our hotel. We slept through breakfast and then some, rolling downstairs to a scene straight from a Nordic fairy tale. Fir boughs draped the living room doorway, a stout tree glowed with white lights next to the piano, candles flickered on every surface, and star lanterns hung from the ceiling.
After lunch we ventured out to the one nonnegotiable Stockholm stop on his itinerary: ABBA The Museum, an obvious must for any self-respecting theater kid. I trailed behind Oliver as he took in actual costumes worn by Agnetha, Frida, Björn, and Benny and followed the trajectory of their mostly drama-free career, a sort of yin to Fleetwood Mac’s yang. Eventually we were ejected into the gift shop and, one ABBA hoodie the richer, moved on to mingle with holiday shoppers in the city center.
It was December 21, and the Christmas bustle was reaching its peak. At NK, Stockholm’s landmark 1915 department store, a twinkling four-story tree rotated from the ceiling in the colonnaded atrium. Elsewhere, tiered Advent candles and yet more star lanterns glowed in windows as dusk fell around 3 pm. In restaurants and shops, the forced hyacinths and amaryllises felt like a declaration: In winter’s depths, you can make your own light.
We headed to Old Town to stock up on essentials at the Christmas market’s cozy huts: glogg for me, with a stack of crisp, heart-shaped pepparkakor, Sweden’s ubiquitous ginger cookie; a steaming waffle for Oliver; and tomte figurines and wooden butter knives for our family back home. Oliver deigned to snap a photo of me with my glogg but declined my dinner offer, so I dropped him at the hotel (where a roll-away bed had appeared in our room) and grabbed my own dinner – and a glass of brut – in town.
The treetop star of our trip was Christmas in Swedish Lapland. Arriving in Kiruna packs all the drama of landing on some frigid Star Wars planet. Our plane touched down on the frozen runway around 1:30 pm, just as twilight was descending – or, more accurately, deepening. Here, at 67 degrees north, the days were even shorter than in Stockholm. The sun wouldn’t rise again until the new year. As we crunched through the snow to the tiny Kiruna terminal, our eyelashes and nose hairs froze. It was 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Our destination, Jukkasjärvi, just 20 minutes down the road, is home to a tourist attraction that would also be our home for Christmas Eve. The Icehotel is constructed each year from massive blocks harvested from the Torne River. Each spring before the thaw, tons of ice are hauled from its waters and tucked away in cold storage, where they wait to be transformed into November’s giant, ephemeral lodgings. The following spring, the whole thing (aside from a few suites and a bar kept cold for year-round use) melts and the process is repeated.
By the time we arrived at the hotel, it was completely dark. The air glittered with gusts of snow, and on cue, the northern lights appeared like some celestial welcome banner. Oliver, in the highest possible act of approval, brandished his phone and started snapping away. We were issued snowsuits, boots, and balaclavas, as was every other visitor, which gave the outdoor scene a sort of Teletubbies-on-ice vibe, everyone waddling around like awestruck toddlers against a backdrop of motionless evergreens frosted in gobs of snow.
Most people who visit the Icehotel just stop for drinks at the Icebar and a wander through its rooms, many conceived by artists. Oliver and I would be spending the night before Christmas swaddled in subzero sleeping bags atop reindeer skins in our own snow-carved suite. One of us was having second thoughts about the whole endeavor: our dogsledding outing, the nighttime snowmobiling, and especially his bed of ice. Out there on the frozen tundra, it was just my will versus one stubborn teen.
I persisted, parting the boy from his video games and the heated lounge the next morning, and following the sound of yipping to the frozen Torne. We installed ourselves on a four-person dogsled with two bundled Brits and a pink-cheeked driver at the helm. The barking crescendoed as we slid into motion, picking up speed across the snowy expanse. Snug houses decked out in white lights hugged the banks, and a family passed on a snowmobile towing a child of 3 or 4 on her own tiny sled. In my seat behind Oliver, I didn’t have to see his face to know he was loving it. When the dogs stopped barking, there was just the sound of runners on snow and the big Arctic sky slowly turning pink with the not-quite-sunrise.
Later, there was a starry snowmobile drive through the woods to a firelit hut, where we sipped hot lingonberry juice and politely masticated bowls of moose goulash. There was the night in our suite of ice, where, insulated from the world by three-foot-thick frozen walls, we slept cocooned in silence inside our industrial-strength sleeping bags. There was Christmas morning, where I gave Oliver a bracelet from the hotel gift shop, and he gave me some caramels he’d packed from home.
There were a few more lazy days in Stockholm – including a reunion with our luggage – at the elegant Grand Hôtel, shopping for souvenirs at home-decor institution Svenskt Tenn, ordering burgers and Champagne (for me) in the hotel bar, and grazing through the julbord, a traditional Swedish Christmas feast of approximately 3,000 types of smoked and pickled fish, Swedish meatballs, and house-brand aquavit. There were protracted silences and refusals to visit the Vasa Museum, which houses an entire seventeenth-century warship excavated from the muck of Stockholm Harbour. There were doubts that this trip had been a good idea.
And then there was our return home, complete with someone’s repeated wearing of an ABBA sweatshirt, retellings of the snowmobile ride, sharing of northern lights photos, and casual bragging. One thing about teenagers is that they don’t always shout their newfound admiration for their cool mom from the rooftops. Several months later, I asked Oliver in passing what he thought our best-ever trip had been. “Oh,” he said, “definitely Sweden.”
Swedish Essentials
50 Degrees NorthTour operator 50 Degrees North can organize custom itineraries throughout Sweden, including visits to Vaxholms Bed & Breakfast for cinnamon-bun-making lessons, candy-cane-making lessons in Stockholm’s Old Town, and stays at the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, with dogsledding, snowmobiling, and northern lights viewing. Pricing varies depending on itinerary.
Grand Hôtel StockholmThe flag-festooned Grand Hôtel Stockholm presides over the city’s waterfront, looking very much like many stately old city hotels. But inside, the 1874 building is a warren of surprises, from its subterranean spa and Versailles-inspired ballroom to the cavalcade of decor styles throughout its 279 rooms, including a two-story Attic Suite with its shocking-blue wrought-iron stair railing and bold wallpaper, and the Flag Suite with its porthole windows and spiral staircase to a glass-bubble lookout tower. Virtuoso travelers receive breakfast daily and a $100 hotel credit.
Start planning inspired travel and read more about me and what I can do for you!
Nine Muses Travel designs journeys to inspire artists, arts lovers and the culturally curious.
Danielle Dybiec
Founder & President
WHY USE A TRAVEL ADVISOR?
Nine Muses Travel offers a premium experience with flights, guides, drivers, rental vehicles, and the best accommodations to maximize your time, with expert advice on how to get the most out of any destination. We INCLUDE amenities for you at the world's finest hotels, the BEST OF THE BEST!
Complimentary room upgrades at check-in, subject to availability
Complimentary daily breakfast
Early check-in / late check-out, subject to availability
Complimentary Wi-Fi
And more!
Nine Muses Travel works with exceptional suppliers who add unparalleled value:
Expert guides: artists, historians, naturalists, unique locals with insider tips & insights
Flexibility with your touring - See and do as much, or as little, as you prefer!
Custom-designed routings
Exclusive experiences
24/7 real-time support
Comprehensive travel protection plans
Kommentare