The spring is definitely here now! We have still some snow left on the ground but the days are getting longer and the temperature is mostly above zero. Migratory birds are arriving little by little, and all the birds have started to sing. The coming one month is very good for bird watching! There are no leaves on the trees yet to hide them, and they are very busy in trying to get attention from females and fighting off rivals. Early mornings it can be quite a party out there!

The days are getting warmer and the mosquitoes are still a month away. One of the best times of the year to enjoy walking outdoors. It is still April though, and some of the days the weather can be pretty mixed; sunshine, rain and snow.

No signs of global warming this winter

The temperatures have been below zero for about 4 moths now, and -20 or more for weeks at a time. Daytime temperatures are slowly getting a little higher but early mornings it can still be close to -30. But the daytime hours are getting definitely longer. The spring is on it’s way.

I don’t really want to complain about the winter, I like it, it’s beautiful, but this time we were hit by some unexpected difficulties that made it bit tougher than usually. Our heating system didn’t work very well for a long time and the inside temperature on the first floor was cold enough to cause some serious  damage. The water in the heating system, that was supposed to warm up the house, froze and broke the heaters. Then, when we changed from using a pellet burner to ordinary wood, all our problems disappeared.

I have started to rebuild the SlowLife.se site. New design and functionality. It came to my attention that visitors didn’t find all the pages on the site. In my ignorance I had thought it was all very clear and easy to navigate, but obviously not. I needed to do it again. And that’s what I’m working with right now. Many of the visitors missed that I have detailed information and photos from every day of the hiking trips. Trail, cabins flowers and more. Two examples here: Tarra Valley and Padjelanta and The King’s Trail. If you would like to have a sneak preview of the new design you can have a look here.

The vendors have reclaimed the main street in Jokkmokk

The temperature dropped below -20 the other day, and it has stayed there ever since. The car was a bit slow to start in the morning. The tree structure of our house is complaining by exploding  sounds, and our cat refuse to go outside. Everything is as one could expect around the time of Jokkmokk winter fair.

Usually I try to visit some of the lectures offered during the fair, but this time we went only to have a look at the spectacle.  About 47.000 people visited the fair this year. 46.848 to be exact, according to the Swedish Road Administration, who measured the traffic between 5 -7 February. Visitors during the Historical Market 2 -4 February were not included in the numbers.

If you are thinking of going to the Winter Fair in Jokkmokk, the Historical Market would probably be more interesting than walking with thousands of other people between stalls selling cheap plastic and candy during the “real” market. Of course, to be honest, you can find other things too like clothes, smoked reindeer, pelts and knives. And traditional Laotian and Thai food!

Historically the fair used to be a place where the nomadic Sami met ones a year to buy supplies, sell their products, meet friends and pay taxes. The Historical Market is something of a remake of those days, to show how it might have looked like. These days I suspect the only thing the reindeer herders actually buy at the fair, is plastic ropes to be used at the reindeer round-ups. The wendors weren’t excited about the competion of a Historical Market when it started a few years ago, so that’s the reason you can’t experince both of them at the same time. But I hope they will rethink this in the future.

But the fair is still a place to meet people. I met a friend of mine and his wife down by the Talvatis-lake, as I do every year, and my wife and daughter got a ride with their dogsled. I’m starting to recognize many of the artists and wendors too selling their stuff at their regular spots every year. We also stopped for a short chat with a Japanese girl from Stockholm selling natural herbs and related products. I bought a DVD with Laila Spik. She tells about natural remedies and food used historically in the traditional Sami life.

The temperature was pretty cold all day, and it was necessary to wiggle one’s toes and fingers all the time to avoid the cold. Even though I used two pairs of thick gloves and winter boots with two layers of socks. Towards the end of our visit the wind started to blow. Nothing much, just a gentle breeze, but that was enough to freeze our faces to ice.

Winter road in January

Being the first post of this blog, the default head line provided by WordPress feels pretty accurate. Hello world!

When I’m not busy doing other things, I drive my daughter to school in the morning, and pick her up in the afternoon again. 240 km. 60 km one way. This is how the road looks like more or less all the way. Depending on the weather and the time of the day, the scenery change.

When I start in the morning it’s pitch dark, and then the light changes from pale pinks and blues at mid day, to warmer colors at sunset when I drive back home in the afternoon. The darkest time of the year has past long time ago, in the beginning of December, but the sun is still a bit shy. It only shows up between 08:30 - 15:00 here at the arctic circle, and not very high above the southern horizon. In theory we have almost six hours of sunshine, but because of mountains shielding the sun, the actual amount is much less.

Not much trafic on the road. Sometimes a timber truck or two, but specially in the early morning hours there can be plenty of birds on the road. Mostly ptarmigans and black cocks. The ptarmigans are still wearing their white winter garbs and can be quite difficult to distinguish from the snow, and I’ve had some close encounters with them while driving. Sometimes they get caught by the headlights, and if I keep the right speed, the birds can fly in front of the car for some time.

While driving I also need to keep my eyes on the reindeer. They could jump out of the forest anytime. But I think the reindeer herders have moved most of them closer to the coast where there is less snow and easier to find food. An occasional reindeer or two can sometimes be standing on the road, but I haven’t seen larger groups of them for some time now.

If driving on these, sometimes icy roads, one has to learn not to jump on the breaks when something unexpected happen, but instead to shift to a lower gear and use the engine to get the speed down. Using the breaks will more often than not result in just locking the wheels and gliding without any control. Not very good if you suddenly meet a timber truck at a curve coming with high speed.