The Northern Lights and Reindeer Sausage: Winter in Swedish Lapland
Come hungry and with plenty of warm layers, and you’re in for a storybook winter in Sweden.
Photographs by Julia Sellman
I went to Swedish Lapland with three goals: Hug a reindeer. See the northern lights. Eat everything. The bitterly cold conditions in Sweden’s northernmost province don’t stop locals from savoring its winter splendor. Or visitors, for that matter — the region has seen a jump of 37 percent in guest bookings over the past decade. So what makes this snowy sanctuary such a hot spot? I decided to find out.
After flying into Luleå Airport from Stockholm, my first real stop is Arctic Treats, one hour east in Kalix. Åsa Ulvede, the city’s first chocolatier, opened this airy shop and café a little over two years ago, and she sells truffles and pralines stuffed with locally foraged ingredients like juicy lingonberries, sweet-tart cloudberries, and dully sour sea buckthorn.
“The Sámi are a very true and honest people, with a deep connection to nature. I want my guests to see the history and culture of the forest, to understand the lifestyle here, and experience new tastes.”
— Eva Gunnare, Airbnb Experience host
Next, I head to Jukkasjärvi, 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle. I stop en route at Lapland Guesthouse in Kangos for Swedish fika (equivalent to a coffee break). I wrap my hands around a hand-carved cup, or kåsa, brimming with Lemmel coffee, which owner Johan Stenevad has boiled over an open fire. He serves it with kanelbullar (Swedish cinnamon rolls) and tiny cubes of kaffeost, a firm cheese. Stenevad instructs me to toss the cheese in the cup and let it marinate. Sounds weird, but when I bite into it later, it has a satisfyingly squeaky chew. Though I would have loved to spend more time with Stenevad — a snowmobiling safari guide and master bladesmith — the road calls.
At Nutti Sámi Siida in Jukkasjärvi, I finally get my reindeer hug. Affable herder Nils Torbjörn Nutti runs this corral and ecotourism outfit. Though most guests join him for longer excursions, he sells bags of lichen, beloved by the deer, to drive-by travelers angling for a quick photo op. The reindeer chase me around the pen, eager to receive their snacks. They might not be quite as cute as the Hallmark movies make them out to be, but meeting them in real life is a bucket-list triumph.
Airbnb Superhost Brice Casula lives just about snowball-chucking distance from the corral. His company, Svea Snowmobile, leads motorized excursions that start on the Torne River, cross frozen Lake Sautusjärvi, and cut through dense woods — but those adrenaline-pumping pursuits aren’t the only draw. “Maybe 80 percent of our guests get to see the northern lights, if the sky is clear,” says Casula, “but we never know with nature.”
To hedge my own bets, I travel another 90 minutes to the mountainside village of Abisko — the northernmost point on my itinerary — with hopes of seeing the elusive aurora. My beacon: the rustic Aurora Sky Station, perched 2,953 feet above sea level in Abisko National Park. It takes a 25-minute chairlift ride to get there, but what awaits me at the end is worth it: a four-course northern Swedish dinner, including potato-and-leek soup with smoked ptarmigan, Arctic char tartare with horseradish cream, a supple moose steak, and cloudberry parfait. Impressively, the chefs prepared the entire meal with no running water and limited electricity. Even their ingredients were ferried up by chairlift, just like me.
Afterward, I zip on a snowsuit and clamber up the snowbank behind the restaurant. If I stand any chance of seeing the northern lights, this is it. On top of a mountain, I wait. And wait. And wait some more. I imagine I see a green glimmer in the sky…but it’s just wishful thinking. The cloud cover is too thick.
Whatever disappointment I feel about missing the northern lights, I forget within 24 hours. That’s because I find myself seated at a dinner table in Jokkmokk, enraptured by the joyful tales of forager extraordinaire and Airbnb Experience host Eva Gunnare.
Originally from Stockholm, Gunnare has lived in Lapland for half of her life. She was married to a Sámi reindeer herder for 17 years and devoted a year to studying the indigenous food culture at Jokkmokk’s Sámi Education Center. “That brought so many senses to life for me,” says Gunnare, who felt an immediate kinship with the historically nomadic Sámi.
Before moving to Jokkmokk, Gunnare knew very little about the aboriginal people of Lapland. In school “we learned more about Native Americans than the Sámi,” she recalls, adding that the ethnic minority was often ridiculed by the mainstream for protesting against land use for mining or hydropower. “They are very much made invisible, as if they don’t exist. A lot of people think the Sámi just make trouble, but they are fighting for their rights, which have slowly but continuously been taken away from them, decade after decade.”
The Sámi’s love of the land — and their fierce desire to protect it — resonated with every fiber of Gunnare’s being. In 2011, she launched her own culinary enterprise, Essense of Lapland, and she now works as an “Arctic food ambassador,” introducing Swedes and other travelers to regional culinary traditions.
I went to Swedish Lapland with three goals: Hug a reindeer. See the northern lights. Eat everything.
Our experience begins as so many in Sweden do — with a fika. Gunnare brews tea (her own blend of herbs, plucked from the surrounding woods) over a crackling fire in a kåta, a wooden tepee-shaped shelter traditional to the Sámi. Next, she serves an astounding multicourse meal inspired by the eight seasons of Sámi Lapland. In addition to spring, summer, autumn, and winter, the Sámi recognize spring-summer, autumn-summer, autumn-winter, and spring-winter. Because the temperature and light conditions are so extreme above the Arctic Circle, the region supports a limited number of plant and animal species. This dinner is a showcase of that bounty.
Reindeer is served in every form imaginable: fresh, smoked, salted, cured, fried, dried, boiled, and with its blood cooked into lacy black pancakes. (That last one is especially popular with Sámi children, but I had to choke my serving down. It didn’t taste bad; the hurdle was mental.) But it was the creations from Gunnare’s “local wild pantry” that really floored me: a sweet juice made from rosebay willowherb, ribbons of orange cloudberry “leather,” a crackerlike “bread” baked with rye seeds and the inner bark of pine trees and slathered in juniper butter. Gunnare ends the intimate meal by closing her eyes and singing a joik, a wordless Sámi evocation so hauntingly beautiful it gives me goosebumps. I never saw the northern lights, but I don’t really care. Experiencing this magical place, with Gunnare as my shepherd, I am smitten.
About the author: Ashlea Halpern is the co-founder of Minnevangelist and editor-at-large for AFAR Media. She edited New York Magazine’s pop-up travel blog, The Urbanist, and writes regularly for Airbnb Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, and Artful Living. After spending almost four years traveling Asia, Australia, the Arctic, and North America, she settled in Minneapolis, MN — the most underrated city in the lower 48, bar none. Follow her adventures on Instagram at @ashleahalpern and @minnevangelist.
