Lapland letters

A hike amongst the lakes

It feels nice to return to Michigan. It is allegedly spring here which brings with it oodles of cold rain, fairly reasonable chance of an occasional snow showers and freezing nights to ensure you don’t turn off your heater just yet. But after twenty odd days in the Swedish arctic, Mid-West America feels warm and more importantly, populated.

The Northern Lapland in Sweden redefines solitude. You come across isolated microscopic towns isolated from each by gigantic countless frozen lakes. The winter is a consistent feature in these parts, making an appearance in December and then hanging out about town right until the end of May when most of the ice melts. The respite from the cold is only for perhaps three months before it starts cooling down and going dark again. These seem painful conditions until you realize that people have decided to call this home and live here year after year.

I got an opportunity to experience solitude like no other when I went dog sledding. With an utter lack of instructions, I managed to get on the sled and hold on as my set of huskies took off doing what they like doing best. When the adrenalin of the launch wore off, I finally managed to look around me. It seemed like I was in the middle of middle of nowhere.

The whiteness of the landscape stretched as far as my eyes could see. The occasional pine trees broke the monotone of white. But even when the horizon lay, a white grey sky met a white land to further blur the boundaries. Our dog sled pack has now spaced out in these frozen lakes. I found myself alone with the sound of four dogs huffing and the runners of my dog sled sliding on packed snow. It was wonderful and frightening in the same instant. At no point during this amazingly unique experience did I loosen my grip on the sled. I did not want to fall off into nothingness.

I found it fascinating that people choose to live here. That they have managed to call this place home, winter after winter! And not just in these modern times when heat can be generated by human technological magic and warm clothes can be purchased around the corner at half price. The town museum indicated that people had called this place home long before central heating was even considered remotely possible.

In northern Norway, extreme took on a new meaning. While I was doing my part as a tourist, furiously clicking away at the gorgeously dramatic scenery of the fjords with an inadequate camera, I spared a thought for the ruthless Vikings who called this place home. I imagined them sailing in the choppy ice cold waters and coming home to frozen waterfalls for most of the year. In the entire trip, I couldn’t understand if these people who had chosen such solitude for peaceful surroundings were ever terrified of the silence or the loneliness.

I am convinced that I experienced something special in this trip. The endless reindeer and moose meat can indeed make for interesting talking points but they can hardly be the highlights of this trip.

This time in the Lapland, I experienced the stark difference between solitude and loneliness. It became painfully clear that while you can choose one geographically, the other chooses you irrespectively.