Finland/Sweden 3/15/2023

Wednesday 3/15/2023 - Arrival in Sweden: Haparanda Stadshotell, Gammelstad, Brändön Lodge, Northern Lights

We opted for breakfast in our room again this morning. It was lovely yesterday, and rather than go over to the dining room and then come back to the room before checking out, it made more sense to just eat right in the room. We had requested it for 8:00 a.m. (the earliest slot available). Not seeing the delivery car at 7:58 a.m., Craig joked that the delivery might be a tad late due to the fact that many guests probably ordered breakfast for the exact same time. But no, at 7:59, the car pulled up, and at 8:00 on the dot, the delivery driver was at our door. Impeccable service!

We had ham and cheese omelets, sausage, bacon, bread, cheese, orange juice, and coffee (we just ordered the coffee today rather than messing with the complicated machine in the room).

After breakfast, our luggage was collected from the room and we checked out. We got onto the bus for our longest day of driving. Today we would be crossing into Sweden. But there were many stops planned to break up the journey.

While on the bus, Gosia handed out menus for our farewell dinner on Saturday night. Our Stockholm hotel requires you to make your selections 72 hours in advance. So here we were, bellies full from breakfast, trying to decide what we wanted to eat for dinner three days from now. I took a photo of the menu so that I would remember what we had chosen.

As we drove through the Finnish landscape, a train was traveling parallel to us, and we proceeded side-by-side for quite a while.

Because Finland and Sweden are both part of the European Union, the border crossing was all but nonexistent. We crossed a bridge over the Torne River and saw a sign welcoming us to Sweden, and that was it. When we crossed into Sweden at Haparanda, no lie, the first thing we saw was an IKEA! You can't make this stuff up. Sweden is an hour behind Finland in terms of time zones, so we gained an hour as we crossed the border.

It was a gorgeous day, with blue skies and sunshine. While in Haparanda, we stopped at the historic Haparanda Stadshotell (City Hotel) for a traditional Swedish fika (coffee break). The room where we had our fika was in the basement and was decorated to look like a medieval mead hall. It was dark and had reindeer antler chandeliers over the long table. Candles and pine boughs decorated the table. We had delicious cinnamon rolls, coffee, and orange juice as we learned about the history of the hotel. All they do is feed us in Sápmi (Lapland), lol! We are like hobbits with second breakfast and "elevensies".

The owner of the hotel, Susanne Wallin, had worked there since she was 16. She eventually moved to another job, but when the hotel came up for sale, she decided to purchase it. She is obviously very proud of its history. Such a grand hotel today seems a bit out of place in a small border town of 1500 residents, but it was once a hotbed of political intrigue. The opening of the hotel took place on December 5, 1900.

The hotel was built during an era when Haparanda constituted the western outpost to tsarist Russia. This was where the East met West, and the city was a melting pot, fuelled by espionage as well as contraband. A fifth of the city’s residents is said to have been spies and agents. - Swedishlapland.com

We learned about the so-called "goulash barons", who profited from smuggling during the first World War. Lenin stayed at the hotel prior to starting the Russian revolution in 1917.

Susanne showed us a Hans Rosenfeldt novel called "Vargasommar" which takes place in the hotel. They will be filming a movie version on location soon.

The hotel is decorated with vintage objects, including a typewriter, gramophone, ice saw, antique cash register, and a bootleg beverage cooler, to name a few. An upstairs ballroom had gorgeous custom glass light fixtures.

The hotel is so storied and historic that we could have spent much more time here, but Gosia had to keep us moving...we had several more stops on the itinerary today.

Our next stop in Sweden was Gammelstad. It is a "church town", established in 1492. At that time, people had to travel long distances to get to church. So they created a settlement of small cottages so that people had a place to stay on weekends when they came into town to go to church. Northern Sweden didn't have many real towns, so these temporary church towns met the social needs of the spread out population, including tax paying and court trials.

The cottages were originally built to house workers who were building the church. The church is in the center of town, and cottages are on small roads radiating out from the center of town. The cottages were grouped according to the owners' home villages. The distance between cottages is often 2 feet. There are 405 cottages in Gammelstad.

People who lived 10 km from the church were expected to come to Gammelstad every weekend, whereas those 20 km away were expected every other weekend. Eventually, there wasn't room for everyone, so some weekends were designated for married adults to go to church, and others were for younger, single people, giving them an opportunity to mingle and look for suitors.

There were once 71 church towns in Sweden. Eighteen remain today, but most are not well-preserved like Gammelstad. Because of this, Gammelstad is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We started off our visit inside the Nederluleå church. It is beautiful, with a gilded altar and pulpit, and frescoes on the ceiling. The altarpiece was fabricated in Antwerp in the 1520's, and the pulpit dates to 1712. The bell tower was built later, in 1850. There were no windows originally on the north side because they believed that bad spirits came from the north. And they had high windows on the south side to protect from the Russians.

After touring the church, we walked around outside, observing the adorable cottages. Most are painted red because of the availability of red paint produced from the leftovers from copper mining. It was a very picturesque town, especially with snow on the ground. It reminded us of New England.

Craig was walking around without his coat. It's interesting how quickly you become accustomed to the climate here. The sky was blue with white puffy clouds, and the sun kept us warm.

After stopping at the visitor's center and buying a book on Gammelstad's history, we got back into the bus. We drove through pine and birch forests, with the trees covered in snow. It was like a fairy tale setting.

We stopped at Brändön Lodge on the Bay of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea for lunch. The lodge consists of a main building housing reception, the restaurant, and lounge areas. There are 15 cabins facing the ocean, which at this time of year is frozen over. Though we were just stopping here to eat, it is a fully functional resort and offers excursions for its guests in all seasons.

The staff were quite friendly and we were shown up to a dining room which was empty except for our group. There was a view into the kitchen where the food was prepared. There was a lovely buffet lunch consisting of parsnip soup, salad, salmon, blueberry juice, and berry cake with vanilla sauce. Everything was delicious, and there was plenty of food, but I wasn't all that hungry, having already had a large, hearty breakfast and a fika so far today!

After lunch we walked around the grounds, looking at the frozen sea, and even saw a tiny house on runners being pulled by a tractor. We saw cross country skis, kicksleds (more about them later), and hockey sticks, belying the fun that can be had on the grounds of the lodge.

As we left, Gosia pointed out the heaters in the parking lot which can be used to thaw your car if it is too cold for it to start.

The weather changed, and it was snowing pretty heavily as we drove to our hotel. It is a very cool small boutique hotel called the Arctic Bath Hotel. The main building/lobby/bar/restaurant is shaped like a bird’s nest, and is situated literally over a (now-frozen) river. There is a sauna in the building, and people can then take a dip in a hole cut in the river ice to cool down afterwards. About half of the cabins are also over the river ice, with the other half on shore.

The hotel had a fika ready for us in the restaurant when we arrived, but we knew that there was a 6-course dinner at 6 pm and we were still full from lunch. It was already 4:30! So we skipped the fika and went straight to our room to get settled.

We were in a river cabin, Room W12. Because everything was covered with snow, it was hard to tell where the land ended and the river ice began. We crossed a ~20 foot bridge to get to the platform that housed our cabin. The cabin itself was asymmetrical and had odd angles. Like our previous cabin at the Arctic Treehouse Hotel, this cabin was decorated with a minimalist Scandinavian aesthetic. There was a window facing north, but the angle was so high that we doubted we could see the northern lights from inside. The cabin had a back door off the (huge) bathroom that led to a back deck with a ladder. In the summer, this must be ideal...you can swim in the river right from your room! Each cabin had a life ring hanging on the exterior wall.

There were several inches of dry, fluffy snow on the bridge to get to our room, and Craig grabbed a shovel and started shoveling so that our boots wouldn't get all snowy before entering our cabin. When the employee brought our luggage to the room, she said that she would shovel the walkway for him, but Craig said that he enjoyed doing it; there wasn't very much snow anyway.

We tried riding a kick sled, which is kind of like dog mushing but without the dogs. You stand on one runner of the sled and kick your other foot to propel yourself. Elderly people use them in the ice and snow instead of a walker because they are more stable. There is a seat on the front where you can give someone a ride or place your parcels.

The sky cleared up, and we watched the sun set over the river before walking over to the restaurant for our gourmet 6-course meal. Our group took up two long tables in the restaurant. There were cute little ceramic candle holders on the table that were shaped like the bird's nest building itself. We sat with Cindy and Kevin. We had red wine to drink and Craig also had a Botten Vikens IPA. Each course was set in front of us and described to us. When everyone was done with that course, it was cleared and the next course arrived.

Cindy and Kevin had recently seen the movie "The Menu", and insisted that we all clap once to get people's attention as each course was introduced. We have not seen the movie yet, but all of this talk about it definitely aroused our curiosity! Some of the kitchen staff were also hip to the movie and got a kick out of it.

It was a very eclectic menu with very artistic presentation. Much fancier food than we are used to! Although we were unsure about some of the dishes at first, we ended up enjoying everything very much. We had lots of laughs with Cindy and Kevin, and look forward to doing it again tomorrow night with a different menu.

I am not an oyster person, but I wanted to try everything. Cindy took the opportunity to get a video of me gamely trying an oyster.There was no way for me to subtly consume my oyster...they had already sucked theirs down and were all watching attentively as I tentatively ate it. Let's just say it's not the most flattering video, LOL!

At the end of the dinner, they showed us a printed menu of all 6 courses, which I photographed so that I would remember all of the details. The courses were as follows (the astute viewer will notice 9 entries here; some of them were served concurrently, and there was some humorous discussion as to what exactly constitutes a "course"):

Cone with mountain cow yogurt, yuzu, shitake, and roe
Rye with fermented vegetable and blueberry, and roe
Mountain cow tartare with currant, dijon, capers, garlic
Oyster with charcoal cream, sea buckthorn, chili, dill
Scallop with cauliflower, green apple, tapioca, sea buckthorn (Craig was subtly given braised carrots as substitution, since he is allergic to scallops)
Bread with blueberry butter
Mountain cow steak with black cabbage, green cabbage, and tallow
Olive oil citrus sorbet
Apple with charcoal ice cream, tar merengue, and caramel

We were impressed with the way that they handled Craig's allergy to scallops. He had disclosed this allergy in paperwork long before the trip began. At one point during dinner, the waitstaff asked what cabin we were in, and then when they brought that course, Craig's was carrots instead of scallops. They had known that someone in cabin W12 was allergic to scallops, and they handled it so discreetly! Craig also has a recently-discovered sensitivity to olive oil (of all things) as well. He had not disclosed this on his paperwork as he hadn't known about it, so the olive oil sorbet was something that he couldn't really enjoy. He had a tiny taste and then let me eat the rest of it.

Walking back to our cabin after dinner, shortly before 9 p.m., we saw the northern lights dancing in the sky! We are so lucky that the sky cleared up after having snowed earlier in the day. We watched the lights with Rick, Molly, Humberto, and Max. The small lights on the path were hindering our ability to focus on the lights, so Craig tucked a glove into one of them to cut down on the glare. It was quite cold. My phone doesn't register photos of the northern lights, so I need to use my little Sony camera. My fingers eventually got so cold that I literally couldn't press the shutter any more. I had to warm my hands again before they would function properly.

We then went back into the room and got a good night's sleep after a busy day. Our first night in Sweden!

Haparanda Stadshotell

Gammelstad

Brändön Lodge

Arctic Bath Hotel