Sweden's Norrbotten county is nothing if not a land of contrasts
The snowflakes swirl and swish gently in the breeze before they join the blanket of white that covers everything as far as the eye can see. It’s almost as if words from a Robert Frost poem have manifested themselves into the view from my hotel room window, 100 km south of the Polar Circle. It surprises me that the harsh reality of minus 35 degree Celsius can look so stark and beautiful all at once. But as I was to conclude after my three-month sojourn in Arvidsjaur, that little town in Sweden’s Norrbotten county was nothing if not a land of contrasts.
The first indication of this was evident even as the flight to Arvidsjaur began its descent and an endless stretch of white came into view. Not just snow-covered land, but also lakes frozen solid, giving the illusion that the town was a lot bigger than it actually was. My first close encounter with those hallowed lakes involved me shuffling my feet through the snow, imagining there really was solid earth underneath it all. Until I came to a patch where the snow had been cleared away. I could see little cracks on the surface. The ice had a disconcerting translucence to it. And then it did something that I later found out was quite commonplace up in Norrbotten and the Lappland region—it shifted and settled with an audible sigh. My companion looked at my shocked face and laughed. “Don’t worry about the noise, the ice is thick enough to land a small plane on,” he said. I shivered, half out of fright and half because of the cold, and continued trudging along. Fifteen steps later, I’d managed to slip and land on my behind, eliciting more laughter from my companion. Lappland clearly wasn’t for the faint of heart. But, looking at the frost-covered trees around me, and that beautiful white ice, I realised it was already beginning to grow on me.
Arvidsjaur, on the icy road 860-odd kilometres north of Stockholm, is a tiny town. If you’re in a hurry, you’ll drive right through it and barely realise it’s gone by. So tiny that the population of approximately 4,500 people has at some point or the other come into contact with one another, and if they don’t know each other, they know of each other. In fact, one young lady complains that privacy is almost non-existent. Another tells me there’s nothing to do on her days off and there’s nowhere to go. Having lived all my life in cities, I find myself concurring with her. I wonder whether agreeing to accompany my husband there on a three-month work trip was a good idea.
After all, just a month later, I find the quiet too quiet, the calm too calm, and the constant peace disconcerting. But for many residents, the extreme stillness is precisely the best thing about the town. The fact that they all know each other means there’s next to no crime. And when some nefarious activity does take place, it’s so uncommon that shock grips the entire town. After all, this is a place where most people don’t bother locking their front doors and leave the keys in their unlocked cars. It’s a town that has a police force comprising two people, and the most work the officers have is at the Saturday night discotheque from where they might have to occasionally escort slightly inebriated Svens or Larses home.
In fact, the most trouble you can get into is if you hit a reindeer with your car and don’t report it. Not surprising, as the reindeer forms the backbone of the economy, especially for the indigenous Sami people. And to truly know what the reindeer means to the Lappland, you need to visit a reindeer farm.
(This story appears in the Sep-Oct 2016 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)