Abisko - An Overview

I've been in Abisko now for exactly a week. It's one of the farthest north towns in Sweden (200 km above the Arctic Circle (which, if you were wondering, looks like this:

I never realized you could see the Arctic Circle, but if I had to imagine what it would look like, I'd say that's pretty right)).

Abisko is a town with a population of less than 100, but it is also the entrance to the Abisko National Park, and the start of the famous Kungsleden hiking trail, which draws in a lot of outdoorsy folk.


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Abisko is situated on the southwest shore of Lake Torneträsk, and has views to the south of Lapporten, which is known as the Gateway to Lappland:

Abisko is also home to the Abisko Scientific Research Station, which is the reason I am here. I'm doing research for my thesis (because yes, I am in school) on fluctuating asymmetry in mountain birch leaves. Basically, I have to collect a ton of leaves and measure them. More on that later. But anyway, here is MY research station!

I'm a real scientist now! I guess I was a real scientist before, but that was the lab coat wearing/reactor building kind. Now, I'm the Arctic research station kind. It's very nice inside too (you have to take your shoes off when you enter the building and wear indoor shoes!), but more on that later too.

Here is the town...

(The railway is very important to the town since the surrounding area is one of the largest sources of iron ore in the world. That's why Scandinavian buildings are always red!)

And the train station...

And the school with it's cute garden...

And it's cute playhouse...

With it's cute tiny wood stove...

And what every town of less than 100 needs; a dog agility course:

Wildflowers EVERYWHERE

The lake shore with Lapporten in the background:

But the big draw of the area is the National Park and the scenery. I happened to arrive right in the middle of the Fjällräven Classic, a 110 km race through the mountains along a section of the Kungsleden. The finish line was the Abisko Mountain Station (a lodge/hotel/entrance to the national park), and I got there right as the first participants starting arriving. Since it takes people a varying amount of time to complete (some people run it and arrive at the finish line with their feet bleeding and looking like they've been running through the Arctic mountains for the last 20 some hours, and some people do it over a number of days), it's basically a week long hiker's/folk festival (Swedish style) as more and more people arrive. 

The first day I got there, before things got too crazy:

Whenever a new person showed up, everyone would stop what they were doing and clap and cheer. It was pretty neat. You just had to make sure you didn't walk into the area from the wrong direction and accidentally cross the finish line (which is very easy to do since it's the way you get off any trail. I made that mistake once. After that I was very careful to loop WAY around). 

After a few days it grew bigger:

It was a great place to just hang out and watch everyone. And I do realize this was a very select section of the population, but overall  I would say, these are my kind of people! I'm digging Sweden. 

Since it was also a "folk festival" they had people playing music most of the time. A lot of it, as you would imagine, was in Swedish. But some of it I recognized. Still, I was surprised to hear this little ditty, all the way up in the Arctic Circle of Sweden:

Things got a little rowdier at night. It was a lot of fun. Not that I participated. I just sat on the edge looking like a creepster again. Or like that cool, quiet, mysterious person, as I liked to think of it. Towards the end of this video I show what I was doing: making up data sheets for my research. (Oh, and btw, I totally forgot that I could talk while I was making a video. These would be way more interesting with a little commentary. Next time.)

Since I didn't want to pay for a place to stay, I figured I'd utilize Sweden's Every Man's Rights law, and just pitch my tent somewhere. This turned out to be a lot more difficult than it sounded. You aren't allowed to camp in the national park except in designated areas (which you have to pay for) and you can't camp at all in nature reserves (which was a lot of the areas outside the park). This basically left people's front lawns and swamps. Oh, and have I mentioned the mosquitoes yet? I've worked in the pocosin of North Carolina in June, I've been to the lakes of Maine and Michigan in the summer, I've been to Panama, and the swamps of Florida, and these are, by far, the WORST mosquitoes I've EVER experienced. This is me attempting to defend myself:

And no, it wasn't cold or sunny that day. I also have 94% DEET (which I didn't even know they made) that I put on my face (which I've never done), and just today, even with this getup on, I got a mosquito bite ON MY EYELID. You literally can never stand still. I made up a little jazzercise style routine that I do when I'm eating. And you wouldn't believe the suffering my right hand has gone through with trying to take pictures. And they can bite you through regular clothing, so just wearing long sleeves and pants is not enough. You have to have thick layers. 

Here's one of the little guys, trying to defy me by sitting on the leaf I need to pick. Little does he know he's about to be squashed. 

My strategy for getting in my tent is to go to the tent, then walk about twenty feet away, slow enough for them to follow me. Then I turn quick, take them off guard, run as fast as I can, and dive into the tent. This only somewhat limits the amount that gets in. After I've killed all the ones in the tent, I do enjoy lying there and watching all the ones outside try to get in. Sometimes I practice "deep breathing" to really get them riled up with the carbon dioxide. But back to my Tent Pitching Location Situation.

The first few nights I found a semi-non-swampy spot near the lake. It was pretty nice and I liked it. 

Here is the road down to my temporary home:

The path down to the tent:

The tent:

See that sunset in the background? That goes on all night! The sun is pretty much in a constant state of rising or setting from 9 pm until about 6 am. And it keeps moving and changing directions so the colors and the angles are perpetually changing! It makes it really hard to go to bed. That first night I was in my tent around 11, and I could see the sky changing and I had to get up and go back down to the lake to see what was happening. 

When I got down there (I don't know if you can really make it out in the picture unless you know where it is) there was the bottom half of a perfect rainbow! At eleven o'clock at night! And you could see every color reflected in the lake. It was pretty spectacular. 

Other pictures from that evening:

It stays light enough all night that I can easily read in my tent without even considering the need for a light. 

Okay, that's enough for one post I think. More to come includes: Excursions around the area, my new home, and a late night visitor. Exciting!