Nordic Breeze | Iberian Seas

It turns out writing a blog is a lot of work and once you fall behind on a few events it feels pretty overwhelming to catch up on. I definitely need to write a post all about Lucia Day and Christmas in Sweden but that’s going to be a fair bit of work so I figured I would start off with a review of some of the fun outdoor winter activities I’ve done in January and February. This winter in Sweden has been unseasonably warm and with very little snowfall which has meant that we haven’t been able to play outside in the snow and ice quite as much as I had hoped. That said, we’ve had plenty of fun winter adventures and activities!

Ski trip to Åre

In late January I went alpine skiing in Åre with about ten friends from my program. We took an overnight train from Stockholm up to the ski resort in Åre which took about eight hours. Åre is one of Sweden’s most popular alpine skiing resorts and is very popular with students. We had an awesome apartment where we could ski in and ski out onto a green slope. As an American, it was amazing to be able to do the whole trip without a car! We had four full days of skiing plus a half day in Åre before we took the train home. It was a lot of fun and absolutely beautiful up there. I’ll write more about this trip and post it soon.

Ice Skating

Ice skating is one activity I was very much looking forward to in Sweden. Unfortunately, it’s been a very warm winter and the natural bodies of water (it’s hard to separate the archipelago and the lakes in Stockholm) have not frozen over the way they normally do which means we haven’t been able to skate much on natural ice. That’s okay though because we have a wonderful outdoor public skating rink right near campus! It’s a sports facility called Östermalms Idrottsplats (lit. “Östermalms sports place”). In the warmer months it’s a running track and soccer field but in the winter they turn it into a huge ice rink that is free and open to the public certain hours during the week. In early January I bought myself a pair of cheap ice skates and I’ve been able to go out skating at Östermalms IP a handful of times.

One time we rented a bunch of hockey sticks from Fritidsbanken and played the world’s slowest and most chaotic game of pickup hockey. Fritidsbanken (lit. “the leisure bank” or “the free time bank”) is an incredible Swedish organization that is basically a library for sports equipment. Anyone can rent all sorts of sports equipment (skis, snowshoes, skates, hockey sticks, tennis rackets, helmets, soccer balls, and much more) for free for two weeks. The founding principles are that anyone can borrow an item, everything is free, and equipment should be reused until it breaks beyond repair. If something breaks while you are using it they don’t make you pay for it. Instead they say congratulations, you have gotten the most possible use out of the item! It embodies everything I love most about Sweden – sustainability, trust, and services that benefit the entire community and just make sense.

I had always wanted to try playing ice hockey and this was super fun! None of us could skate very well so it was quite slow and I fell many times but we had a blast. I discovered that you hold an ice hockey stick in the opposite direction than you hold a field hockey stick so it felt very strange in my hands. After playing around for a little while it started to feel more comfortable and I had a blast. Having the stick also seemed to help with balance and I think the skating was actually easier when you weren’t so focused on it. My friend Shuai is an amazing photographer and he was on the sidelines taking really cool high quality photos of us.

Hockey Game

After we tried our hands (and skates) at playing ice hockey, it was time to let the professionals show us how it’s done. In the beginning of February I went to an ice hockey game with some friends. This was a derby match between two second division Stockholm teams: AIK and Djurgården. These two clubs are considered “twin teams” because they were both founded in 1891 in Stockholm and they also have a soccer rivalry. Because this was a derby, the arena was entirely filled with AIK supporters. I think this was the first time I’ve been to a sports match with fans from only one team. This meant that every time the opposing team (Djurgården) scored, there was no reaction from the crowd and the only real way you could tell they got a point was by watching the scoreboard. The crowd was absolutely wild and they had some really fun songs and chants. The energy was electric. AIK scored eight goals so there was a lot of celebrating. It was a passionate, chaotic, fun game and AIK (my new favorite second division Swedish hockey team) beat Djurgården 8-4!

Ice Skating on Brunnsviken

For a few days in mid-February we finally got a sustained cold period for long enough for some of the lakes to freeze over! I was only able to get out onto the ice once but it was fantastic. We went over to the same lake where we had gone swimming in the summer (move the slider below to see the difference). There was about an inch of light snow on the ice which was really fun to skate through and draw patterns in. Most of the ice was really smooth and perfect for skating but it was also cool to find the areas where the ice was uneven and harder to skate on. We were definitely cautious about where and when it was safe to skate on this ice but we saw lots of other people out skating, walking, and cross country skiing on the ice. We also saw someone taking an ice bath near the pier.

Ice Bathing

One weekend in February my choir had a rehearsal weekend at Bogesundslandets Nature Reserve just outside of Stockholm. We spent most of the weekend rehearsing the music for our concert in March but we had a couple of hours on Saturday to relax and enjoy the area. About 20 of us decided to use that time to go ice bathing! This is a very Swedish activity but this was also the first time many of my Swedish friends were trying it. You cut a person-sized hole in the ice (sometimes with a chain saw) right next to the dock where you can easily get in and out with a ladder. Then you gather your courage, strip down to your bathing suit, and lower yourself into the freezing cold water. You don’t stay in for long but you can give yourself a few seconds to adjust and try to keep breathing. Then you climb out and, ideally, head straight into the sauna. Unfortunately for us, there was no sauna here. We climbed out, toweled off, and struggled to get back into a few layers of warm clothes with completely numb fingers. It is definitely refreshing and really does make you feel good once you’re warmed back up. The water seems scary but after I got undressed I was so cold and numb from the air that the water really wasn’t any worse (and was maybe even better). Getting dressed was very difficult as my feet were frozen solid and my fingers were fully numb and not really working properly. By the time we walked back to the conference center I was almost fully warmed back up again.

So even though it has been a disappointingly warm winter (at least for me – many Swedes are perfectly happy for a reprieve) I have still been able to have a lot of fun and do many of the activities I was really looking forward to in Sweden. I wanted to do more cross country skiing around Stockholm but I was able to try it out once when I went on a trip up north to Lapland (spoiler alert! Keep an eye out for an upcoming post about that trip 😊). And while it hasn’t snowed much in Stockholm this year, it was absolutely beautiful when it did.