Written by Jesús
12 May 2015
Picture credits: All the pictures were taken and edited by Lewis Beischer
I wanted to share with you some of the pictures that my friend Lewis took while we were in Lapland last winter… Enjoy!
We went there at the darkest times of the year, when the sun didn’t even rise above the horizon. This is why most of the pictures look like they were taken during a sunrise/sunset. Basically, the sun stayed just below the horizon for a couple of hours every day, which made the light look so amazing!
Most of the pictures were taken around Kitkiöjärvi, a super small town in the middle of nowhere, that I love to spend time in. I have some older friends who live there, who see the world in such a different way than people do in large cities. It’s nice to get some sense of perspective, and to get lost in the emptiness of nature.
This is the uninhabited school (some kind of hostel) where we stayed during our holiday. It used to be a school, but as all the young people moved out of the village, they closed it down ages ago, and is now used as a hostel whenever people want to stay there. But during winter there is no one going there, so we basically we had the whole building for ourselves, with a sauna and a gym in the basement! Check out their website.
Walking around the village to visit some friends…
Going to a reindeer herding occasion, where Sami people mark and sort the newborn reindeer, along with the old ones. We got to go there because some really nice local inhabitants and friends offered to take us there. (Try to find me between the reindeer!)
There is just something magical of being the only person around, with your tracks being the only ones on sight…
We also spent a few days around Kiruna, just walking around, climbing to the top of ski slopes, sliding downhill in bin bags etc… In this picture, you can see the ski slope far in the background:
On night, at 1am, we saw in the Aurora Forecast that there were very strong auroras in the sky taking place, so we had no choice but to put on our clothes and go for a cool walk outside of town to check them out. It was about -18degrees C, but it was so worth it!
We also went on a guided tour to the mines in Kiruna.
One day we found a sledge lying around that we borrowed to go on some fun and speedy downhills
One day I’ll live here… It’s kind of my dream 🙂