Well it seems my expectations of the Swedish winter have not been reached, not so far anyway. The past two years have seen temperatures of -25 here in Karlstad and for a town situated by a huge lake an epic amount of snow. This year however, decided to be a bit warmer. There has been a severe lack of snow and low temperatures and I have had to venture further north to get my cold fix. One of the things I was most looking forward to in Sweden was an extreme winter. Not just so I could regress and play in the snow but also for the experience of a proper winter. It turned out that this winter Karlstad recorded it’s highest temperature for December at a reasonable +11 degrees. I’m hoping my occasional verbal disappointment with the weather will tempt fate and send the wrath of whichever nordic God handles it upon me.
One of the things I was told about was the lack of sunlight in the winter months and how it affects the locals. I was ready for this long, hard, cold period where the people basically hibernated and I would crave the warmth of the sun. I heard somewhere it could get as bad as only 3 hours of sunlight per day. Now it seems like a lot of talk, unless like the temperature this year has been an anomaly. At the back end of January the hours have already started creeping back and it is getting lighter and lighter with each passing day. The worst it got was that by 3pm it would be dark but it didn’t seem to last long nor had a psychological effect on myself or anyone I knew. Definitely not the winter I had imagined.
My travels north were adventurous enough to give me my fix however and up in Abisko we only had a few hours of daylight for the four days we were there. There was also a lot of snow and the chance to go dog sledging.
