Travel Dates: December 2022
Hotel:
Best Western Hotel Arctic Eden – located in the city center of Kiruna, just a few minute walk from a grocery store and a few restaurants. Parking and breakfast are both included, and overall it’s a good hotel due to its convenience. You’ll also get a good view of the iron ore mine in the distance, which is the largest underground iron mine in the world and the major source of Sweden’s wealth. You can tour the mine (LKAB guided tour) but will need to make a reservation in advance. We unfortunately didn’t have the chance to do this, but heard great things about it.
Camp Ripan – also located in the city center area, but a little more off to the side given the need for more land to build the “camp” complex. The rooms are like cabins, each accompanied by a parking space. There’s one restaurant on site and nothing else close by–you’ll need a car to drive to the nearest restaurant, store, etc. The hotel does offer complimentary breakfast, free ice skating rentals to their outdoor rink, and a spa/sauna (at an additional cost).
Food:
Stejk Street Food – food truck across the street from Best Western that had amazing reindeer & moose steak platters and sandwiches. The meats and sauces are delicious, and the portions are plentiful (if you order the XL size). Their warm lingonberry juice was also the best I had throughout the entire trip. I highly recommend stopping here; they have a lavvu tent (teepee) that is warm and insulated if you would like to eat there, or you can take the food to go.
Ripan Kitchen – the restaurant on premise at Camp Ripan requires you to make a reservation. We ordered the kornotto (vegetable risotto) and reindeer sirloin–both were very delicious. If you’re staying at the hotel, I would recommend eating here for dinner one evening.
Activities:
Icehotel is known for its rooms made entirely of ice (they also have regular, warm hotel rooms too). If you’re not interested in sleeping in the cold, you can purchase a ticket to visit all the ice rooms during the day, which is what we did. We bought the ticket with the drink option, which was cheaper than buying the drink separately at the bar later on. Tickets can only be bought on site and no pre-booking is available.
There are two buildings to view: one that has all the ice rooms and another that has the ice room deluxe suites and an ice bar. For our add-on drink ticket, it comes with any drink of your choice. We got champagne and a bourbon cocktail, and all drinks come in glasses completely made out of ice (best to wear gloves when drinking).
We spent about two hours there and it definitely got very cold so make sure you bundle up. If you have never been to an Icehotel before, it’s interesting to see all the ice rooms where guests will be sleeping later in the evening. Some of the carvings/rooms are beautiful, while some of them are very odd.
Nutti Sámi Siida is an open-air museum where you can learn more about the native, Sami culture. We unfortunately didn’t have time to see this, but did partake in one of their outdoor activities: reindeer sled racing.
They offer free pick up, so we chose to be picked up at the Icehotel since we were checking it out earlier in the day, and could leave our car in the parking lot. Once we arrived at the tour office, we changed into winter jumpsuits. You can wear your own clothes, but I highly recommend using their jumpsuit because it’s very warm and insulated. They also have mittens and snow boots to borrow if needed.
We then took a 45 minute wooden sleigh ride (pulled by a snowmobile) through the forest to reach the reindeers. At the reindeer pen, we were given food to feed them. All the reindeer there were male so be careful as they can get a little aggressive and pushy, and may accidentally knock you with their antlers. After feeding them, we gathered three of the reindeers to start sled racing. Each person sits or kneels on a sled pulled by a reindeer, with three sleds on the track at once, racing each other. The reindeers can run very quickly so hold on tight! You’ll get a helmet and everyone takes a turn doing one lap.
Afterwards, we went inside a lavvu for lunch and had smoked reindeer meat, with flatbread and lingonberry jam. Lingonberry juice and coffee were also served. After lunch, we headed back to the tour office (10 minutes by the snowmobile-sleigh) and they took us back to our pick up location.
This tour was expensive (starting around $268 per person), but I definitely recommend it if you’re feeling adventurous because reindeer sled racing was super fun.
Arctic Lapland Tours is the company we booked (via Viator) for a snowmobile tour. We arrived at the operator’s store at 9am and changed into their jumpsuit and boots (it’s mandatory for everyone to wear the company’s outfit). Socks, mittens, and balaclavas were also provided. They then drove us to the snowmobile site where we signed waivers and got helmets, before getting a crash course on how to use the snowmobiles. Once ready, we all drove a test lap and then followed the snowmobile trail into the woods.
We spent a few hours on the trail because part of the tour group got lost and their snowmobile got stuck in the snow. After they were rescued, we rode to a cabin to have lunch, consisting of cheesy bread, salmon, carrot soup, and lingonberry juice. Then we headed back to the snowmobile site before getting dropped off back at the store.
The tour was fun, but most of our trails were in the woods so we couldn’t go that fast (compared to other tours that may lead you to an open, frozen lake where you can really gas it). It’s also possible that since people in our group got lost, it shortened our time to ride the snowmobile because we had to wait for them.
SkyArk Tours is the company we booked for ice fishing. They picked us up at 9:30am at Camp Ripan and we headed off to a frozen lake. There is a heated mini caravan-like capsule sled where we sat inside while being pulled by the snowmobile. It was definitely nice and warm, but it was very bumpy!
Once we got to the lake, our guide, Sven-Eric, showed us how to drill a hole to start ice fishing. It was extremely cold standing outside waiting for a fish, which we were unlucky to get any. We then went to the outskirts of the lake, on the shore, where he built a fire and cooked us salmon for lunch. We also had Swedish coconut balls and coffee, and then spent a little more time ice fishing, but still to no avail.
On our way back, Sven-Eric allowed us to ride the snowmobile, which was different since you’re pulling the sled and you can’t go as fast. Overall the tour was quite an experience, especially sitting inside the capsule. We did get stuck a few times and had to help push the sled a bit so this was certainly an “outdoorsy” adventure. I would recommend this given the experience, and we were also lucky to have this as a private tour. If there were more people, it would’ve felt crowded in the capsule and wouldn’t have been as fun.
Northern Lights are what the Swedish Laplands (where Kiruna is located) are known for. Because you’re way up North, there’s barely any daylight during the winter (most of the day is in the dark) which means Northern Lights are easier to spot. We were unlucky and had cloudy weather everyday in Kiruna so we decided to drive about an hour northwest towards Abisko.
Abisko usually has the best chance to see the aurora borealis because it’s one of the driest places in Sweden and is protected by the peaks of the surrounding mountains. This makes it the one place in the world within the Aurora oval that has the most clear skies, thus the highest chance to see the Northern lights.
We did see the aurora borealis around 9:30pm in Abisko but it was a bit faint. When we drove back to Kiruna, we saw the aurora borealis again around 10:30pm.
Based on this experience, I’d recommend heading out to chase the Northern Lights after 9pm. You don’t necessarily need to drive all the way to Abisko to see it; just driving halfway (~30 – 40 minutes) is enough to find a good spot. When you drive on the road heading towards Abisko, there are many pullout points (one every 5-10 minutes) where you can stop and check the sky (make sure you look north). There are no lights at all on the road so it’s perfect, but just be careful and mindful of other cars passing by or reindeer in the middle of the road (which we saw!) because it can be a bit dangerous.
Miscellaneous
It is really cold in Kiruna in the winter, so we highly recommend bringing hand and feet warmers, which were our MVPs on the entire trip, especially during our outdoor activities.
Globe Trotter 