Our morning walk was not the most comfortable; we had to cover up as
much skin as possible from the mosquitoes and at the same time the sun
was breaking through the clouds making things very very muggy!! But
we found some cross-country ski trails in the forest which made some
very nice summer walking paths. Marea seems to be getting keener and
keener at giving cross-country skiing a try somewhere in this world.
I (Daniel) tried to imagine skiing up these hills and thought maybe
via chairlift could be more fun??
We then went back into Jokkmokk where we spent a good portion of the
day working our way through Ájtte - the Swedish Mountain and Sámi
Museum. This gave us a little more insight in the Sami people's way
of life and the area in the north. One of the coolest things was a
display of various Nordic animal scats (poo). Now we can be real
professional trackers out in the forest!!
By the mid afternoon we had written off the midnight sun for another
day, and headed for the Muddus National Park hoping to see some more
of those animals responsible for the poos. We parked up and as it was
crappy weather, decided to catch up on a few chores like sorting
through our hundreds of photographs.
Then 20:30 rolled around and our previous yucky rainy day turned blue
sky and brilliant; not a cloud in the sky. We looked at each other and
it was on the road again headed for Gällivare and Mount Dundret with
an anxious eye out for any clouds on the horizon. We got to our
destination at 22:30 where I (Marea) was thrilled to find we could
drive almost to to top of the 800m mountain. We set up 'camp' and the
tripod with Daniel taking photos of the sun every 10 minutes. The most
amazing observation was that the sun did not sink toward the horizon
and then rise again, but sunk, then tracked parallel to the horizon
for about 2 hours before rising again.
At 00:30 I ordered waffles with cloudberry jam to takeaway (from the
cafe which is conveniently open from 21:00-01:00) and we enjoyed these
with a shared tipple. Daniel did have a bottle of local arctic berry
flavoured cider to enjoy when midnight came around, but he let the
kiwi boys down when he a) didn't have a bottle opener on his keyring
and b) couldn't open it using a rock!
Obviously it is the 'midnight sun' which is the big tourist (by the
bus load) attraction and by 02:00 we were the last vehicle in the
carpark when we too retired to bed, but with a view of the 'midnight
sun' out our windows.
When I was growing up we always had a couple of framed old black and
white photos of the midnight sun on the wall and for me this is truly
a highlight of our trip; seeing the wonderous phenomenon that is the
midnight sun and on such a beautiful cloudless 'day' too.
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