This Arctic Retreat Offers Aurora Borealis Viewing and Much More
There’s ice fishing, snow machine riding, dogsledding and … ice sculpture competitions?
Three cabins, each with a back wall of windows, are perfectly poised to observe the aurora borealis.
Photographer: Graeme Richardson
I was butchering a block of ice the size of a tombstone, trying to etch out a jukebox with a sharp chisel, when there was an enthusiastic shout beside me. I tried to remain focused on my task—determined that my husband and I would beat my parents at ice sculpting; their own slab was starting to resemble its assigned goal, a bar stool.
We were standing in the middle of the frozen Rane River, in Sweden’s northern reaches, carving out this ice bar as the first activity on an action-packed birthday trip. This is just one of the many seemingly harebrained—but physical and fun—tasks you’ll find yourself engrossed in during a typical stay at the Arctic Retreat. But our guide, Staffan Wallner, was urging us to look up. I diverted my gaze to meet his. No, he said. Up up.