From Obbola to Tromsø – home home and work home Mar 25 2025

Thursday, 20 March – Obbola

Annika and I are in Obbola, my “home home”. In the morning we get visitors. Three deer stand in our garden – always alert. Are they happy, that much of the snow is gone?

In my lunch break I am kayaking round the island Bredskär. That’s just 3 km. There is still some ice round the rocks at the shore, but much snow and ice has melted away the last weeks. What a warm winter.

Friday, 21 March

Annika and I take the car to Tromsø. We will make a stopover in Jokkmokk, because the total distance is almost 1000 km. Hejdå home home!

In warm and sunny weather we head northwards to Piteå and then northwest to Jokkmokk. Now we are north of the Polar Circle.

In Jokkmokk we meet a good friend and take a walk round the lake Talvatissjön. Around the sun a halo appears .

Saturday, 22 March

After a good sleep in the hostel Åsgård Annika and I continue our car trip. Gällivare, Kiruna, Abisko. Torneträsk – the 6th largest lake in Sweden – is still completely frozen. Good for recreation such as skiing.

Parts of the road were closed some days ago. You can still see some remains of the snow storm.

Some weeks ago it would have been impossible to drive from Jokkmokk to Tromsø in daylight. Anyhow two days ago astronomical spring has started and the days are as long as everywhere. After hours of driving the sun is low but visible. It illuminates the beautiful clouds. And then we arrive at our apartment in Tromsø, my “work home”.

Sunday, 23 March

On Sunday the weather gets nasty. Max temperature: +9 °C and wind gusts up to 23.5 m/s. Annika and I take a promenade anyhow. With spiked shoes because some of the ways are just bare, wet ice and the friction is next to zero. We arrive at home before the rain. Good luck.

Monday, 24 March

On my way to work I spot the first spring flowers in front of the Tromsø Cathedral. I could believe in spring …

Tuesday, 25 March

… but do know the forecast and it is correct: Snow, snow, snow on the next day. So it looks like in the morning outside of the apartment …

… and so in the afternoon, when I walked home.

Me and the old Anorak I’ve bought 2nd hand

So we did not solely travelled between countries but also between seasons. Anyhow I hope for some more winter days (or weeks), before my seasonal clock will jump to spring mode. Perhaps in mid-May?

The moon has a halo Mar 11 2025

Back in Obbola – opening the kayak season Mar 9 2025

Friday

Two days ago Annika and I returned from our Finnmark and Finland journey. Just north of Umeå there was a low layer of strange clouds. Any of you who knows what kind of clouds this is?

Saturday

We are back home in Obbola in Sweden. The sky is clear and blue. In wintertime this often means that it can be pretty cold outside. Instead we had up to +8 or +9 °C. What a strange winter.

The wind is strong. The waves have already crushed the ice floes. In the afternoon the floating ice has been blown away into the open sea.

There is still some snow around but parts of the ground is free of snow. That‘s early for the season. And so is the arrival of the first whooper swans.

Sunday

The wind has calmed down and so have the waves. Time to fetch the kayak from the garage and open the kayak season. While there was not much of ice left at the shores of Obbola and the island Bredskär there was another highlight today: A 360°C halo round the sun.

Next week?

It looks like we expect colder temperatures, sun and calm weather. I hope, I have more opportunities to do some kayaking.

Polar stratospheric clouds in Råneå Mar 6 2025

This article is part of the series “2025-02: Finnmark”.

While Annika and I were visiting Teknikens Hus, a museum in Luleå with friends and their kids, it was clearing up more and more. At 16:00 the museum closed and Annika spotted a Polar stratospheric cloud in the west.

When we arrived at our friend’s house in Råneå, the colours of the clouds had intensified and I went out to take some photos. I was standing on the snow covered field and it was getting darker. Together with the moon the planets Mars, Jupiter, and Venus were visible in the blue sky. After a while the clouds got paler, but even now, at 18:22 there are still visible. They just lost all their colours.

Strange clouds Feb 2 2025

When I woke up today at 7 o’clock half the sky was red. It was still dark enough for stars being visible and I considered whether this could be some strange sort of polar light.

When I walked to the ski jump it has become less dark and it was clear, that the colours come from the light of the sun rise (09:17 today). Anyhow there must have been some strange clouds up in the sky reflecting the light of a sun still being 8° below the horizon. Even the snowy mountains were crimson red.

When I took a hike with a friend on the frozen snow near Tønsvik my eyes caught another special cloud phenomenon. These pale clouds were colourful due to diffraction. The effect was weak and delicate and so the photo looks a bit boring. No reason to now show it anyhow ;-)

It is 8 o’clock. The sky is clear and I can see Mars, Jupiter, Moon and Venus in the starry sky. In the north there is a very faint polar light.Will it develop? I’ll check until I’ll go to sleep.

The sun is back in Tromsø Jan 22 2025

Today I saw the sun for the first time this year. Polar night in Tromsø has already ended one week ago but it always takes some days until it rises over the mountains. Yesterday it was cloudy but today was the day. Welcome back, sun.

This is a shot by mobile phone. I may have taken better photos with my small Sony camera but I forgot it in the office.

Autumnal equinox 2024 Sep 22 2024

It is autumnal equinox, the beginning of autumn today. Despite of the unstable weather a friend of mine and I took a tour to Oldervik and took some photos. Yes, we got wet and the friend’s dog was not amused. The good thing about unstable weather: You have a good chance of interesting light situations and rainbows.

Wind and weather, water and ice Aug 21 2024

This article is part of the series “2024-08: Fram Strait cruise KPH”.

Wednesday, 21 August 10:36. It’s Annika’s and my fourth wedding anniversary, but I’m far away from her. I’m on the icebreaker Kronprins Haakon in the Fram Strait at 78° 50′ N, 12° 16′ W, that’s between Greenland and Svalbard. Air temperature is +0.2 °C, water temperature -0.1 °C. It is day 9 of the scientific cruise FS2024 of the Norwegian Polar Institute. Today I have found some time to write a blog article and also to publish it thanks to the fast satellite internet on board.

This article is about the journey, about the elements, not about research. I’ll come to this later in other articles.

13 August

Today the 2024 expedition to the Fram Strait begins. Short name: FS2024. 19 participants and 20 crew members are on board. Round 18:00 we leave the port, sail along the Adventfjorden and turn into the 107 km long Isfjorden. When we reach the open sea the sea gets rough and our ship starts to pitch and roll in the waves and not all people feel well. I have a cabin in the bow of deck 3 and the larger waves splash sea water against the port hole.

Sailing along Svalbard, soon we will leave it behind

14 August

In the night the wind has calmed down. We are heading west and it is quite foggy. This year there is much less sea ice in the Fram Strait then usual at this time. Less ice coverage means increased air humidity and that results in fog.

15 August

It continues to be foggy, no need to take any photos of the sea. But in the afternoon the sun manages to fight its way through the fog. This results in two hours with blue sky and also in a phenomenon I never experienced before. A fog bow. As with usual rainbows the sun is in the back so it is not a halo. The water droplets of the fog are so small, that the colours are very weak and so the fog bow looks almost white.

16 August

Research as usual: Two mooring recoveries and several CTD casts, MSS casts, optical casts. The weather: also as usual. It is foggy again and it will stay like this the whole day.

It is not clear whether we will have any ice station on this cruise. The ice stations planned for yesterday and today have already been canceled due to the lack of sea ice and tomorrow it doesn’t look better. At lunch time at least the first chunks of ice have appeared. That’s a nice change in the uniformness of the foggy weather.

17 August

For days we have been checking the wind speed on windy that forecasted winds up to 40 knots for today. That’s 20 m/s. And the gale has already reached us. The waves have started to get larger with spray on the top. They splash against the few ice floes drifting around us.

In the afternoon all research has been cancelled because of the increasing wind and growing waves. After dinner I go down to deck 3 and into my room. We have average wind speeds of 22-23 m/s now. The ship pitches a lot and in combination with the high waves (I think, 3–4 metres) the port hole of my cabin is occasionally under water. These are some screenshots of a short movie I made with my mobile:

Now the ice floes are not gently drifting anymore but are at the mercy of the waves. Is the storm our friend and blows that one nice looking ice floe in the north towards us? Or will the swell break the ice into smithereens?

18 August

Half past seven – breakfast time. Wind has calmed down to 15 m/s. We are at 78°50′ N und 9°30′ W. I work a lot this day on my computer, hardly looking out of the window. We want to reach 14° W tonight. That’s not so so far away as it sounds, since one degree west means a distance of just 21.5 km at these latitudes.

At 18:30 all people involved in sea ice work meet up. That’s also the people doing “bridge watch” looking for polar bears from the bridge at deck 8. We get a safety briefing for being on the ice and then we see a presentation created by ice expert Henrik that shows the ice situation. There are two possibilities for an ice station for the next day.

Planning for the ice station (slide by Henrik Fisser, UiT)

It’s hardly believable – we are still in open water with less than 1% ice. But we have a fresh satellite image and people who know ice so I’m optimistic. If only the ice is stable enough.

At least there are some flat ice bergs around.

19 August

At 4 o’clock in the night I wake up. I know this noise, the vibrations, these movements. Kronprins Haakon breaks though the ice! I look through the porthole – we are in the ice! Despite the early hour I get up to take photos on the helicopter deck. It looks so different from the previous days.

Shortly after nine o’clock I take my mobile phone to make this photo:

And this means – after a year and two month I finally stand on the arctic sea ice again. I missed it, I just love this environment! Today’s mission: Flying a drone to produce images for a so-called orthophoto. But that is another story to be told a bit later.

Ski tour in Sweden – side trip to Nallo Mar 23 2024

This article is part of the series “2024-02: Ski tour Sweden”.

Day 10 – 7 March – Vistas—Nallo

After our break day in Vistas we have planned to go for a side trip to Nallo, a small STF cabin embedded in high mountains just nine or ten kilometres away. We will stay there overnight. The weather forecast looks great for today (sunny and calm) and ok for tomorrow (overcast but also calm). In the morning it was -13 °C but temperatures are rising quickly.

After breakfast we pack our things, but leave some items behind. We’ll be back tomorrow. Our friend Dirk who is stugvärd here accompanies us a bit then we start our ski tour. Then we continue alone up the valley Stuor Reaiddávággi.

We arrive at lunch time and make something warm to eat. This time no packet soup as usual, but trekking food (mostly powder). Quite ok, if you ask me. I manage to take a photo of the cabin in the sun, that shines here for less than an hour this season because of the high mountains in the south.

The cabin is an Abrahamssonsstuga (or Fjällstuga 65). This type of cabin has 21 places and was built a lot in the mountains between 1965 and 1973. It can happen that you hike the whole day to arrive at a cabin that looks exactly alike the one you left in the morning. However, I like them if there are not too crowded and this night we will be only six people (plus the stugvärd) sleeping there.

At dinner we eat trekking food again, this time another brand. That pulp was the most disgusting stuff I have eaten for ages and neither of us manages to finish the meal. Good, that we have chocolate left to cover the bad taste. After dinner another polar light is building up. First just a thin stripe like a spotlight, then it broadens. At the same time the first clouds have started gathering but are held back by the mountains.

Day 11 – 8 March – Nallo—Vistas

Oh, the weather forecast was correct. It is cloudy today. However we have an easy job today: Just skiing back the 9 (or is it 10?) km and loose 220 metres of altitude. Breakfast, packing, doing our cabin duties and off we go.

While Nallo was above the tree line Vistas isn’t. First there are single birth trees than birch forests. Back with the trees comes the animal life, mostly the ptarmigans that sometimes sit on a branch of a birch looking like big, fluffy snowballs. Not the best camouflage … . What we however do not see are the four moose. We will see them later from the cabin using a binocular.

And then we are at Vistas and the Sauna is almost ready.

After sauna Annika is preparing the farewell dinner. Dirk already had watered the dried potatoes, feta cheese and vegetable in the morning, now she is making frittata with porcini mushrooms. Delicious! Dirk contributes the dessert and we have a “gemütlich” evening together. It’s Annika’s and my last day in the mountains. Today we will reach civilisation again.

Ski tour in Sweden – Tjäktja—Alesjaure—Vistas Mar 21 2024

This article is part of the series “2024-02: Ski tour Sweden”.

Day 7 – 4 March – Tjäktja—Alesjaure

I may repeat myself but again we have sunny weather and blue sky at -6 °C. The only difference, it is windy today. It started last night when we were out to watch the Northern Lights and now the wind is blowing snow over the mountains and through the valley. While we are starting our tour we are having an impressive parhelion and a piece of halo right of the sun. I’m pretty sure that it isn’t created by stratospheric clouds but by the blowing snow.

Tjäktja in front of the mountain Lulip Muorahisčohkka

We descend into the valley Alisvággi and leave the blowing wind behind us. Now sun feels warm but on the ice of the river system Aliseatnu the cold air still wins.

It takes some time until we can spot some of the cabins of Alesjaure. I can see them behind the rocky hill. No, they are on the rocky hill. I remember having tried to climb this turtle shell-like hill with skis and pulka years ago. I have learned my lesson, we walk up. And then we are welcomed by the warden with a hot and very sweet juice. We chat for a while (we have met once years before) and then Annika and I sit on the reindeer skin lying on the bench by the table and take an outdoor picnic. We may choose a room because we are first. We enjoy the weather, inside and outside. Later, after dinner we will head for the sauna.

I thought it would be extremely crowded here but we arrived on the right day. Yesterday: 40 guests. Tomorrow: 50 pre-booked guests. Today: 11 :-)

Day 8 – 5 March – Alesjaure—Vistas

Today is a special day. We do not take a break day, we continue to Vistas where our friend Dirk is currently warden. With 18 kilometres it is the longest distance on our ski tour this year and I was a bit afraid that it could get tough. Is there a track? How is the snow? Therefore I have urged Annika into raising up ridiculously early. We have the large kitchen for us while ptarmigans are hopping and clucking outside of the windows.

The sun starts to illuminate the highest mountain peaks, soon we will have sun as well. 7:05 (sic!) we start our tour.

… and get a little lost. We navigate by eye and sync the stones marked in red with the summer trail on our map. Anyhow it doesn’t fit. The GPS helps and now we know where we are. While finding a good route to get more north were we assume the correct route to be we realise that the summer markers are all over the place. Not helpful! Our assumption was correct, there is the unmarked winter trail. It is obvious, because now we see snow mobile tracks, ski tracks, pulka tracks, boot tracks, snowshoe tracks. I guess we won’t have any navigation challenges anymore today.

We cross the first lake Bajip Čazajávri and the second lake Vuolip Čazajávri, then we stand at the “abyss”. The steepest part of this declining slope falls 50 metres on 200 metres and we both decide to unmount the skis. Beside of a patch of soft snow the snow is good to walk on.

Now we are in the beginning of the valley Visttasvággi which will gently descend for the rest of today’s tour. And since it descend we leave the barren kalfjäll and meet the first birch trees, the first ones since a week.

Leaving the kalfjäll – one of the first birch trees

The next hours we will ski in the sun. The hot sun. First I take off my jacket, then cap and gloves, then I roll up my sleeves. Finally I put on the shirt’s hood again, not for cold but for sun protection. Some photos from the tour:

Moose droppings are not the only animal tracks we see. There are the typical deep moose tracks, the smaller reindeer tracks, countless ptarmigan tracks (both feet and feathers) and a special track – like a fox on snow shoes. This was the description of the Sami on Sälka when he described wolverine tracks. The wolverine track follows the trail for a long time and watching it is pretty exciting.

The wolverine tracks are special, since these animals are rare. Only round about a thousand wolverines live in Scandinavia. But I love the ptarmigan prints as well. They often seem to tell stories.

My titles: 1. Zen garden / 2. Hieroglyphs / 3. Salsa party

After some hours of sun we finally come into the shadow. Almost a relief. Now it is not far anymore to the Vistas cabin, which is not part of the famous Kungsleden trail since it lies in a side valley. Skiing there was much easier then I expected and we had a faster pace then on the preceding shorter distances.

Dirk has seen us already and welcomes us outside with two cups of hot juice. Later we get an incredible five star afternoon snack. It consists of two surprises. First surprise: We found cookies in the leftover food in the kitchen cupboard! Two sorts, one of them with chocolate. That has never ever happened to me before and I hardly can imagine why people should leave cookies behind. I won’t! Anyhow I’m grateful. Second surprise: Dirk does not only invites us to coffee but also to Christmas stollen, a traditional German Christmas cake. It is never too late to eat stollen. Thanks, Dirk, for sharing it with us!

After dinner – Dirk invited us again – I just walk around to take photos. A faint polar light can be seen but it is nothing compared with the last days, especially the night in Tjäktja.

Day 9 – 6 March – Vistas

Today is the fourth and last break day we take on this tour. Are we lazy? Yes and no. Annika is sawing logs, I am chopping the wood (not my best day though). I fetch water from the river by lowering a bucket from the bridge into a patch of open water. The ice on the river is not save. But we also sit outside reading and I am using the short period where the sun shines on the cabins (yes, another fine day) to take some photos.

Tomorrow we will ski to Nallo and stay there over night, then we will come back to Vistas.

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