Not long after my last post winter arrived in Västerbotten, the Swedish district we live in on the western side of the Gulf of Bothnia. This is the northern most arm of the Baltic sea, with Norrbotten further north on the Swedish side and with Österbotten on the Finnish side of the gulf. That end of the year time with shorter days and unstable weather is in general not showcasing this area from its best side. I did however manage to take some awesome photos (as seen above) in early December, a day with an amazing light reflecting in the partly frozen Ume river.
This has been Bentley’s first taste of snow & ice, with the weather shifting from freezing cold reaching nearly -20 (which is only half as cold as they had it here the previous winter) for soon to change to plus temperatures and rain. In other words we’ve had some pretty slippery conditions both for driving and walking. Pure ice like an ice skating rink which turns even more lethal with a layer of powder snow on top. We live near the river with some great areas for walking, which has been great in this also first taste of being a city dog. On recent walks we regularly encounter locals ice fishing (for perch and possibly the occasional trout) and further along some people practising ice bathing. Bentley has however been dismayed by all the ducks that Aidan and I have had to tell him to ignore. Easier said than done for a duck dog. This leads me to think of a peculiar behaviour by most dog owners here, that they keep offering their dogs treats/candy to try and distract them from all kinds, including just meeting a dog on their walk. One day Aidan walked Bentley, who was staring longingly at a bunch of ducks, a passing dog woman asked Aidan if he wanted some candy to distract him. I don’t think most people have a concept of the very strong hunting instinct in dogs bred for this sole purpose. One could literally put a roast dinner in front of Bentley but he would completely ignore it, if there are game birds close by.
Pictured above Bentley is admiring some of the local mallard population (we really have seen a whole lot of magnificent drake mallards) and also on a field where he’s got to stretch his legs a couple of times. However, I have been wary of the possibility of getting in contact with roe deer close to roads and an icy river. An interesting observation of Västerbotten now and when I lived here more than 30 years ago is the big drop in the moose population and the big increase in roe deer. Back then roe deer was fairly rare to see this far north. Just like the moose population here was so much bigger compared with in North Norway. Now we always encounter moose when we’re out and about in Norway, something that rarely happened when I grew up there. Sweden had their highest population of moose throughout the 1980s. A new more intense management of the population was introduced from 2012, citing damage to the Swedish forests and to reduce number of traffic accidents involving moose. While Sweden still has a large population it’s interesting comparing how 175 000 moose were shot in 1982/83, it was down to 80 000 animals in 2019/20 and the 2023/24 season only 50 000.
On December 20th Aidan and I drove up to North Norway, to have Christmas with my parents and my brother who came south from Hammerfest. We crossed into the Arctic Circle early afternoon and a while later we drove past Gällivare. I noticed the time of their sunrise that day was 10.58 and with sunset at 12.12 there wasn’t much chance to get sunburnt. The shortest day of the year was the following day, when the northern hemisphere was the furthest turned away from the sun. Slightly further north between Gällivare and Kiruna we moved into the polar night, where the sun didn’t get above the horizon at all. It’s the very opposite of the midnight sun in summer. From Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost city, best known for the mining of iron ore, we had another 135 km to the Norwegian border. From there it’s a half an hour drive down from the mountains to the coast and another hour or so to my parent’s place. From door to door the trip took us about 12 hours, compared with around 10 hours in summertime. Pictures above from the road through north Sweden and my brother Knut with Bentley in North Norway.
North Norway and Christmas is all about the food, with traditional Norwegian dishes. Our family has like 60% of the country had the pork dish ribbe as the main Xmas meal. It’s actually more like pork belly than ribs. However, during the Xmas holidays we now manage to get in some other meals also traditionally eaten at this time of the year. Pictured above left is poached halibut, a beautiful, big flaky fish that we sometimes also catch ourselves. Pictured above middle is also the dish pinnekjøtt, smoked and dry cured ribs of mutton, originally most popular in the south-western party of the country. Aidan and I also took the opportunity to bring some of our ptarmigan and black grouse from the hunting season with us back to Umeå. From this we had some outstanding meals, naturally making stock and gravy from the carcasses. Pictured above right is ptarmigan breasts, necks, gizzards and hearts ready to be cooked. Some of the birds were packed full of blueberries and that was the overwhelming scent as I was cleaning the birds, that had been frozen complete with feathers and innards (just like I’ve also done with quail in New Zealand). It was then natural to serve these birds with some blueberry jam, from berries Aidan had picked in the autumn. We really enjoyed these gourmet moments early in the new year.
In these past few months I’ve been working with intellectually disabled at a place in the forest 30 km north of Umeå. It’s been a very different type of work for me but it’s been interesting and I’ve enjoyed it. The picture below is from a drive to work with a couple of reindeer slowing down traffic.
At present I’m back in south Norway visiting my sister. It’s Friday night and we’ve just had tacos with a bit of a twist, with reindeer. It worked really well.
