Sweden, Finland, The Big Chill
So how do you train for trail running in the winter and also have some fun? François d’Haene, the world ultra-trail champion tried out Nordic Touring in Sweden and Finland. The sheer immensity of this chilly playground offers endless escapism, where your neighbour is more likely to be a reindeer than a person.
Text and photos : Franck Oddoux
This really should have set the alarm bells ringing… Why did our rental car have an electric radiator in the back, as well as the usual car heating system? Kiruna is a mining town, perched right at the top end of Sweden, where it is startlingly freezing cold. This is a polar antechamber where they extract iron mineral the hard way. It isn’t exactly Doudinka in Siberia, the ghost town petrified by the cold winds, ice and long nights, but Kiruna does have a Siberian air, the roads are “cryogenically frozen”, similar to a couple of people in the street, they don’t drag their feet moving from place to place event though they are weighed down by the immensity of their armour of clothes against the cold. It looks like everything is closed – in the whole town one Asian greasy spoon has a vaguely welcoming light. Here they speak Russian, drink Chinese beers, with sinister faces and sticky tables, Sharon Stone could walk in any moment. The mining company had exploited just underneath the actual town (his GPS wasn’t working underground?) so here the buildings are at risk of collapsing. A study is underway to move the entire town….
Welcome to Kiruna.
Operation Nordic Touring
François d’Haene has just finished his most extraordinary season yet, 2014, he is now the UTWT world champion. How do you prepare for the next season after such a magnificent year? How do you keep the stimulation flowing for training between seasons? All too often too many miles kill the desire for more. Even athletes need some form of escapism, pleasure and fun. Splits in the stadium or on the road aren’t really his style… So he had a bright idea! To go to Sweden to check out a little Nordic ski touring. It’s a way of pumping the cardio but without putting excessive pressure on your joints and exploring a stunning environment of Lapland’s forests to recharge the batteries and stay in shape.
Direction: west of Kiruna to Norra Byavägen and then Tundrea, a Finnish village just over the northern Swedish border. Bizarrely enough it is rather nestled in the mountains almost at the border crossing of three countries: Norway, Sweden and Finland. The main road, or should I say the ice rink, takes us from Kiruna to Norra Byavägen in the middle of the night. Even the studded tyres don’t make you feel Zen in these conditions.
The Car hire company’s warning: “don’t drive too fast, wild game is abundant and they don’t ask permission to cross the road”. The boot isn’t big enough to stuff a deer into it. But we have realised why there’s an extra radiator in this tin can of a car. It’s so cold outside that the windows are freezing up inside! This is definitely not the moment to have a flat tyre. It isn’t surprising that Sweden and Finland have some of the greatest car drivers in the world the way the car is skidding left and right!
Skiing is a way of life
Norra Byavägen is a typical little village with houses that dare to be noticed: painted bright yellow and red, no doubt to add a bit of warmth to the surroundings. Another iron mine was the source of their prosperity but global prices slumped and they went and dug elsewhere. There’s almost 200 kilometres of cross-country skiing tracks in the heart of these forests. We saw one lonely technician grooming the tracks on his snow scooter and we didn’t see anyone else, not one skier. Sweden is paradise for this type of activity – the Royal Way Kungsleden 425 km north to south, littered with refuges, simply magnificent for discovering the most beautiful landscapes in the country. Travelling by ski is part of Swedish daily life, going to school, to work and for pleasure as much as for competition. Norra Byavägen is no exception to the rule, skiing is in everybody’s DNA.
Walrus and a meteorite
The ideal is to have skis that are wide enough not to sink into the fresh snow, The Skin(2) is doted with a small skin underneath the ski, it allows you to ski without worrying about wax or maintenance. It isn’t designed to go fast, but just for training purposes, and here training takes on a whole new meaning with this frozen labyrinth wonderland. The groomed tracks lose themselves in twists, turns, loops and frozen lake crossings, to this you can add the “off tracks”, that you can explore practically to infinity…and beyond.
Our guide is Johan, who runs the lodge (3) and a Swedish skier keeps pace with François: half-man half-reindeer…
One morning after my shower Jörgen looked at me horrified, “you shouldn’t shower it removes your skins natural sebum which helps to protect you from the cold…” Here in Lapland man adapts to nature, being autonomous and to survive the extreme weather conditions you need to have good reflexes. At the age of 11 each child receives their first knife, to be prepared to cut a branch, make a shelter… Orientation is also a fundamental necessity – as here one area can very quickly resemble another.
Our host waited until the end of our stay to open a chest where he preciously guards the fruits of his labour: he makes knives. But not just any knives, these are exquisite works of art, finely chizzled with exceptional blades and the handles are made from walrus teeth. Teeth that he himself went to search for in the polar circle on the beach. Rich Russian tourists buy certain ones for several tens of thousands of euros. One blade is exceptionally heavy, the metal came from a meteorite… Incredulous we ask him about it and he points to the corner of the room, at a rock the size of a basketball: “try and lift it…!” …Impossible! He had the metal removed by a digitally controlled machine to be able to extract the necessary material. An incredible country where the men see elves in the forests and where the knives’ metal comes from the furthest reaches of the universe…
Head in the freezer
Jörgen comes to Finland with us. 4 hours in the car and the mercury has plunged even further. We thought we were cold before, but that was nothing compared to Tundrea. The forests have left space to the frozen lakes and the wind increases in strength. The cross-country skiing tracks are sublime and the views white and blue. From time to time in the blizzard wind we lose the little red wooden crosses that mark the tracks from sight. Our Finnish guide has his own rustic humour, another wild man integrated into nature’s land; he suggests we eat lunch in full head-on-wind at the top of a pass… They realise at this point that the French are good at complaining and can quite easily go on strike…! So with our encouragement we move to a more sheltered spot. The light is incredible, pure crystal.
After skiing in this magnificent land we warm ourselves up in a bar run by a Lithuanian…how did she find herself so far from home? Despite speaking perfect English, she keeps her secret safe… None the wiser we take to the road back to Kiruna, it is an enchanting adventure in itself: the auroras borealis surrounds us with its green light in a surrealist image, what a magical way to leave this natural world behind us.
(1) François and Carline exploit the vineyards Domaine du Germain that produce Beaujolais, Beaujolais Village, Moulin à Vent and Chénas, from black gamay grapes
(2) The Skin range by Salomon is designed for classic cross-country skiing: the skis have a skin under the waist of the ski. Waxing is not necessary. Pure, silent gliding.
(3) Lapland Incentive – Wärdshuset, Norra Byavägen 132, 980 63 Kangos, Suède. [email protected].
Transamericana avec Rickey Gates
