TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

Had to be up early this morning, the train heading north left at 07.15 and so the hotel kindly put on an early breakfast for us.  The train was ending up in Gallivare but we weren’t going all way today our stop was Slagnas at 14.52. Again the rough guide had mentioned that there was a Sami Centre near Slagnas where you can stay the night, sleep in a Sami hut and get to know a little about the culture. The train stopped and dropped us off and then we caught the bus to the Sami Centre. Once there the daughter of the owner showed us to our hut, which was wooden but with an open fire in the middle. We had a coffee and she talked about the Sami people. There are about 70,000 of them spread across Sweden, Finland, Norway and Russia.  They have a parliament and their own flag. We were then shown how to lasso reindeer, ate reindeer for tea cooked on an open fire and were then left to our own devises.  We had the whole camp to ourselves! There was no relaxing however as we had to make a fire to heat the water for our shower which was basically a tub which heated up and washing up bowls to pour the water over us! Then there was the fire for the sauna which took about an hour to heat. There was the fire in our hut too which had to be kept in at all times to keep the hut cosy and to keep the mosquitoes out!  Finally there was the fire outside to boil the kettle!  I was in my element all those years in Guide camp paid off………..using silver birch bark and kindling before the big logs!  We had a sauna…all naked of course and then dashed down the pontoon and jumping into the lake, this was real back to nature stuff!  Our sleeping arrangements were very simple too, birch twigs as the mattress with reindeer skins on top and then our sleeping bags.  We settled down in our hut at about 10pm and it was still board daylight!  I had got my hip flask, with a drop of sherry in it thanks to Rona! so had a tipple before sleeping by the fire.  Steve couldn’t sleep and so decided to go fishing on the lake at 2am in daylight again, he caught a couple of fish, apparently they got away!

What a great experience……..!!!!