"Takk/tack/tak/takk/kiitos": My lifelong love affair with the Nordics
When home is a place far from home.
Sweden
It all started with Sweden. When I was young, maybe 16, I started chatting to people online. People my age, generally about bands I liked. I got talking with a lovely Swedish girl named Lisa, and over time it developed into more - a relationship. She came to visit me in the UK, and eventually I went to visit her. A silly teen, I ended things with Lisa for very weak reasons, but Sweden made an impression on me which lasts to this day.
It’s hard to say what it is about Sweden I like the most. I like Swedish culture, Swedish food and fashion and style. But more than anything, Sweden just has this feeling of comfort and safety I associate with the idea of “home”. It’s never been my home - a future post might discuss my one sincere plan to move there - but it wasn’t to be. I speak more Swedish than I do any other language (besides English), some of my favourite bands are from there (looking at you, Kent) and all in all, it feels like a place with a magnetic effect on me: all roads lead to Sweden.
Lisa was from Alingsås, just outside of Gothenburg, and we visited both when I went to see her. Later trips took in Stockholm and eventually Malmö, which usually also involve a trip North up the coast to Helsingborg. This is a beautiful little port town, quite a romantic spot where my wife and I left a padlock for several years (until the sculpture it was locked to was removed, boo!). A couple of hours by train from there is a stunning forest, Skäralid, which also left an impression on me.
I have a very good Swedish friend called Sophie who I’ve met in Sweden several times. One time she invited me to stay with her over Midsummer (Midsommar), in her lovely house in woods not too far from Växjö. We had an amazing time, drank snaps, ate sill, went to the maypole dance in the village and played kubb. I remember that trip fondly and I am so glad I got to experience that slice of Swedish culture with good friends around me.
Iceland
Iceland had always appealed to me. The prospect of the Northern lights, geysers and the many stunning waterfalls, plus the Viking history (Iceland was founded by Vikings, exploring from Denmark and Norway past Scotland and Ireland); it always felt like a place I’d love to visit. I first visited in 2011 when my son T was a few months old - I knew nothing about the country really, and did the usual tourist spots of the Golden Circle and the Blue Lagoon, as well as exploring Reykjavik fairly thoroughly.
Since then I’ve returned three more times, most recently in October 2022. With each trip, my knowledge of the country’s many attractions grows, and this was the first time we actually stayed outside of Reykjavik, near to Selfoss and closer to most of the things we wanted to see. Introducing my three kids to the wonders of Iceland, including some spectacular aurora shows 5 out of 7 nights, was a really special thing for me.
Denmark
One of the first things I did when my marriage ended was to take time to truly explore Copenhagen. I stayed at an Airbnb for the first time (it was a while back…) and the host was a friendly guy who had dinner with me, gave me a lift places a few times and generally took an interest in “hosting” in a way people don’t these days.
Copenhagen is a beautiful and varied city. I’ve seen most of its many major districts and feel I’ve rather “done” it as a city now, but it remains a great hub for exploring Southern Sweden or Eastern Denmark. From an interest afternoon in Cristiania (ahem), cool Nørrebro, somewhat risque Vesterbro and peaceful Østerbro, there’s a lot of different things to be seen. I love taking a canal trip which spits you out into the harbour, taking you around the back of the Little Mermaid statue - the tourists are much more interesting than the statue itself!
I’ve also spent time in Roskilde (absolutely loved wandering the banks of Roskildefjord), Lerje and up North on the Danish riviera around Hornbæk. I love that north coast and there’s some incredible beaches, with stunning dunes there. It’s often been extremely warm and clement too, not something one necessarily associates with the North of a Nordic country! All told, Denmark remains probably my least favourite of the Nordics as it feels the most European; not too far from parts of the Netherlands or Germany. Not a bad thing, but not that unique thing I love, which is just a bridge away in Sweden.
Norway
I first experienced Norway as one long trip, from Bergen in the (relative) Southwest, all the way up to Tromsø. My wife and I did this trip in a week, by sleeper train and sea, and it remains one of the most amazing trips I’ve ever taken. From the white nights in the south, long evenings where the sun was in the sky until 11pm, and it didn’t get truly dark, to the midnight sun in the North, Norway is a land of amazing contrasts.
Bergen itself is a stunning town, with a couple of assisted trips up mountains (funicular and cable car). Daffodils were blooming when we were there. Oslo itself didn’t do much for me, but we took some time to visit the Fram museum and I spent the rest of the trip reading “Farthest North” by its captain, Fridtjof Nansen, a truly inspiration figure. I remember the train rumbling through the evocatively yet appropriately named Jotunheimen national park, before getting off at Bodø to board the Hurtigruten ship through the Lofoten islands and beyond the Arctic Circle. Our cabin was the cheapest they offered, with no windows, and we wouldn’t have changed it! And finally, arriving in Tromsø where we spent a few days enjoying the midnight sun each night, dining extremely well and seeing the local sights.
Svalbard
Later that same year we took another trip to Norway, but this time to see the opposite of the midnight sun: 24 hour darkness. It was really something to see both the midnight sun and 24 hour darkness in the same year, and again I hold the trip to Svalbard as one of the greatest I’ve ever taken.
We first flew up to Tromsø and were treated to a quite stunning aurora - we watched from the town’s graveyard, not at all spooky and a perfect spot away from light pollution up on a hill. The next morning we flew north to Longyearbyen, the major town on Svalbard. Coming in, we could see the incredibly “arctic” landscape of ice caps and glaciers, mountains and frozen lakes. It was a dream come true to be there at all.
Svalbard in winter qualifies as “24 hour darkness” for sure, but it wasn’t proper pitch black darkness for most of the daytime and we were able to explore. We had heard before visiting, that in order to leave the town you need either a gun (and licence), or an armed guard, as the island’s population of polar bears was roughly equivalent to its population of humans! We heard some horror stories we were told had been hushed up so as not to dissuade tourists. The phrase I remember best from these was “what was left of those two wouldn’t have filled a carrier bag”. We were glad our guide had a very large gun!
We saw what there was to see in Longyearbyen and just beyond it - no money for a longer trip and not the time of year for expeditions to Pyramiden or the other spots on the island. But we did get to visit the international seed vault, took a trip to see some of the native stumpy Svalbard reindeer, and checked out some mines and an aurora monitoring station. One of the things which made a big impression was the enormous dog kennels on the edge of town - much of the island’s transport is conducted on dog sleds, and these loud, smelly encampments were kept some distance from the residents and tourists! Our accommodation was a converted miners barrack at the top of the Longyearbyen valley, just below the glacier.
Finland
Another wonderful place to visit is Finland, a land of lakes and forests. I’ve visited a couple of times, once only to Helsinki and another time for longer, taking in the South Central area based from just outside of Forssa. Finland is a stunning country for driving holidays and the open road was the main feature of our stay, but a close second was the lovely log cabin we found to stay in, and its secluded nearby swimming pond which we had exclusive use of. Of course, we were also provided with a sauna, and the long-drop outside toilets were a torchlit walk away; on that same walk, each morning, we found what we think can only have been moose fur high on the bark and in the low branches of the trees.
Finland provided a multitude of national parks. There were so many in reach of our cabin that we didn’t even try to visit them all, but our favourite was Liesjarvi, a stunning and quiet spot with a few handy firepits and a very swimmable lake. Skinny dipping in that lake was definitely one of the highlights of my adventures; the fact I was there when final confirmation of my divorce came through, after many tough years, made it extra special and it feels like an almost baptismal place of rebirth for me.
As a lifelong Moomin fan I had to make a trip to the Moominmuseet in Tampere, and it did not disappoint, with many original drawings, sketches and models made by Tove Jansson herself. We would love to take my now Moomin-mad daughter A to Moominworld, a proper theme park in Finland, and that may be something we look to do in the coming years.
Finland is hard to sum up in words. It is vast and wild, but very friendly and easy to live in. The people are kind and helpful, and the roads are fantastic. All told we loved our time there and could even imagine living there, in that little cabin, although I’m sure in the winter it might be a lot more hard work!
Greenland and the Faroes
I’m not done with the Nordics by any stretch, and would happily visit any of the countries above again at the drop of a hat. But there remain a couple of glaring omissions from my list: The Faroe islands, and Greenland. Both of these are more niche and potentially less budget travel friendly than the others, but before I die I hope to spend a decent amount of time visiting both.
What calls me to these places? About 10 years ago I did one of those ancestral DNA profiles. It showed I was a very high percentage Nordic. Around the time my DNA results came back, a second cousin of my mum shared his geneological research with us. Turns out, on my mother’s side, we are Normans. Normans being Vikings who settled in Northern France (a ploy by the French to stop constant Viking raids in that area). Given the ancestors in questions were nobility, we could follow records back to kings of Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Those same kings traced their own ancestry to an even more impressive place - the Norse god of the sea, Njörðr.
Turns out, this place I’ve always felt at home? It’s where my ancestors were from. And I carry with me the knowledge that though I was born in England and will probably live out all my days here, part of me is of the North.
I once maintained a small blog summarising my thoughts on the Nordic countries along with tips for visiting them. It’s aging now, but has an extensive gallery - check it out at https://nordic.home.blog/