Eventually though we did find enough space to pin out our big blue tarp. So, with a simple pinebranch platform lashed together and propped on stones to provide a level sleeping area, and a vital mosquito net in place to stop ourselves being vampired dry overnight, we could finally settle down and try to sleep. Now all we had to deal with was the heat.
Comfortable temperatures
If contemplation of Arctic summers conjures up images of chill frosty mornings and lingering banks of stubborn snow and ice, Nordic reality will come as quite a shock. True, in prolonged overcast, weather temperatures can certainly hover somewhere in what we might call the cool
range, and snow definitely loiters on the northern sides of mountains, but as soon as the clouds clear, and with the sun not setting at all for a couple of months, things can warm up fast. Even in August that big round fiery thing up there only dips below the horizon for a couple of hours or so each night. Temperatures can sit well above 20˚C for days at a time. And then we had inadvertently driven north into what one happy Finn suggested was the warmest summer he’d seen in 40 years. All extremely uplifting stuff, but stretched out under the white side of our tarp that evening, the warmth from a low sun seemingly doubled by a wobbly reflection off the river, we lay wide awake, our down bags rejected at our feet. Sleep came at about midnight as the sky finally turned a deep stove-enamel orange.
Late at night in northern Sweden
t
from which to choose a campsite, even two countries, the banks running along either side were steep, narrow and covered in bushes. Certainly no room for our tipi here.
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