The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Ready for some extreme glamping?
Michelle Jana Chan finds that clear air, space and total darkness are the real luxuries at a high-end ‘nature camp’ in the wilds of Arctic Sweden
It was only late morning but the shadows were already long, foretelling the end of the short day. The light fades quickly in winter in the northern Sapmi region of Sweden, when the sun rises but only lifts itself a few degrees above the horizon.
I had come here, north of Jokkmokk, above the Arctic Circle, to find the Sapmi Nature Camp on the banks of the Lule River, a pitch of six tents, each a teepee-like structure called a lavvu in Sami, decorated with reindeer hides and warmed by a wood-burning stove.
It might not be luxury in the traditional sense given there is no running water or electricity, but rustic camps such as this one promise a place free from the tangle of rules and regulations we are enduring in our search for simpler settings – and the price rises accordingly.
Some of the smartest hoteliers are going back to basics now: COMO and Aman offer a one-night tented experience in the Himalayas bookended by stays in their comfortable lodges in Bhutan. These nights out can cost the same as a night cosseted in the hotel. Some might think the prices don’t align; I’d argue guests are getting more for their money out in the fresh air.
Also in on the action, tour operator Black Tomato created a service, Blink, to pitch bespoke camps anywhere guests might desire with a price tag that reflects the costs of operating in remote areas. Just like at Sapmi Nature, what travellers pay for is the rare access, the logistics and in-built contingency, as well as the specialist guiding.
I pulled on some snowshoes, drawing the criss-cross straps tight over the bridge of my boots and buckling them behind the heel. Then I stomped down the deep snowy banks, ungainly, and out onto the frozen Lule River, which stretches from the Scandinavian mountain range on the border with Norway to the Gulf of Bothnia looking across the water to Finland.
Here, the ice was more than a foot thick and laden with powdery snow. Nobody was about, but there were the delicate tracks of a balletic fox, and then the rather more cumbersome shapes left by a hare.
After half an hour working up a sweat, given my poor technique, I stopped in the middle of the river. One cannot afford to stand still for very long in this climate, but it’s impossible not to be arrested by this place. Around me the wind had carved great scallops of snow, undulating waves, rising drifts. Not today, though. The air was completely still. With the sun on my face, it might have felt a little warm, even at minus 11 degrees.
I squinted into the lowering sun, now dipping below the tops of the birch trees, and noticed in my vision my eyelashes and their shadows. When did I last notice my own eyelashes, I wondered?
There is something about the nearmonochromatic surrounds of a snowscape, its easiness on the eye, which allows one to observe more critically. There is so little smell, so little sound, that everything becomes noticeable. I continued marching across the hard river, hearing only my fast shallow breaths and the crunch-squeak of my snowshoes.
Back at camp, I joined Lennart Pittja, the owner of Sapmi Nature, who was brewing a pot of hot coffee and filling jugs with the juice of lingonberries he had foraged.
“It can take just one day to get back on track,” I mused, referring to my solo snowshoe and how quickly I felt I’d come to my senses, in its literal meaning.
“One day is better than no days,” Lennart nodded. “But two days is better than one. And so on.”
Fortunately I had one more night. “What can I do tomorrow?” I asked eagerly.
Lennart paused. “I don’t want to offer lots of activities. I want my guests to ‘just be’.”
I felt wrong-footed because of course he was right. This place wasn’t about fast-paced quad-bike trips or helifishing. It wasn’t about maximising time, but slowing down time.
That evening, Lennart and I prepared a sauna on the banks of the river. First we smashed into the ice, initially with a shovel and then an oversized electric drill bit, to fill up four large buckets of water, before hauling them by sledge up to the cabin. There, we poured the icy water into a metal pan and lit the adjoining log-burning stove.
A couple of hours later, I ventured back through the snow, towel in hand, to find the sauna warm and dry. I splashed some water on the stones and steam rose up. After a 20-minute sweat, I ran out into the night air and threw myself naked into the deep powder. I was back in the heat again moments later, dizzy but euphoric. It was the best sauna I’d ever had, not just for the setting and the snowfall, but because I’d prepared it.
Meals here are also laboured, and more delicious for it. While Lennart prepared the food, he told me the story of each ingredient, explaining, for example, how he caught the Arctic char at a lake on the border with Norway where he learnt to fish with his father. During another meal – moose with palt, a hearty mix of potatoes and flour – he described how he had shot the male moose after sounding a call like a female in heat.
While we ate in the glow of candles and kerosene lanterns, Lennart spoke more about the indigenous Sami culture, which was his motivation to create the camp. He grew up in a local reindeer herding family and told me how he wants to “raise awareness about [his] people”. This is the real reason to come here: for Lennart’s company, for his knowledge as a Sami. He taught me about the deforestation going on in Sweden, even now; how the Sami practice of reindeer-herding was under threat; but also about a recent historic verdict in the Swedish Supreme Court, which had awarded hunting and fishing rights back to the Sami.
“It’s all about this table,” he said, gently tapping the wooden surface, “about what we say around it, what we share.” At the end of the night, he sang a joik for me, a traditional Sami chant; it was hauntingly, unforgettably beautiful.
Overnight, as the temperature fell to minus 15, I burrowed deeper into my sleeping bag, my nose peeping out, and I could almost smell the cold it was so sharp; I listened out for sounds of which there turned out to be none. In the morning, the zip to my tent had frozen; I had to use brute force to crack it open.
Some may feel daunted by the rawness of these experiences, without the comforts of hot water, flushing lavatories and WiFi, but it’s the off-grid nature of the place that is, in fact, the allure. The camp is located inside the Sjavnja Nature Reserve, focusing on the smallscale and the sustainable, without a neighbour in sight. It turns out it is this simplicity, the clarity of the air and the depth of the darkness that are the greatest luxuries of all.