Cabin fervour

A lodge in Lapland has lots to offer, from ‘mushing’ huskies to ice-breaking trips

I’M SIPPING HOT CHOCOLATE at the kitchen table with Keijo Nikumaa, a softly-spoken bear of a man who runs dog-sledding trips with his partner Marie from their cosy, firelit home in Swedish Lapland. Also at the table is my husband Christy and our six-year-old daughter Eva, who is cradling a tiny black Alaskan husky puppy from whom she hopes never to part. We’ve just completed an hour-long sleigh ride pulled by eight dogs through a Narnia-like forest in a snow storm.

Thrillingly, all three of us – even Eva – have had a turn ‘mushing’, which involves donning a head-torch, standing on the back of the wooden sleigh, leaning into bends and comedy ducking to avoid low-hanging branches. Keijo has led the way on his snowmobile, keeping just far enough ahead that we’ve only seen or heard him when he has paused to talk us through a tricky bend ahead. It’s just one of the extraordinary guideled experiences on offer when staying at nearby Brändön Lodge, where we’ve come for a four-night winter break.

Just 100km below the Arctic Circle, the waterfront lodge sits on the small island of Brändön (bränd meaning fire, ön – pronounced ‘oon’ – island), one of more than 1,000 within the remote Luleå archipelago in the north part of the Bay of Bothnia. All become icebound between December and April, when the sea freezes so solidly that they make ice roads across it to link the four main inhabited islands. Making it even more atmospheric, in late December, when we go, it rarely gets brighter than twilight and snows almost all day, every day.

Local Göran Widén has been running the lodge for 19 years. A small-scale business, it offers a friendly, safe base from which to experience the Arctic lifestyle. Perfect for families, there are 15 toasty-warm cabins, each with its own living room and two bedrooms. In a large communal cabin, where people shed outdoor layers and pad around in thermal socks, there’s a Scandi-chic sit- ting room with a roaring fire and board games, a bar and a candlelit restaurant, which serves three meals a day, packed with local ingredients. There’s always a wonderful, thick vegetable soup to kick off with, then red-wine-braised moose one day, light baked Arctic char another, plus wild-rocket salads laced with crayfish and smoked salmon.

With sleds and snowshoes aplenty, the grown-ups can linger over G&TS in the bar after dinner, or and carry them down to a tipi lined with deer hides and heated with a fire, while the kids race about in the snow until bed.

Highlights include a morning spent on a working ice-breaking ship (where we put on special suits and float about in the sea), Eva feeding the five resident reindeer – and, on our final night, hot toddies around a campfire on an uninhabited island across the bay.