European stories: the North
Order
Last month, I set foot on Swedish soil for the first time after four years away, having once lived there, adopting temporarily the Scandinavian way of life. Today, that period feels as though it belongs to another time.
My first encounter with northern Europe dates back to early 2014. I moved to Copenhagen to study. It was a grey and windy January. From my room on the Frederiksberg campus, I could see through the fog the small park where, every morning, joggers and dog walkers would pass by.
Throughout the winter, I crossed the misty lawns at dawn to go to class. I cycled everywhere, cursing the relentless wind and the snow that turned even the simplest outing into a small expedition. Yet none of it lowered my sense of wonder for a city where order, freedom and elegance seemed to coexist so effortlessly.
Then spring arrived. The fog lifted from the harbour and the city changed almost overnight. We emerged from a long hibernation. I still remember us lying on the university lawns beneath the cold April air, soaking up the sun through our coats. We spent hours walking along the waterfront, wandered into Christiania for the afternoon, and made our way to the old warehouses of Refshaleøen for fish and chips and beers by the water.
Choosing Copenhagen had been no accident. For years I had been drawn to northern landscapes, to cities of austere beauty, and to the warmth of a tastefully designed interior after a long day out in the cold. I tried to absorb these ways of living which, from a distance, seemed beautifully balanced.
And four years later, on another January day, I moved to Stockholm.
The years I spent in Sweden brought a new series of discoveries and acclimatations. The excitement that had accompanied my first experience of Denmark gradually gave way to a more nuanced reality. The wilderness always close at hand. The calm and meticulously organized daily life. The polite yet reserved encounters. The order. The uniformity.
An atmosphere that, at different times, filled me with joy and left me deeply unhappy. A landscape whose serenity embraced me, while the cities often felt rigid and predictable. I found myself longing for spontaneity, warmth, and a bit of unpredictability.
But there were also the summer crossings through the archipelago, swims from remote islands, and the vast expanses of pine forests and ice in Lapland that made me think there could be no paradise other than this one, and that continue to haunt me even now.
Silence
As the years and journeys have passed, I have felt an increasing desire to leave cities behind and lose myself in the empty spaces that still cover large parts of the world. I have learned to enjoy silence, emptiness, and to step away for a while from the noise of cities.
One of the journeys that shaped this discovery was a trip to Lapland. A two-hour flight from Stockholm is enough to reach Kiruna, the last major town in northern Sweden. Through the window, vast stretches of snow and frozen lakes come into view. Scattered pine forests. Nothing else.
When we land, the runway has barely been cleared. In the middle of a blizzard, I step into the tiny airport, little more than two large rooms, a few ticket counters, and a handful of vending machines.
Outside, the air is sharp and dry. It is March. The temperature must be close to minus thirty degrees. Crowded into the small terminal, travelers wait for the bus that connects the airport to the town centre.
Years have passed since that journey, yet I can still picture the thick layers of snow covering the rooftops, the freshly cleared ditches, the milky sky, and that cold, diffuse light unique to the far North that I could never find anywhere else. Whenever I think back to it, the same feeling returns: the sense of an immense and hidden world whose scale can only be understood by travelling through it.
I would later encounter that feeling again in valleys near Tibet and on the desert plateaus of Central Asia. But that morning, when I opened my eyes after a freezing night and looked out at the white expanse stretching beyond my window, something struck me with unexpected force.
These are not dramatic landscapes like the fjords of Norway or the volcanoes of Iceland. What surprises you here is emptiness. The absence of people and of the familiar traces they leave behind. The absence of relief, movement, and sometimes even color. The eye can wander endlessly across these white plains dotted with scattered pines. Up there, time itself has frozen.
On my cross-country skis, I circle the frozen lake before disappearing into the forest. I stop regularly to catch my breath and take in what surrounds me. The sky is clear, the snow sparkles, and the silence is complete.
The following day, after around twenty kilometers by sled, we stop for lunch around a fire in a tipi hidden among the trees. The dogs enjoy a brief rest in the sun before growing impatient again. I struggle to keep them in check, but it doesn’t really matter, if I fail to find my way back to the farm, they will.
At that moment, it feels as though I am experiencing something unique. Yet I know that feeling is partly an illusion. The illusion of a city dweller travelling through a world of her own fantasies.
A lifetime spent in the North might be needed before one truly finds one’s bearings there. Before deeper truths emerge day after day, and the landscape ceases to be a backdrop and becomes a companion instead.
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