Trail of the Lion King

For the past few months, I’ve been visiting Lulea for work. It’s up in Swedish Lapland and an interesting place to spend some time. Jen thought that it might be a good location to see the Northern Lights and so she tagged along for this trip.

We spent the first day walking along an ice trail that runs across the sea from the town centre harbour to a small island and beyond. A track had been polished that allowed people to skate or use some sort of snow walker. I think my skating days are done, but I was happy to give Jen a push on the walker thing.

We made it to the island and back in temperatures that varied between -26C and -29C. It’s fair to say that I didn’t really notice the difference between the two. Both were colder than my previous experiences in Atyrau and Moscow, where it didn’t ever dip below -25C. What I did notice though was my nostril hair freezing and ice forming around the stubble on my chin.

When we got back to the apartment, I discovered frostbite on my thighs, despite having worn two layers on my legs. As I write this a month later, it is still very visible, although it hasn’t yet turned black, which suggests that I probably won’t need my legs lopping off.

You’d think that temperatures like that would mean no football, but that’s not the case. It’s pre-season in Sweden and they get around the issue of frostbite by playing the games indoors. That meant that Jen and I could pop along to the Arcushallen whatever, stadium, complex, aircraft hanger?

We called into some Swedish burger chain for something to eat beforehand, where the highlight was seeing a couple of old blokes, presumably celebrating Valentines Day, eating ketchup mixed with a few sachets of salt whilst waiting for their order to arrive.

The pre-season friendly was between Bergnasets and Boden. It was a fixture that I’d seen for real the previous summer. There was probably a similar crowd of eighty or so on both occasions, but when it’s approaching thirty degrees below zero, there’s not many places you can leave the house for.

The game got off to a lively start with Boden going a goal up in the opening minute. They doubled their lead in added time at the end of the first half. I think both sides were drawing on some ringers and Boden had a bloke up front listed as Thor the Lion. I hope that really is his name.

The second half was both scrappy and closer, with each side scoring for an eventual 3-1 away win.

Tags: frostbite, inadequate clothing, ketchup mixed with salt, legs dropping off

This entry was posted on March 13, 2026 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Football, Hiking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.