The train journey from Narvik was whatwe thought was the best so far, partly to the lovely weather and partly to the great views thanks to the lovely weather. We also met a great guy onboard from Brazil, Filipe.

We arrived in Kiruna in the -20s and were picked up by a guy called Stig, who was going to take us out into the wilderness and stay in his log cabin. You could see he was a hardened reindeer hearder so we knew we were going to get a good experience. He gave us a quick tour of the city and then we headed back to his house in Kiruna...just a shack pretty much, where we picked up some hardcore winter clothes and the snow mobiles ;)

We headed off across frozen lakes for about 45 mins, it was blody freezing and cruising along with the wind in your face, a crazy dog sitting on the sled being pulled by the skiddoo and light fading made it good fun.

We arrived at the log cabin and were pleased with what we saw. It was in the middleof nowhere with part frozen river a stones throw away. The dog was lovely also. It was a cross breed between a swedish and finish dog stig told us. I cant remember the exact breeds but the reason behind it was to have an obidiant dog with a loud bark to help with the reindeers.

The first night it was just Adam and I with Stig, we helped him prepare the cabin, get fires going and get some food together. We could tell he was trying to work us out and see if we were nice people and obviously us being fine english gentlemen he soon became friendly and opened up.

He cooked us some traditional lappish grub,reindeer soup followed by moose steak! it was bloody delicious ;) After dinner we got talking and learnt a lot about whathe does and how hard life is. The amount of work thathe has to do to ge tby is so much. Kiruna is now the biggest underground mine for Iron Ore, the city has had to move outwards numourous times because of danger of collape where the mine has weakened the ground. It has brought in a lot of money to the area but the effect on the tradtional way of life for the lappish people has changed a lot. One of Stigs friends told us that he had to quit his life long job that he loved to work in the mines purely because he couldnt afford not to anymore :(

After talkin a bit more he told us that he would lke to start a some knd of help out service where people can come and help out with the reindeer hearding so thathe can try and bring in more money. We told him we would love to help out once we get back to the UK and put him in contact with a few companies that Adam knows. Plus we would gladly come back to help out.

Stig later brought out the alcohol which he told us doesnt usually happen for guests but how could he resist us ;) After a few drnks we played a few songs for him which he loved. Stig got out some special reindeer meat that he had cldsmoked back in september, it was amazingly rich in flavour yum yum. Later that night he asked if we would stay another night when the new group arrived and gave us a cheap price, jolly nice of him and we accepted.

The nextday we helped him prepare for the big group of 12 guests arriving later by getting the other cabin ready and warm with log fires and then making a cross country ski track with skidoos. Later when the guests arrived we all said hello and had dinner together, some crazy food i tell ya! lots of reindeer and blood dumpliings, home made lappish bread, some other meat and a bit more meat haha.

Later on there was sweish sauna followed by a dunking in the snow and then Adam and I put on a small gig if ya want to call it that in the main cabin for all the guests, they loved it and it turned out to be an awesome night.

The next day we went ice fishing but we knew nothing wouldbe there because we were to far back from the flowing water,never the less it was fun to just see how it was done but. Later that day while everyone was chilling out me and adam found a cool slope that was pretty steep and then discovered the bum sleds (check the pics), we managed to get everyone out and throwing themselves down the slope, it was cold and wet by the end but great fun.

Kiruna was awesome, we had alot of fun and it was great to be out in the wilderness, id deffo go back.

That evening we caught the night train and planned to get of at Sundsvall.