Northern Sweden and Winter Sports
In the winter, the ICEHOTEL is built every year near the northern town of Kiruna. Kiruna is also frequently used as a place from which to see the Aurora Borealis (Northern lights).
Tourists in Sweden's north in the winter often take trips in reindeer sleighs with Sami drivers, or in dog sleighs. It is also possible to ski, with downhill resorts at Åre and Vemdalen, and there are many cross country ski tracks throughout northern Sweden. Vasaloppet (in the beginning of March) is the oldest, longest and largest cross-country ski race in the world. Ice hockey is a popular sport in the winter. Many of the bays in the northern part of the country are frozen in winter, and it is possible to go ice yachting or ice skating on the ice. Many lakes are also frozen, so ice fishing (pimpelfiske) is quite common.
Read more about this topic: Tourism In Sweden
Famous quotes containing the words northern, winter and/or sports:
“‘What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I,
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;”
—Walter De La Mare (1873–1956)
“We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave, devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the end, I think you really only get as far as you’re allowed to get.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)