Malaysian family experienced a white Christmas in the Arctic Circle

Late last year, my family and I went on an adventure to the Arctic Circle, specifically Kiruna and Abisko in Sweden. The trip was for us to experience a “white Christmas”, see the northern lights (my wife’s life-long dream) and celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.

Packing for a family of six for a winter holiday was not easy, but my wife managed to keep it to 12 bags, which I thought was a great feat. Before the trip, we told our kids more or less what to expect, and got them involved in the crafting of the itinerary. This proved to be helpful as they were generally cooperative and didn’t complain much throughout our long journey.

The first leg of our journey took about 19 hours (from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, to Stockholm in Sweden). We then took the train – the Arlanda Express – to Central Station, which took about 20 minutes. If you’re planning to do this, here’s a tip: Children up to 17 years old get to ride for free when accompanied by at least one adult.

We waited at Central Station for a few hours to catch the Arctic Circle train that goes across the Swedish Lapland to our next destination, Kiruna.

The final leg of our journey was scheduled to start at 6.08pm, and the train departed punctually. Surprisingly, we all had a comfortable experience on this 950km-long trip that lasted over 15 hours. The sleeper coach is highly recommended for this journey, and our family occupied two triple-bed compartments, which also came with a shower facility.

You can book directly from the train operator Vy’s website. Tickets for year-end holidays sell out very fast so do check the website from time to time to see when bookings are open.

Overall, we took 39 hours to get from KL to Sweden’s northernmost city, Kiruna, which is 200km north of the Arctic Circle. It was indeed a long trip; thankfully we only had some minor misadventures along the way. Mostly, we enjoyed each other’s company and had lots of fun, arriving at our destination in high spirits.

Kiruna has been undergoing some massive transformation projects in the past few years, in which buildings are either moved or rebuilt from the old city centre to the new one that’s 3km away. This is because the old city is said to be sinking, thanks to decades of iron coal mining activities; apparently it has the world’s largest coal mining industry.

We stayed at the nature-inspired Scandic Kiruna, and went dog sledding, one of the recommended things to do in Kiruna. Representatives from the Arctic Dogsled Adventure picked us up from the hotel to go to their dog sled site. Getting into the required attire for dog sledding was a bit of a hassle but it helped us fight the super cold winds!

We also visited the Nutti Sami Siida, an open-air museum to learn about the Sami people – the Indigenous folk of Scandinavia – and their culture. In my view, it was not the best activity to do during winter, especially when it is snowing.

However, we did get to feed the reindeer, though we had some not-so-friendly encounters with a few of them.

The food at the restaurant there was delicious, though.

After Kiruna, we made our way to a small village near the Abisko National Park. We stayed at a nice cottage called the STF Abisko Turiststation, where we could cook our own meals. Abisko is said to be one of the best places in the world for northern lights sighting due to its “blue hole”, a weather pattern.

The writer’s four children enjoyed their time in the snow.

And it surely did not disappoint. We had our first – and only – sighting outside our cottage at 5am. We were lucky that we weren’t asleep yet during those wee hours, thanks in large part to the live webcam on the Aurora app, which helped us track the movements.

We ended our vacation by spending a couple of days in Stockholm and visiting old friends before heading back to Malaysia. We definitely got to experience all that we wanted to on the trip – a snowy, white Christmas, a northern light sighting and a memorable anniversary with loved ones.