The Scandinavian mountains have photo opportunities around every corner. Click here to see a photo gallery, where I celebrate the amazing beauty of the north.
You should pay it a visit to enjoy angry lemmings, stunning lakes, beautiful flowers, endless sunsets or breath-taking mountain hikes.
It will show you a summer as you have never seen one before.
You might recognize some of the pictures from my previous posts, but all together, they summarize the atmosphere even better.
I am a true summer child. I love the sun, the flowers, the birds and all nature’s activity in summer. I brighten up under a warm blue sky.
I do not know a thing about the Scandinavian winters, with their eternal nights, mountains of snow and freezing temperatures. When the first northern light hits the sky, I flee to the south.
The only Scandinavian snow I know is from the stubborn little patches that resist the changes of the seasons and do not want to melt before the end of July.
I only experienced the Scandinavia with its abundant flowers, seeking cooling underneath waterfalls and dipping toes in the lake.
I must admit I also know those summers from endless rains and late snow storms that bite your fingers off on top of the mountains, but those harsh feelings are soon forgotten as soon as the shiny sun is back.
I have to repeat it to myself every sunny day again and again: northern Scandinavia is a hostile place. It is not always like this. The seedlings in your experiments might soon die from the cold. Never forget this while you gaze at the blue sky and cool your burning skin with fresh melting water from a stream.
We ended our Scandinavian fieldwork trip with two days at the other sides of the mountains. We had to find back the Norwegian plots of the roadside research of two years ago to install temperature sensors in the soil.
This little trip brought us the highlights of the Norwegian summer in a peaceful valley called Sjkomdal, in this season a true example of a Scandinavian paradise.
We traveled up and down between the softness of the grasslands in the valley and the breathtaking views from the mountain tops.
The ultimate goal was to find back the sticks that had been waiting for two years in the immense eternal forests and tundra to mark the location of all plots. For the next year, they will guard the temperature sensors until I come back to pick them up.
Luckily, we had gps-coordinates, pictures of the locations and some marks in the field to help us on this true treasure hunt. This facilitated the search drastically, although some sticks still managed to disappear untraceably over the years.
It was nice to be reunited with my plots after two years; coming back there felt like revisiting a childhood playground. With the help of two days of fantastic summer weather, I now finally realized the full beauty of the area and the luck we had to do science up there.
After a long and hot day of climbing the mountains, we set up our tent close to a lovely and cute ‘Fjällbuhytta’, right above a river perfectly suited for an evening swim. We took our time to swim away the dust of the working day and watched the alpenglow on the mountains at midnight.
Mission accomplished in the best of circumstances, that is one thing that makes ecology so amazing!
When time is short and work takes long, the midnight sun truly is a blessing.
We had been climbing for a whole day to find a nice location to install our new experiment at one thousand meters, when it turned out the chosen mountain would mean a massive logistical challenge the next years. The climb was long and steep, the nearest road was at least half a day walking and all plots would be long hikes away from each other.
Moreover, the vegetation did not look as promising for the experiment as it did elsewhere. The tough decision had to be made that this whole day of climbing under a baking sun would not result in the completion of another successful experiment. We had to let the plan go, a decision made lighter by the chance to enjoy the beauty of the Arctic summer. We watched down on the valleys and tops and worked out a promising plan B.
In order to finish all the work in time, we had to be sure we would have plots with ideal conditions on the last day of the fieldwork. Luckily, circumstances in the north turned out in our advantage. As the sun would never set during the night, we could spend a whole night working and searching the mountains for good locations for the next day.
Luckily, we could make use of the chairlift, which brought tourists around midnight to 900 meters of elevation to admire the magnificent view on the sun. It allowed us to experience two successes that night: a satisfying hunt for ideal experimental locations, and a fairytale experience on top of the world.
We wanted to have our new experimental plots at 1000 meter above sea level, an easy decision on paper that however resulted in a lot of climbing in real life.
We had to get up, up and up, higher and higher, slowly approaching this magical elevation. Luckily, this extra physical input resulted in in new and unexplored landscapes and views.
The variation in landscapes and environments in the north is truly stunning. Over a distance of only a few kilometers, we passed snowfields, boulder areas, green meadows and large rivers to cross. Over every bump, the view changed completely.
All the hikes were luckily worth the effort, and in the end the seeds were all succesfully planted 1 kilometer above sea level. Now it is a thrilling wait to see their performance under the midnight sun.
All the long hikes could be used to explore the tundra landscape and its breeding birds. Skua’s, golden plovers, meadow pipits and all kinds of gulls use the open area above the treeline to lay their eggs.
The 3D lab 