Finally the weather stabilised, and after 5 waiting days Flemming and I could fly from Piteå to Kiruna! We were so happy! We only slept 4 hours (because of the late night flying in the Piteå flying club), but we were ready, and looked forward to the flight over the mountains of Lapland. Before we got our headsets on, Flemming took this colourful selfie of us:
We flew over the Älvsbyn airfield which is about 15-20 min north of Piteå:
This airfield was also on our wish list. Although we stayed so close to it, we saved the visit for later, as our focus had been on reaching Kiruna first. We followed the Pite river, and it was a picturesque flight:
Our flight plan had all the coordinates for flying over the Storforsen waterfall, we wanted to see from air. The Storforsen waterfall is indicated with a blue circle on the map below:
When we reached them, our jaws dropped – the view was magnificent:
Storforsen is the biggest waterfall in Europe. At its maximum, around 1,000,000 litres of water per second (!!!) flows through. We did a couple of rounds, and took hundreds of pictures:
Flying over it, we didn’t know, that some days later we would be visiting this place by car together with Peter Christensen, a Danish pilot from Älvsbyn gliding club (we flew over earlier that morning).
After getting enough of flying over the Storforsen, we continued to Kiruna. The Norrland landscape was so beautiful! Mountain valleys, rivers, lakes, and endless forests:
We had been in contact with the flying club in Kiruna, and Peter – one of the pilots – was waiting for us there. Peter warned us there was something wrong with our arrival time. And indeed, it was. Kiruna airport was only open a couple of hours that day, and opening hours in NOTAM were of course UTC. Somehow I made a mistake, and sent our flight plan with landing time in Kiruna whilst the airport was closed. When I realised that, I called Sweden Control, told them about my mistake, and asked to change our flight plan to Gällivare, another airport 30 min south of Kiruna. Gällivare was open, we didn’t need any PPR to land there, and it was the only choice!
We crossed the Arctic Circle on our way:
It was second time we did it: first time was by car, when Flemming and I had a trip to Kukkolaforsen on the border with Finland, and to the north of it.
Gold mine south-east of Gällivare:
We landed in Gällivare, and were directed to the General Aviation parking.
The flying club was closed, but there was a single bench outside where Flemming and I waited for about 2 hours, watching the cloud mass to build up:
We left Gällivare, grateful for this chance to spend our waiting time in:
Several days before, I had asked Swedavia, that manages the airport in Kiruna, for PPR outside airport opening hours, but was not granted it. It was also therefore, it took us 5 days to be able to find a suitable weather window for coming to Kiruna.
In general, we enjoyed very much flying in Sweden. Lapland with its almost 9,000 lakes was truly special:
Further north, the pine trees became taller and much slender:
And soon we were established in the landing pattern for Kiruna:
Kiruna tower welcomed us, and guided to the parking stand:
Peter – from the flying club – also welcomed us, showed their hangar, and followed us out of the airport. We were so glad we reached Kiruna, we could almost not believe it. One more selfie of two incredibly happy pilots that day, with Kiruna airport in the background:
Our rented car was waiting for us. The plate said “GED”, and “ged” means “goat” in Danish. We laughed a lot of this coincidence, and during our stay in Kiruna called this car “our goat”:
First to our hotel Samegaard, 5 rooms located in a Sami museum building. The museum was unfortunately closed due to COVID-19. And we were the only guests there. The hotel had a small fully equipped kitchen, breakfast was only included during working days, because during weekends there were no staff there.
We left our bags, and took our “goat” on a tour around Kiruna:
Lunch in Fika, a very nice cafe in the city. They had a good choice of salads, ice-creams, beverages.
One thing we noticed in Lapland was plates and portions – plates looked small, but were quite deep, and portions were always generous.
The rest of the day was spent for driving around, and flight planning for next day – we were going to fly over Kebnekaise, the highest mountain in Sweden!
