Jokkmokk is 1,033 km from Grimsö and according to Google Maps (click to see map), this should take about 12 hours to drive. It is in Swedish Lapland (more about the Sami people later) and it is just above the marker for the Arctic Circle.
Jokkmokk has been the meeting place for a Marknad for 408 years where Sami people came together to sell their reindeer, trade, find love, and refresh their contacts from other Sami groups. In more recent times they have been giving Themes to the Marknad celebration, this year's theme was Art.
On the trip we decided to swing into this waterfall, which was rather cool. Apparently there are only 3 rivers in all of Sweden that do not have dams and this is one of them.
The options for travel of course are to drive, train, bus, or plane. Initially, I was supposed to go to the Sami Marknad with 4 people. Pablo from Spain, Sara from north Sweden, Daniel from Stockholm, and me. Eventually, due to plans changing, Pablo dropped out because he had a conference in Portugal and Tuija from Finland replaced him. We were to drive Daniels car as he had the bigger, better gas mileage and a car that unlike mine you could lock, you could listen to CD's, didn't give warnings in a language the owner didn't understand, and was just a little more "tested" for reliability. We were to leave Wednesday from Grimsö, drive up to Umeå and stay with Sara and all leave the next morning bright and early. On Monday, Sara wrote us saying she could not go because she did not have anyone to take care of her dog. By Monday night, Daniel said if Sara wasn`t going he wasn`t going.... that just sounded so lame! and be it true or not, the delivery was sad. It would have been better had he just said he did not want to go cuz in all honesty, it did not matter if he went or not - it was no sweat of my back. I would never want anyone to be forced to go on a trip as that just ruins it for everyone. Tuija has a Finish saying about someone who is a sourpuss or has a long face that applied perfectly at the time and its about looking like an elephants...
So, Tuija and I had to "scramble" a little (thank god she had a better car than I) to plan our travels, but now it was just the 2 of us.
We left a little later than originally planned (left after Fika instead of at 8am) and it took ~7 hours to drive to Umeå or maybe a little longer. The roads were kinda bad. It was OK, but we did almost crash once because this guy decided to pull out in front of us and I had to slam on the breaks and we were driving on icy snowy roads, the ABS kicked in, the car fishtailed, my reaction was to pound on the steering wheel expecting a horn noise to come. Instead, I realized I was in a french car and that meant the horn was a little button on the tip of the turn signal. Who thinks of that?? Who thinks in the dire moments when you are panicking bracing for impact that you would even begin to think "Oh, I must delicately use my thumb or one finger to push a little button that will give this delicate beep beep noise as a solution to getting someones attention to warn of emanate danger!!!" ... Otherwise it was an uneventful trip. We stayed with Sara - which was very nice of her, ate some home made pizza and left the next morning a little later than planned (start of a theme I think). Tuija's car was a little quirky like mine, her heater didn't always work properly where there wasn't much control over the amount of heat coming out of the vent - either off or FULL on so my contacts got dried out quickly. She also had her GPS which was great - except it only spoke Finish or Swedish. We ended up calling the GPS Gertrude. Gerty had a bad habit of giving too many directions at once, like the next 4 moves - so it always made it seem like we were turning right because for some reason there was usually a right turn and it was the last in the series of her rhythmic finish instructions. **Side note: If the Swede's have a sing song, up and down melody to their speech, the Finish have this rhythmic flow that is like a mandolin with sharp cuts. Finish is more like Hungarian and Estonian than Swedish or Norwegian.**
When we arrived in Jokkmokk it was pretty late....or at least it was dark and cold.
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