tour information

what we do

Arctic Adventure has been arranging well organized trips to Swedish Lapland and Norway since 2000. We arrange and perform all kinds of winter activities like snow mobiling, ice fishing, dog sledding, Northern Lights watching, moose and reindeer Safari, Kick-sleds etc., most performed by our personnel, others by experienced suppliers of special skills like dog-sled.

We at Arctic Adventure have serviced a selected few tour-operators, both UK-based and others, with 100% attention and provided accommodation, transfers and activities etc., to 100 % satisfaction and so far, never a flaw. We are your pathfinders to the north!

about the tours

• Safe arrangements. Safety always comes first
• Provides guests with extra clothing, jackets, trousers, boots, gloves/mittens and cap.
• Meet and greet arriving visitors at the airport with a name-plate and a great smile
• Make the transfer to accommodation and use the time to provide full and good information on the local amenities also exchange information such as preferences for food and possible shortcomings like allergies and the like.
• Ensure that the accommodation is comfortable for the guests and according to expectations.
• Provide a written program for their whole visit.
• A visit can be B&B, half or full boarding and always with a water heater and coffee/tea available.
• Provide the guests with a simple cell-phone with our numbers and emergency programmed.
• We can be reached 24/7
• We have no restrictions for the participation of children. They will always be provided with safe car seats, helmets and special care in the cold.
• We support the practice of giving preference for Swedish Cousine and local produce.
• We offer 10 different winter activities.
• We make bespoke packages for Tour Operators
• We are fluent in English and Swedish. Translators to Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are available.
• We have expert knowledge of the region and are well connected within the tourism community.

destination

Boden is our operational base. This placid town is strategically located by the great Lule River, in the intersection where the coast meets the mountains at 65°49’21.9 ” N – 21°41’24.3″E. the Lule River is the life-nerve of the Realm of the Sami people. Boden is the place where you enter this realm - welcome!

Here you will find it all, the long, cold mid-winter nights with the Northern lights above in the crisp cold air that makes your shoes quirk when you walk and your breath visible and you can make smoke-rings without smoking. Boden is surrounded by wilderness and is home to moose, rein-deer, bear and other arctic wildlife! And a Silence…you have never experienced before. Truly stunning!

Boden enjoys excellent communications in every aspect. With just a 35 minute transfer time from Lule Airport, with direct connecting flights for Stockholm, Gothenburg, Tromsö and Uleoborg. Through the Arlanda Stockholm hub there are connections to all major airports in Europe and Overseas. During a normal working day there are 12/15 departures for Stockholm Arlanda. Traveling in slower pace, the Northern Railway Trunk Line passes right through Boden and you pass the main Highway E 4 on your way to the airport.

On telecommunications Boden is on top with 4G connections throughout most of the community (which covers an area of 4300 Km2 [1,654.50 square miles) most venues and households have a fibre high-speed connection. Even Facebook has one of their facilities nearby, so it is easy to get here stay in touch and all you have to do to enjoy the peace and solitude of the wilderness is to turn your unit off.

History

Boden was merely a road crossing until 1827 when the construction of the church began. Until then it was an outpost of just a few farmers and a Sámi-settlement. The church was built to house all inhabitants of the area, spread out over the vast area of the northern part of the Lule Parish, 2 500 seats. To house the local people approximately 250 church-cottages were also built around the church. 25 of these still remain today. With the new church completed, the local market at the time was located in the nearby village of Heden, the market then moved to be close to the church in 1831 and once construction of the cottages was complete people started to move in and Boden started to grow.

The first boom came in 1883 with the construction of the railway to the port of Luleå and thereafter the fortification of the 5 mountains that surround the town. That was to protect the transportation of iron-ore from the mines up north, on which much of Sweden’s wealth was built. The military presence developed into the central command for Northern Sweden, defending an area of 225 000 km2 which is about the size of Britain (or half of Sweden). The military presence, with up to 4/7000 men quartered also required health care, so what would become the regional major hospital was founded.Up until the end of the Cold War, foreigners were prohibited from visiting Boden.

Since then the role of the military is greatly diminished, after the end of the Cold War and all visitors from around the world are most welcome. This is the historic background why Boden has no major industries and employment is dominated by, public servant’s clerks, hospital and military staff. That might also be the explanation to why the town of just 18.000 inhabitants has produced so many well-known household names for the Swedish public. Among them we find Nobel laureate’s, Commander in Chief, Nobel Committee Secretary, artists, musicians and athletes. Over the last 30 years, there have been at least 50 of them.

Boden, as a former main centre for the northern defense has not yet played out its role, but it less obvious nowadays. As a reminder of the old days, one of the mountain fortresses has been preserved in mint condition just as it was when it closed 20 years ago and can be visited. A truly amazing place! For other venues, like restaurants, shopping mall, football arenas, horse racing grounds, museums, art gallery, historic buildings, parks, walks and tracks, Boden has its fair share.

Climate

Winter, meaning that the landscape is clad in snow (without melting daytime) and ice, thick enough to safely walk on, normally starts the first weeks of December, so Christmas time is always white. The light from the moon and the stars reflects on the white snow to such an extent that you could drive with your headlights turned off if it wasn’t illegal. However it keeps the mood up in the darkest period, when the sun rises at around 10.00 am and sets at 2.00 pm. Temperatures will normally be in the range of -5°C to -10°C but do occasionally fall to -20 – 25°C for a few days. The air is dry and still. No wind when the cold sets in! Strong winds are extremely rare with an occasional snowstorm appearing maybe once in a decade or so. In a normal winter the snow coverage will be around a meter. The “Fimbul”-winter (i.e. dark and coldest) is over when the daylight returns in mid – February and turns Winter into Spring. Most locals wait until then to do their skiing, ice fishing and snowmobiling. Anyone looking for Auroras, dark and extreme cold should visit before. In this part of the winter, called Winter-Spring the ascending sun makes it increasingly warmer, but snow will however continue to fall, but by the end of April the winter is definitely over.

The spring, in our part of the world is quite short, just a few weeks until end of May when nature explodes in green, getting up to speed with summer by growing 24 hours a day in the continuous light. From bud to leaf in less than a week! As the sun is ascending on the sky each day until solstice, the real warmth of summer is dragging a bit, our first really hot summer days, above 25°C normally arrives in the first weeks of July and lasts until end of August, when summer softly switches into Indian-summer. Leafs turn golden mid of September to fall to the ground in October where around the middle of the month the first frosty nights will appear. November is not the best time for a visit as there is a mixture of rain, snow, freezing and thawing and it is also the darkest month of the year as the white snow cover hasn’t stabilized. Better to wait a week or two!