25 km, 4:45, 260 m of ascent. Up the hill to a plateau and then flattish to slightly uphill. Icy conditions, which I found really hard to cope with, especially when going uphill, because I couldn’t get a good enough grip. In the end I just took off my skis and walked a good chunk of the almost-flat-but-still-uphill bit: it was just about as fast as skiing but with less effort and frustration.

We had brilliant sunshine all day. It was so hot that I took off everything I could – jacket, hat, even gloves – and found myself wishing that there were more layers I could shed. We had a luxurious sit-down lunch in the sun.

The sunshine led to some absolutely stunning views today.

The very last bit of the trail to the hotel at Friisvegen went downhill through the forest. Twisty little paths, slightly icy, with barely enough room to brake and turn. Just skimming the edge of losing control, which was an inordinate amount of fun.

(That’s me about to catch up with the rest of the group.)

The hotel at Friisvegen was yet another nice one, with a friendly Dutch couple as our hosts. I had trout for dinner (as the meat-free option) for the third day in a row and I am getting just a little bit tired of it.

33.5 km, 6.5 hours, 790 m of ascent (and about the same of descent). Up onto a plateau, then flat, and down again at the end. Some fields, some undulating forest, some open hillsides. Prepared tracks at the start and end of the day but “natural” trails during the middle section.

It was very windy today. The weather forecast said we’d have the wind in our faces, but that luckily turned out to be completely wrong and we had the wind at our backs or sides nearly all day. The temperatures were around zero and the sun was mostly shining, but the wind made stopping unpleasant. We took our first, very hurried lunch standing up in the wind, in a slight dip in the ground that barely made any difference for our comfort. Later we ran across a small hill that was situated just in the right direction to block the wind, so we could actually sit down in its lee for a second lunch break. Very pleasant.

I managed my clothing and thus body temperature much better today, because I decided to adjust whatever I needed whenever I needed to, without worrying about falling behind. I re-learned how to switch hats without stopping, and how to take off and stow my jacket in thirty seconds.

In the evening I felt quite stiff and sore, and walking up and down stairs was somewhat painful. Skiing uses not just the obvious muscles (thighs, hip flexors, arms and shoulders and back) but also some that I don’t even realize I have except when I’m skiing. Note to self: next time, get on location a few days earlier if possible and use these days to re-find my technique and my skiing muscles.

Høvringen to Rondablick. 28.5 km, 6 hours, 380 m of ascent. Prepared tracks all day. Uphill to begin with, then mostly flat. Open hills, some forest.

Today was a warm day, with temperatures well above zero, even though it was mostly cloudy. It looked colder than it was so I was wearing too much for the first half of the day – a windproof layer seemed like a necessity – and I was too busy focusing on my skiing technique to realize that I was overheating. When we stopped for our lunch break, I was sweaty and steaming and thirsty. After lunch I skipped the windproof jacket and went on in my wool top only and felt much better.

I was the slowest one in the group but not by much. I’m clearly out of shape compared to our last trip, though. That’s what I get for not having skied for three years.

We’re mostly staying at hotels during this trip. Both Høvringen and Rondablikk were nice hotels with good food. Rondablikk had a bizarre and slightly unpleasant collection of stuffed animals, though. I can come up with scenarios where you’d end up with a dead bear and the best thing you could do with it might then be to stuff it and display it. But killing and stuffing a mama duck with six downy ducklings? Eew.

After two missed years due to covid restrictions, I finally have the chance to go on a ski trip! This year my one and only favourite tour guide John Howie is taking us down the Troll Trail in Norway, from Høvringen to Lillehammer. Six days of skiing and about 160 km to go.

I spent the entire day today on trains. Got on the first one in Spånga at 06:05 and got off the last one in Otta, Norway, at 19:38. It wasn’t supposed to take quite this long but the train in the middle (Stockholm to Oslo) was delayed by over an hour so I missed my connection and had to spend almost two hours sitting in Oslo Sentral. But now I’m here, and tomorrow I will start skiing!

I’m still coughing a bit but mostly only when I try to talk or happen to laugh, so I think and hope that it shouldn’t interfere with the skiing. Fingers crossed.

Is there even a point to writing a review for the year that ended? I thought. But what is obvious and top of mind for everybody right now, won’t be as obvious a few years from now.

2020 was the year of the coronavirus and its associated disease, covid-19. It became a topic during the last week of February in conjunction with winter break, when many people go on ski trips either in the Swedish mountains or in the Alps. (We went to Åre: day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, day 6, day 7.)

There were plentiful reports of lots of people being hospitalized with covid-19 in Italy but the Swedish authorities still thought it unnecessary for tourists returning from the Alps to self-quarantine. Just two weeks later the situation had deteriorated enough for the authorities to recommend working from home. People were stockpiling toilet paper, fearing a full lockdown, which never came. The summer was a bit better (the virus being less active during the summer, just like other coronaviruses such as the common cold) but in autumn it all went downhill again.

Some countries managed to contain the virus and limit its spread but Sweden plainly didn’t, and the situation now is worse than ever. Hospitals are nearly full and people are dying in record amounts. 8727 deaths thus far in Sweden, which is about 870 deaths per million people – ten times more than Norway (80 per million) and Finland (100). The authorities keep trying to redirect comparisons towards the worst-hit countries instead and of course we could be up there with France, Italy, Spain and the UK (1000+ deaths per million) or even Belgium (near 1700) but given that we are closer in all ways to our neighbouring countries, this just looks like a futile effort to deflect blame.

I started working from home on March 13. While things were calmer in the spring and summer I made a handful of trips to the office for workshops and retrospectives, but I haven’t been there at all since early September.

Working from home felt unfamiliar at first. Then during summer I quite enjoyed it. It’s more flexible than working in the office: I could have lunch outside in the sun, or work in the garden. I dug and planted bushes behind the house as well as a new flowerbed. Not commuting saves me at least an hour and a half every day – I’ve never been so little stressed about times and schedules. And I am mostly more productive this way.

Now during the dark, dull half of the year I am enjoying it rather less, especially with all the extra restrictions.

Eric has been working in the office mostly (or sometimes at a customer’s office) but commuting by bicycle. Ingrid and Adrian’s daily lives have been least affected. Adrian’s least of all; Ingrid would be hanging out at the movies or McDonald’s or a gaming centre with her friends, if it wasn’t for the virus.

All trips abroad for the rest of the year were cancelled and most domestic trips as well, some before booking and some after. We were forced to cancel our annual trip to Estonia. We replaced our usual summer hiking trip with a week in Gotland, just before the larger crowds got there. (Day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, day 6. I missed my ski tour in Norway and my autumn hike in Jämtland, but replaced it with two lowland hikes (Kinnekulleleden day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, and Sörmlandsleden day 1, day 2, day 3.)

And of course we have been to no concerts, theatre, dance performances, museums, or other culture (apart from one movie, with two empty seats between each family group for distancing, back when the cinemas were still open) since March. No visits to gyms or swimming pools. No scout camp. No birthday parties and no Christmas celebration with the extended Bergheden family. Only a funeral.

For the past month or so I’ve started to really chafe at the restrictions. I used to get fresh air, exercise and at least a little bit of variety from cycling on small errands in the middle of the day, but since November all that is also strongly discouraged. I feel locked in, and I struggle to find ways to fill my time at home. Reading, knitting, blogging, cooking, etc… All nice activities, but I would enjoy them more if I could choose them freely, rather than doing them because I cannot do much else. Reading a new book is still just more reading. I want out.

Even though vaccines are on their way (and the first doses have arrived) covid-19 will be with us for many months still. But I’m about to start working on a new project at work in a few weeks: something new in my life! And the days will become longer, and January and February are usually colder than December, so perhaps we will get freezing weather and firm ground so that I can go walking without wading in mud.

PS: other notable events or achievements for this year include developing my Sonos companion app which I am quite proud of, and finally finishing my green cardigan.

I also made two skirts, one scarf, two pairs of socks and two pairs of mittens.

This was also the year of the wasp invasion in Ingrid’s room.

The Gotland trip is over and we’re home again.

I like travelling. I like being at home again (sleeping in my own bed!). But I don’t like coming home from a trip. The end of a trip always puts me out of sorts. Somehow the transition makes me feel out of balance and disoriented. I feel irritable and down.

A night’s sleep generally cures me. And sleeping in my own bed feels so nice after a week on bad mattresses. We stayed in hostels this time; the one in Visby really had pretty crappy beds. It was nice otherwise, though, and very centrally located.

When I’m booking a package holiday, like the one on Mallorca last year, the cost of the hotels is all mixed up with other costs and becomes almost invisible. Now that I was booking three nights here and two nights there, the cost of each night became very tangible. Do I really want to pay two thousand SEK extra per night for a fancier place? Not really.

We economized a bit on the living arrangements, but not on meals. It’s a vacation; I don’t want to spend my evenings in the kitchen. And we found some really nice restaurants! Some of my favourites were:

• Krusmyntagården north of Visby. The vegetarian option (lentils with oven-baked cauliflower) was an actual vegetarian dish, rather than something where the chef has tried to replace the meat. Juicy and full of flavour.
• Magasinet in Fårösund. Looks like nothing on the outside and doesn’t have a web site (only a Facebook page) but serves great fish dishes and Thai food, with an real live Thai chef in the kitchen I believe.
• Mille Lire and Isola Bella, two Italian pizzerias in Visby.
• Last but definitely not least, Cafe Amalia in Visby. They don’t seem to have a Facebook page even. It’s a small cafe in the middle of Visby that serves breakfast all day. Porridge, overnight oats, omelettes, sandwiches, all vegetarian, hand made and utterly delicious. (Overnight oats with rhubarb compote and golden roasted coconut chips; toast with nut butter and sliced banana; sandwiches on moist sourdough bread.) The prices are steep; our breakfasts here cost as much a normal lunch. But so good!

Also, the best ice cream we had was at Visby Glass. This place is worth a detour! Glassmagasinet near the harbour is the most visible ice cream place and boasts that they serve hundreds of flavours, but the ice cream they have is mostly the standard, mass-produced stuff. Visby Glass on the other hand makes their own ice cream and the difference is huge. They had lots of interesting flavours – apple sorbet, dark chocolate, pomegranate sorbet, and so on – and I wish we could have tried more of them.

We are leaving Fårösund behind and heading towards Visby again, so we can take the ferry back tomorrow.

First stop: Stenkusten, the stone coast. This place looks unreal and a bit spooky. The beach is all stones, nothing else, in even-looking layers, looking almost artificial in their arrangement. At the top, furthest from the water, is a very flat surface of sharp-edged chunks of crushed limestone, which looks as if it came out of a production line at a cement factory and was evened out by a bulldozer. Next to the flat is a steep slope towards the sea, and then a flat surface again, but here the stones have been bleached white and tumbled to rounded shapes.

Next we headed for the lakeside beach of Tingstäde Träsk. Adrian wanted a beach where the water was warm and didn’t have any waves. When we got there, we were met by signs warning us of swimmer’s itch. Well, maybe a more protected seaside beach, then? But by now it was time for lunch, and finding a veggie-friendly lunch spot was not as easy in this part of Gotland as in Visby, and when we were done with lunch the weather had turned cold and windy again.

We postponed the bathing to another day and played minigolf instead. Through mostly dumb luck I won the game – I hit several holes with shots that I had no real hope for.

A full day of Fårö.

The ferry trip, which at peak times can involve hour-long queues, went quickly. Gotland in general seems to be relatively empty of tourists right now. Today the weather is wet and windy so almost nobody wants to make a day trip to Fårö. We shared the car ferry with just 5 other cars.

Initially we had a somewhat structured plan for exploring the island, but in practice Fårö is so small that you can criss-cross it repeatedly in an hour. So we just drove wherever we felt like.

First we headed south and wandered around Ryssnäset for a bit. It was seriously windy. We found more fossils, and plenty of tiny clams.



From there we turned north to see the rauk at Gamlehamn. It’s got a large, individualized rauk icon on the map so it’s got to be impressive!

The famous one is vaguely dog-shaped one with two supports. It had many companions, and all together they made for an interesting place: the rocky coastline was broken up and varied, not like the straight and even stony beaches we’ve seen before. This place really invited to scrambling and jumping from rock to rock.




After lunch we drove east to Fårö lighthouse. Not a very interesting sight. But at the end of the road, beyond the lighthouse, there was a wonderful sandy beach, which we had all to ourselves!



The weather was still windy and the water was pretty cold. Eric and Adrian took a very quick dip and then stayed on the beach instead.

Ingrid however absolutely loved this! The cold didn’t bother her much, and the beach was made extra wonderful today by waves. Well, they weren’t large waves on any absolute scale, but for a kid who has had to make do with Mälaren and Kyrksjön and other very placid bathing spots, this was exquisite fun. She jumped the waves for a long, long time. I stayed with her for as long as I could, sharing her enjoyment. We kept looking for the spot with the best waves. Ingrid cheered every time we got one that was large enough to break into foam and was literally jumping up and down with excitement. Afterwards she said this was the highlight of the whole trip for her.


Afterwards we took the long way back towards the ferry harbour, driving past the rauk area on the north-west side of Fårö. Eric and Ingrid had had enough of rauks and rocky coasts by now so towards the end they stayed in the car while Adrian and I went out to climb and scramble among the rocks (and take photos).



Parts of the coastline here looked like something from another planet. There was water, and there were rocks in various tones of gray – and nothing else. Not even the smallest sprig of grass.

We’re leaving Visby behind and heading north and then north-east towards Fårösund, stopping whenever we feel like it.

The first stop was already at Lummelunda even though we were there only yesterday. There’s a nature trail there that’s supposed to be nice, but we didn’t the chance to walk it yesterday. After our visit to the caves it was high time for lunch, but the café there had no proper vegetarian dishes so we started cycling back towards Visby to find food. Today we were properly fed and did that walk. It was rather underwhelming and the signage was laughably unclear and out of date.

Next stop: Lickershamn, to see our first rauk – the Jungfrun. The rauk was cool, but the walk from the village to the rauk was actually even nicer. It’s mostly pine forest, which we do admittedly get a lot of near Stockholm as well, but it’s different here. The ground here is limestone instead of granite, so the undergrowth is completely different. It looks and smells like the pine forests of my childhood. (I lived in Tartu as a child but spent most summers near Tallinn, where the forests were just like this.)

Ingrid and Adrian were more interested in the WW2-era concrete bunker that was situated high on a clifftop near the rauk.


After lunch we drove all of 8 km north to the next beach, at Ireviken. (Gotland is so small that we could start driving towards our next hotel at dinnertime and still make it there before the night.)

Ireviken one was recommended by the internet as a nice bathing spot and, even more interestingly, as a great place for fossil hunting.

We spent a lot of time searching for fossils. At first when we looked at the rocks we couldn’t see anything other than pretty smooth rocks, all white and tumbled into round shapes by the sea – but mostly featureless. But when we sat down and looked more closely, there were fossils everywhere, of all kinds of shapes and sizes! There were fossils clearly shaped like seashells and snail shells, fossils that looked like corals, and loads of small round shapes.


This was definitely today’s highlight and we had a lot of fun combing through the rocks.

When we finally had enough of fossils, we had a quick swim in the sea. The water was pretty cold, but we wanted to at least take a dip so we could say we’d done it – just in case we don’t get a better chance. Swedish summer weather can be unreliable.

We’ve seen enough of Visby for now. Time for something different. We rented bikes today and cycled to Lummelunda and back.

The caves at Lummelunda were our destination in a way but the cycling there and back was almost more important. And we made several stops on the way – to admire the views, climb rocks, take a walk in a nature reserve, etc. We took a long and lovely lunch break at Krusmyntagården. Almost all our food here on Gotland has been good but this was the best meal I’ve had here.

The caves themselves were somewhat underwhelming, to be honest. The parts that the public tour visits are so tourist-adapted, with wide concrete walkways and large man-made pillars, that it barely feels like being in a cave. And the guide was some random guy, probably employed for the summer only. He delivered his talk by rote with rather fake-seeming enthusiasm, and probably knows nothing more about the cave than the words of that talk.

The cycling was very nice. Gotland is flat and bike-friendly. Much of the bike route from Visby to Lummelunda goes along a small seaside bike track with lovely views. Other parts followed small roads, although a part of the trip was along the main road as well (where cyclist had either a separate track off to one side, or at least a dedicated wide strip of road).

Even though the distance from Visby to Lummelunda is just 15 km, the outing took us the whole day: we left the bike rental at 11 and were back just before 18.

Adrian was pretty tired after the trip. He hasn’t learned to pace himself yet; he enjoys cycling fast so he does that until he runs out of energy and then instead of slowing down, or asking us to slow down, he just pedals harder. I had thought that maybe we could cycle around Fårö (which we’ll be visiting on Saturday) but that’s going to be even longer so I guess it’ll be the car then.

The only trouble with cycling is that it’s hard to take photos!