Sweden: 100% Natural Ice

I skate on 100% natural, organic, outdoor ice. You may prefer the Zamboni-manicured surface of an artificial rink, but I'll always choose fresh air and sunshine over a fluorescent-lit, climate-controlled cavern.
Every winter I skate long distances on ice-covered lakes and rivers. Yes, I cross-country ski too, but in a snow-starved winter, I'd much rather go skating than stay indoors cursing the lack of snow. So when I heard about the world premiere of an 80-kilometer (50-mile) skating marathon on natural ice, I signed up immediately. So what if I'd never raced on speedskates before? So what if I'd never skated more than 30 miles in a day? So what if the race was in Sweden? I didn't let those little details bother me. I found a cheap flight to Stockholm, made a reservation at a bed-and-breakfast, and started training.
A good training regimen means skating on any natural ice you can find, whenever you can find it. Before work, after work, lunch hours, weekends. It becomes an obsession. My first workout was December 28 on Post Pond in Lyme, New Hampshire -- ten laps around the perimeter of the mile-long pond on smooth black ice. The day after New Year's, I skated 25 miles on the Connecticut River near my home in Vermont. In the following weeks I skated frequently on Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire. Ten miles long, Sunapee offers a lot of scenery with its three lighthouses, numerous islands and 2700-foot Mount Sunapee towering over the southern end. The 20-mile round trip from Georges Mills to Newbury Harbor and back makes a good 90-minute workout.
On the transatlantic flight, I stayed up all night watching movies, eager for my first taste of Swedish ice. Pam Pearson, an American skater spending the winter in Sweden, met me at the Stockholm airport, and we drove straight to nearby Lake Norrviken to stretch our legs. It had snowed lightly the day before, and a snowplow was out on the ice keeping Norrviken's ten-mile-long plogade bana or skating track in perfect condition. At 2 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon, the parking lot was full, and there were hundreds of skaters on the track. A horse and buggy dashed across the snow-covered ice on the far side of the lake. We skated a lap around the track, then drove into Stockholm for dinner, and by then I was overdue for a good night's sleep. Friday morning I woke up fully rested at 7 AM (1 AM Vermont time). What a relief -- no jet lag!

The best natural ice in the world
Stockholm, Sweden's capital city with a population of about a million, lies sandwiched between a hundred-mile-long lake to the west and the Baltic Sea islands to the east. The Gamla Stan ("Old Town") was founded 800 years ago on a strategic island in the middle of Riddarfjärden, the channel that carries Lake Mälaren's water out to the Baltic.
Stockholmers are never far from the water, and they take advantage of it summer and winter. They insist that they have the best recreational ice skating in the world. And that's easy to believe, because the climate is ideal for skating. Winter temperatures stay between zero Fahrenheit and a few degrees above freezing, and there's very little snow. Close to the Arctic Circle, the winter sun barely clears the treetops, so once the lakes freeze over, they stay frozen until spring.
It was time for my introduction to the Swedish sport of långfärdskridsko or long-distance skating. I had contacted some Swedish skaters by email, and we arranged to meet in the suburb of Ekerö. It was a short drive in Pam's car from Ekerö to the shore of island-studded Mälaren, Sweden's third-largest lake. I salivated at the sight of a lake 100 miles long, frozen solid from end to end! We jumped out of the car, grabbed our backpacks, and began weighing ourselves down with Swedish safety equipment. Our hosts - tour leaders Johan Porsby and Carina Borg from Stockholm; and Peter Dahlén and Morgan Filipsson from Linköping - had thoughtfully brought along an extra set of equipment for me.
Swedish skates are unlike anything we use here in the USA. The long, detachable blades are designed to clamp onto the soles of telemark ski boots. So you can ski and skate in the same pair of comfortable boots. And you never have to lace up your skates sitting in the snow on a frigid lakeshore, as I did when I was a kid. Just put your warm boots on at home, and clamp on the blades when you get to the ice.
I put a pair of isdubbar around my neck. These devices, known to Americans as ‘ice claws’, are what you use to haul yourself out of the water if you fall through the ice. My companions were all experts in this technique -- they had all gone through the ice at least once, and moreover, they were proud of it! "It doesn't count unless you get wet above your waist," Carina told me. "Then you have to change all your clothes!"
Next, I loaded my backpack full of spare clothes sealed up in plastic bags, tossed in a rescue rope on top, hoisted it up onto my back and tightened the waist strap. The idea is that if you go through the ice, the air trapped inside the plastic bags will turn your backpack into a flotation device and keep your head above water.
It was reassuring to know that if the ice collapsed underneath me, I could pull myself out with my isdubbar, strip naked on the windswept ice, and change into dry clothes before hypothermia set in. But it was a scenario I preferred not to contemplate. And that's why Swedish skaters round out their equipment list with a pair of ispikar or "ice poles" -- like downhill ski poles with the baskets removed -- which you jab straight down into the ice to test its strength. If your ispik goes through on the first jab, the ice is too weak. If it takes two or three jabs, your safety margin is razor-thin. Four or more, and you're OK. Ispikar also help you keep your balance on rough, bumpy ice.
Notwithstanding all the unfamiliar gear, and the polite lecture on safety techniques, nothing could detract from the smoothness of the ice and the unspoiled scenery surrounding us. We skated in pairs across an arm of Mälaren, talking nonstop, mostly in English since my hosts were all bilingual and my knowledge of Swedish was minimal. Our route took us to the island of Björkö, site of the ancient Swedish village of Birka, where we ate a picnic lunch on the ice in the sheltered harbor. We took off our skates, and out of our backpacks came foam pads to sit on, plastic tubs full of sandwiches, and thermoses of hot coffee, tea and blåbärssoppa (blueberry soup). For dessert we had semlor, the Swedish version of hot cross buns, with a delicious almond cream filling. After lunch we followed a meandering route back to the car, testing our speed against each other and talking with growing excitement about tomorrow's race. Johan, Carina, Peter and Morgan were all racing too.
Back in the car, Pam and I dashed quickly up to Lake Ekoln for a sneak preview of the race course. As we put on our skates and headed out, a convoy of three snowplows was sweeping the inbound track. I skated out a few kilometers, then turned around and sprinted. I clocked my speed at 1 minute 57 seconds per kilometer, just under 20 mph. I was ready.
Twelve of us met that night for a carbo-loading pasta feast in downtown Stockholm. At the table were six Swedes, two Americans, and four Dutch skaters who had just flown in from Amsterdam. The multilingual conversation turned inevitably to the "mother of all skating tours," the Elfstedentocht, a 200-kilometer Dutch tour that all of us either have already skated, or yearn desperately to skate. (I count myself in the latter group.) After dinner we headed our separate ways to catch up on sleep.
The Vikingarännet Marathon
Saturday, February 13: Sleep didn't come easily the night before the marathon. I tossed and turned, and was already awake when the alarm went off at 5 am. I dressed, ate breakfast, grabbed my skates and walked to Central Station to catch a bus to Lake Ekoln. Climbing aboard the bus, I got my first and last look at the race favorites, a pair of Dutch skaters dressed in flaming red racing suits advertising Unox soup.
Vikingarännet was the right idea at the right time. In the fall of 1998, the Swedish Skating Federation and the outdoor recreation association Friluftsfrämjandet decided to organize an 80-kilometer natural ice marathon, the first ever held in Sweden. Almost overnight, five thousand skaters had signed up for Vikingarännet ("The Viking Run" in Swedish). The registration limit was reached in early December, more than two months before race day, and thousands more were turned away. Of the 5,000 participants, the vast majority were Swedes skating in the motionsklass or touring class. In the much-smaller competition class were a hundred Dutch skaters, an equal number of Swedes, a handful from Finland and Norway, one Scotsman -- and me.
Enjoying my celebrity status as the lone American, I spent the bus ride conversing with Swedish and Dutch skaters, instead of cramming in some extra calories as I should have done. A mistake I would pay for later.
The bus unloaded and we walked to the lake to change into our skates. Early-morning mist was falling through the light southwest breeze, with the temperature hovering around the freezing mark. The race organizers had taken their job seriously, checking the ice thickness; sweeping snow off the track; stationing volunteers along every kilometer of the course; and setting up refreshment stands at 15-kilometer intervals, well-stocked with sandwiches, sports drinks and water.
I was already wearing a nordic ski racing suit, so I pinned on my racing bib and loaded my pockets with food, water and a camera. Oops, too much weight. Something has to go. "I'm the only American in this race," I thought, "and I have to uphold my country's honor!" Reluctantly, I pulled out my camera, stashed it in my gear bag in the changing tent, and proudly glided out to the starting line.
Seconds later, the gun went off, and the ice exploded as 200 skaters accelerated madly. Flying ice chips pelted my face as the Dutch skaters quickly took a commanding lead. I let several packs of turbo-skaters pass me as I searched for a slower group I could hold my own with. I soon found them: four men on Swedish skates, wearing identical blue hats with the red logo of the Stockholm skating club, SSSK. Sucked in by a magnetic field, two dozen of us coalesced into a giant pack chasing the SSSK skaters' wind shadow.
As a novice bicycle racer, I had cycled in close formation before, but skating in a large pack was a new experience. We were hurtling at 20 mph across natural lake ice, full of cracks, bumps and ridges of frozen slush. At less than an arm's length from our neighbors, both front-to-back and side-to-side. A mass of bodies in front of me blocked my view of the ice surface. Our skate blades clanked against each other, our boots bumped, and every so often I felt a hand leaning on my back, as a skater behind me tripped in a crack and struggled to catch his balance.
Suddenly three skaters tumbled in a heap in front of me, and our mass parted as we quickly swerved left or right to avoid the fallen mass. On one of the fallen skaters I saw an SSSK hat. As his three teammates came to his aid, I heard one of them say, "Thure fell!" I thought, that must be Thure Björck, chairman of the SSSK and one of Sweden's fastest marathoners.
But minutes later, the SSSK quartet were back in command of our pack, and there they stayed for 40 kilometers, upwind and down, rocketing past the refreshment stands without even slowing down. At this pace we would finish in 3 hours, 25 minutes. Incredible!
The mist abated and the fog began to lift. I looked behind me, and to my surprise nobody was there. Every skater behind me had vanished, unable to maintain the blistering SSSK pace. As we passed the third refreshment stand, our leaders slowed slightly to grab cups of warm Gatorade from the hands of volunteers. I grabbed a cup too, but as I was drinking it, the SSSK skaters suddenly accelerated, and I couldn't keep up. I watched them slowly disappear into the mist.
Fortunately, two Swedish skaters fell off the pack too, so the three of us skated together, rotating the lead every kilometer. My turn at the front, and I was bombarded with brief bits of advice. "Slow down a little." "OK, that's good." "Take a break now, I'll pull." We'd been skating exactly two hours when we passed the 51-kilometer mark, and as we rounded a bend and turned straight into the wind, I suddenly felt intensely hungry. My stomach and left leg started to cramp up. I let the two Swedes go ahead, I pulled some food out of my pockets and started eating. My speed dropped to a pitiful 10 mph. There wasn't a skater in sight on my track, either ahead or behind. Only the endless streams of motionsåkare -- recreational skaters -- headed in the opposite direction on the outbound leg.
At 65 kilometers there was another refreshment stand, and for the first time I stopped. I chugged two cups of Gatorade, ate one sandwich and was halfway through another, when I saw two skaters approaching. Accelerating slowly, I munched the last of my sandwich, and jumped in line behind them with a burst of speed. They were two Dutchmen on ‘clap’ speedskates. Fighting the wind, we again rotated the lead at each kilometer mark, but one of the Dutchmen was having a tough time with the bumpy ice. He hit a crack, lost his balance, and as he recovered, the tail end of his blade shot back into my left leg. I was unhurt, but I let them skate ahead.
Finally at the 72-kilometer mark we turned away from the wind, and the sun melted through the clouds. Two more cups of Gatorade at the sixth and final refreshment stand, and I was once again hurtling along at 20 mph with the wind at my back, barely moving a muscle. Spectators lined the track -- some on foot, some on skates, and some pushing sparks or "kick-sleds", a Scandinavian invention consisting of a wooden chair mounted on sled runners, with handles on the back for pushing from behind.
At last the finish line came into view, and I rocketed under the giant white banner bearing the word MÅL in huge letters. I was incredulous. I had finished in 62nd place with a time of 3 hours, 43 minutes. My benefactors, the SSSK team, finished in 3:24, taking 41st through 44th places.
To no one's surprise, the Dutch skaters swept the top six positions in the men's field, and the top four in the women's. Dutch skater Hotze Zandstra from Team Haijma won top honors with a time of 2:35:42. His teammate, Andrei Krivosheev, stayed with Zandstra the entire way and finished two seconds behind at 2:35:44. Laura Kamminga from the Dutch KNSB team won the women's event in 3:03:58, edging teammates Wendy Vergeer and Marion Van Zullen by one second apiece.
As Zandstra and Krivosheev were approaching the finish, the fun had barely begun for many of the motionsåkare, who started in groups of 200 between 8 and 10 am, carrying backpacks and ski poles in classic Swedish skate-touring style. By mid-morning, the wind was freshening, and the ice was softening up from the passage of thousands of skate blades. Those motionsåkare who started last definitely had their work cut out for them. But it was a perfect day for all ages -- teenagers to 70-year-olds -- for a cruise along the scenic, undeveloped lakeshore. The last finisher crossed the line in just under nine hours.
Vikingarännet generated intense media coverage in Sweden. There were front-page photos in Sweden's two largest newspapers the next day, and Swedish National Television aired a special half-hour report on the race. The 2000 edition of Vikingarännet promises to be an even bigger event, with more participants. If the ice cooperates, the course will be a straight shot from Lake Ekoln right into downtown Stockholm.
Christer Andersson, a reporter from Radio Uppsala, was waiting at the finish line to interview me. After the interview I found my Swedish friends, we took the bus into downtown Uppsala for a beer, then boarded a train to Stockholm. I followed Johan Porsby back to his apartment, for my introduction to the next day's adventure: Touring the Baltic Sea islands on authentic Swedish skates. With borrowed skates in hand, I caught the subway back to my apartment on Kammakargatan, showered, ate a bowl of cold cereal for supper, and crashed.
Skating the Baltic Sea islands
In the bright morning sunshine we walked out on the pier, across the gangplank and onto the Waxholm, a passenger ferry serving the islands of the Stockholm skärgård or archipelago. I had four companions -- Johan, Carina, Carina's friend Oscar Nässil, and Dutch skater Arjen Meurs. The ferry backed away from the pier and crunched through the ice in the bay. It was a short trip to the island of Sollenkroka. As we jumped off the boat and clambered over the rocks, I noticed a long row of wheelbarrows and garden carts tucked in under the trees and bushes. We plunged into the woods on a hiking trail, and we saw pairs of narrow wheel tracks in the snow. This island has no roads, and no cars -- only footpaths. Everyone uses carts to carry their groceries home from the ferry landing.
We crossed through the middle of the island, past summer cabins tucked under the evergreens, until we reached the far shore, where we sat down on a dock to put our skates on.
Skating on the Baltic Sea? I had always distrusted salt-water ice, dating back to my childhood on Cape Cod. On those rare occasions when the bays froze, the ice was soft and mushy, and the rise and fall of the tide broke it into chunks separated by wide fissures. You can't skate on sea ice, can you?
You can on the Baltic. There's no tide to break up the ice, and the water has only one-third the salt content of ocean water, so it freezes harder and faster. That combination means excellent skating. So, off we went, skirting the north shore of the island. Johan took the lead, and he stopped frequently to thrust his ispik into the ice. The rest of us followed cautiously at 30-foot intervals, with Carina in the rear. Every Swedish tour has two leaders, one in front and one in back.
We stopped for our fika or lunch break in a sunny sheltered spot along the rocky shore. Out of our backpacks came more gourmet treats. As we ate, across the bay sped a propeller-driven airboat just like what you'd see in Florida's Everglades. It whizzed across the ice, suddenly plunged into a hole, plowed through the jumbled floes, then climbed back on top of the ice and sped away.
Reversing our route, we skated, hiked, took the ferry back to the mainland, and caught a bus to Stockholm. But Johan and Carina had a surprise for us. "Let's get off here," they announced. The bus stopped and let us off in the middle of nowhere. We walked down a narrow dirt lane, and there at the end was a secluded cove, frozen solid and lightly snow-covered. Along the shores, sailboats sat at docks frozen in the ice. We clamped on our blades and off we went, past a pair of ice fishermen with their hand-powered auger.
At the mouth of the cove, Johan stopped, jabbed his ispik into the ice, and water erupted from the hole. Thin ice! "Time for a detour," Johan said. We unclamped our blades, tossed them in our backpacks, and scrambled up an icy cliff. There at the top, a stunning vista opened before us, a wide bay dotted with rocky islands. We slid down the back side of the cliff with a gravity assist. Out of our backpacks came our blades, and we were underway again. It was late afternoon, and the setting sun illuminated our faces as we glided past a reedy marsh along the shore. Skating to the head of another cove, we came ashore at a public beach, walked across the parking lot, and along came the bus to take us back to Stockholm.
On the bus, I asked Oscar how far he had ever skated in a day. "Nine or ten miles," he replied modestly. I didn't know it at the time, but a "Swedish mile" equals ten kilometers. So his personal record surpassed mine. As it turned out, among the five of us, it was Carina who had skated the farthest on Swedish ice, 170 kilometers in 15 hours. But Johan and Arjen had both skated in the 200-kilometer Dutch Elfstedentocht (Eleven Cities Tour).
Tailwind to Sigtuna: In the footsteps of the Vikings
Like me, Arjen Meurs was enjoying a few extra days of skating after Vikingarännet. We met at Fridhemsplan station and rode the Green Line subway to the end of the line at Hässelby Strand. From there it was a short walk to the ice on Lake Mälaren. Quickly clamping our skates onto our boots, we let the wind whisk us away in the direction of Sigtuna, 25 miles to the northwest, following an ancient Viking trading route.
The clouds had returned, it had snowed overnight and the wind was on the rise, leaving alternating patches of bare ice and windblown snow. In the gray ice we could see the fossilized tracks of dozens of weekend skaters. A single pair of fresh skate tracks pierced the new snow ahead of us. Here and there we saw a mountain bike track. Not a single snowmobile was in sight or within earshot. With gasoline prices so high, snowmobiles don't see much action in Sweden.
As we followed the lakeshore north, the suburban apartment complexes thinned out. We looked up from the ice and suddenly realized we were surrounded by pristine wilderness. The ice under our skates stretched away in all directions to rocky shorelines bristling with evergreen trees.
Through the gaps between islands we could see more ice, then more islands, to the horizon. And on the ice only Arjen and I, following one mysterious pair of fresh skate tracks.
We never caught sight of the creator of those tracks, but the tracks diverged to the west past a rocky bluff where our route veered north. We stopped at the bluff for a fika, or snack break. It was obvious that many skaters had taken their fika here over the weekend. We saw more old skate tracks frozen in the ice, bits of orange peel scattered among the rocks, and to our amazement we spotted one cigarette butt. Careful not to contribute to the litter, we stuffed the empty wrappers in our pockets and skated to the village of Kungsängen, where we had to get off the ice for a half-mile "portage" around a patch of open water.
We walked through a deserted boatyard to Kungsängen's main street, took a right, passed under a railroad track, under a busy highway, then turned off into the woods, crossed another railroad track and scrambled down a steep slippery slope to the ice. There we found schoolteacher Andre Bergström giving ice-fishing lessons to a group of students. Andre told us the ice was 25 centimeters (10 inches) thick, so we didn't bother to test it. You can always trust an ice fisherman.
Skating north, the wind at our backs accelerated, and so did we. And now there were two skaters coming toward us, fighting the wind. Far out on the windswept ice, we met. "Talar du engelska?" I asked. "Do you speak English?" "Yes, I do," answered Kristian Wannebo, who with his companion Ylva Öhrskog had skated upwind from Sigtuna, our destination. As Kristian pulled out his map to show us our whereabouts, a gust of wind tore it out of his hands, and all four of us raced after it in hot pursuit. Finally Kristian dove forward on his stomach, pinning the map under him.
We could have talked for hours, but the wind chill was getting to us, so we parted company. Minutes later Arjen and I glided into the Sigtuna town pier. The adventure was over; I had to catch a bus back to Stockholm. The next morning I flew home to Vermont, sad to leave Sweden, but fortified with a great treasure of new friends and new memories.
On Wednesday, the day after I flew home, Johan Porsby and Arjen Meurs returned to Lake Mälaren and skated 70 miles from Västerås to Stockholm. But that's nowhere near the record. In a good winter it's possible to skate 210 kilometers (130 miles) in one day. You start in Örebro at the west end of Lake Hjälmaren, and you skate eastward across Hjälmaren, through a canal to Mälaren, and then all the way across Mälaren to Stockholm. Next winter when I go back to Sweden, that's what I plan to do -- but I think I'll break the trip into two days. Come with me if you want; there's always plenty of room on the ice.

Traditional Swedish leather telemark boot on a fixed-heel Nordic blade, plus a wooden ice pike

Carina Borg and Oscar Nassil skating past one of the islands in the Baltic Sea archipelago (Stockholms skärgård)

Carina, Peter, Morgan, Johan and Pam enjoy a ‘fika’ or picnic on the ice. Every skater carries a foam pad to sit on and a puffy parka to wear while eating.

Jamie Hess at the finish line of Vikingarännet in 1999

Oscar, Carina, Johan and Arjen in the Baltic Sea archipelago

Kristian, Ylva and Arjen in the middle of Lake Mälaren north of Stockholm