We awoke Sunday morning after another good night's sleep at quiet and cozy hotel Lyktan in Arjeplog. We immediately prepared ourselves for breakfast, because we wanted to be sure to have enough time to visit two more places in Arjeplog - the Silver Museum and the charming little church, before starting the drive back home.
The collections at the Silver Museum documents the life of the Sami people during much of the 19th century, and is named after the beautiful silver jewelry made by the Sami. The collections are even arranged in period-dated rooms that makes you feel as if you've been transported in time. The Silvermuseum is a real cultural treasure definitely worth visiting!
Arjeplog's church, Sofia Magdalena, is a charming little church picturesquely situated on the bank of lake Hornavan. The church was originally built in 1641, but it has been renovated three times since - first in the late 1700's, again in the late 1800's and finally in 1970. It was during the renovation in the late 1800's that the church's fish-scale-like wooden siding was painted a soft rose color, which is one of the things that give the church its unique charm.
Since a few of my co-workers had highly recommended it as a "must see", we chose our home-bound route with the explicit purpose of visiting the The Wilderness Center (Vildmarkscenter) in Svansele. With close to 400 mounted animals displayed in their natural settings (as well as several displays of historical hunting gear), one could describe the Wilderness Center as a kind of natural history museum. The Wilderness Center offers 11 rooms of animal displays - each room depicting a certain group of animal. For example in one room were seabirds and woodland birds, and another large room displayed animals found in and around lakes and stream, with a little man-made brook adding to the feeling of standing out in the woods. All four seasons were authentically represented to the point where the "summer room" was warm and bright and the "winter room" was very cold, dimly lit, and had fake snow that looked very, very real. The displays were made even more interesting by the way the animals were positioned - sometimes interacting with one another and sometimes as if ready to pounce on some prey.
We chose to drive the rest of the way home on Sunday along country roads instead of the highway. If you're not in a hurry, it's so much more interesting to drive smaller roads because there's always much more to look at when you drive through cute little towns. The only problem with cute little towns is that they usually roll up the sidewalks after 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoon - just about the time that we were longing for a place to stop for a coffee break.
We drove through one cute little town after the other without finding any cute little coffee shops that were open. It wasn't until we reached the city of Vindeln (which lies within 45 minutes of home) that we finally found a coffee shop that was open. The best part was that the coffee shop offered a terrific view of the Vindeln river rapids, which is one of the designated "national rivers" in Sweden.
What fun we had that weekend! We're already looking forward to his next birthday, so we can continue the birthday tradition and discover more of beautiful Sweden!
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