Latest news with #Luleå
The Independent
21-05-2025
- The Independent
The Arctic adventure so thrilling I forgot to look for the northern lights
I'd assumed Swedish Lapland would mean stylish chunky knits and chic fur hats, but I've just been strapped into a bright orange survival suit that consumes everything but my face. I'm an oversized traffic cone turned Teletubby – but thus goes the fashion when gloating in icy Arctic waters. I'm in Sweden 's far north, trying to pre-empt a northern lights no-show by diving (literally) into more Earthly adventures. Basing myself around coastal Luleå (with help from specialist holiday company The Aurora Zone, I soon find I can swim, sled and sauna without ever driving much more than an hour. And the northern lights I'd travelled to see? A distant memory. The tourist-friendly icebreaker ship I'm on does just that as it plies the frozen waters of the Bothnian Sea: it carves a pool of inky black water… and in plop the lurid tourists, fully waterproof. I feel both weightless and safe as I bob on my back like an untethered buoy beneath the pewter clouds. Only it's hard to cling to any meditative state for long because I'm laughing so much. My friends and I flounder with our oversized, cartoon hands, unable to stop giggling at our cumbersome, human-highlighter selves. I clamber onto an ice shelf and bounce back in with a splash, gurgling happily. An ice bath without any of the agony, this wholesome, silly dunking delivers a hit of wellness I'd not anticipated. Back on board, calm comes in a different form: the hissing crack of the 50-metre-thick ice beneath the hull is surprisingly like ASMR. Pale fissures snake across the crystalline surface before they gape wide in grizzly grins. Larger chunks capsize and upend, the beauty and power of their Haribo-sweet interior – gelatinous blue topped with white – is momentarily exposed before they sink to the depths like drowned spectres. Later that day at the Arctic Bath hotel, we step into a menthol-scented wooden room where 'sauna master' Sven promptly roasts us to within an inch of our lives. The perfumed water sizzles furiously on the rocks as Sven wafts a large red fan; he's a flamenco dancer, bullfighter and torturer all rolled into one as he moves the increasingly hot air around the sauna. Sweat bursts from my every pore like a confetti gun. When I am finally allowed outside for phase two of the ritual, a cold plunge feels incredibly welcoming. Though not for long. My language is as blue as my skin, as I'm stabbed repeatedly by the -1°C water. And then I'm out, marching around the pool in a bid to reanimate, like a prisoner released for yard exercise. Before it's back into the sauna to repeat the experience. Twice. Of course, one doesn't need to be in the freeze to enjoy the Arctic's adventures. I have a whale of a time trying my hand at ice fishing. I don shoe grip spikes and stride off like a modern-day Shackleton across the solid sea. Armed with a hand drill, I churn down into the thick whiteness, lower a fishing rod baited with a wriggling maggot into the hole, and wait for what seems like a very long time. Eventually, success strikes. Our guide guts the snared perch with aplomb, slicing it open, peeling off the skin and plucking out entrails as we watch with morbid fascination before he places it reverently inside a smoking tin to cook. I pause my angling to feast on the fresh catch – it's gently charred, tender and delicious – but return only to find some aquatic blighter has nibbled the worm right off my rod and scarpered. Survival talents are further tested when I head out for a wilderness skills afternoon. Equipped yet again with an unflattering 'outfit', I clamp into snowshoes – it's like walking on grippy frisbees as they clunk and flap – and make my way into the forest. Our guide points out the Arctic's edible secrets as we wander – blueberries, lingonberries, juniper and even wild rosemary (but don't eat that unless hallucinations are your thing). Spruce is great for tea, he says, as is Old Man's Beard – a plant signifying the air's purity. Luckily, a brew is on the agenda – provided we make the fire first. We're taught how to split birch logs, assemble them like Jenga, position scraped bark on top and use a nifty flint tool to spark our DIY stove alight. Before long, the fire is roaring and a little kettle burbles storybook-style, producing a tasty infusion that Twinings should probably investigate. We're even taught what a female moose's mating call sounds like – part baby mewling, part cat in pain. Fortunately, the cacophony is courtesy of our guide's horn, not a lovesick cow. He's got a special whistle to mimic bird calls, too – Sweden 's answer to Snow White. My fantasy of gliding over the white stuff in a sleigh finally becomes a reality when we take a snowmobile-pulled sled over a frozen lake. Everything in me screams to get off the ice – surely it'll crack at any minute? But no, this ice is thick and the worrisome puddles of water are simply melting snow sitting on the surface. After all, travelling this way is a standard commute here; I regularly spot locals zooming past on snowmobiles. Admittedly, it's not quite as smooth as I'd imagined – I don't exactly feel like a serene heroine from a 19th-century Russian novel as I bump along. And ideally, the soundtrack would be husky barks instead of a rumbling engine… and I'd be enrobed in furs rather than a snowsuit, but then life isn't all Doctor Zhivago (thank goodness). So yes, style-wise, the trip's been a letdown – but the adventures? Anything but. Who needs the Northern Lights when the real magic is right in front of you?
Belfast Telegraph
20-05-2025
- Sport
- Belfast Telegraph
Belfast Giants to learn Champions League opposition: ‘They're not going to walk all over us'
Long gone are the days where, after their first ever game in the competition six years ago, they were compared to the movie 'Slapshot' after stunning Czech side Bili Tygri Liberec. After winning three games two years ago and missing out on the Play-Offs by a point, the Giants are now competitive on the continent. Nobody expects them to win the CHL, that is asking a little bit much of the Elite League champions, but things have now progressed to the point where at Wednesday's pool stage draw in Stockholm they will be looking for winnable ties as opposed to just experiences. And not only that but, as head of hockey operations Steve Thornton outlines, the Giants themselves have become something of a plum draw for Europe's elite. "It's a different experience. They're not going to come in and walk all over us like possibly it was in the early days now. It's quite competitive," says Thornton. "We're playing against a big bunch of teams but we're holding our own, I think. I think there'll be a lot of teams at that draw that are hoping to get us for that kind of experience. And that's actually quite exciting. "I've been fortunate to be able to go to three or four draws now, where you're in the room mingling, and the number of people that are representing teams across here to come up to you with their fingers crossed to get you, because they want that experience, is incredible. "That says a lot about the reputation that we've built up over the last couple of decades for hockey in a country that just didn't have it before. So it's exciting. I've enjoyed it as well, I'm very proud of that." Six different teams from Europe's elite leagues - Austria, Czechia, Finland, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland - await the Giants when the group stage starts in August, three games played on the road and three at the SSE Arena. Although any team they face will be top quality opposition, of particular note are potential reunions with the likes of Swedish champions Luleå, Finnish side Lukko and Austrian heavyweights Salzburg, while Giants fans may hope for a match-up with German outfit Ingolstadt, who have former Belfast defenceman Sam Ruopp on their roster. Although they will be underdogs against just about every other team in the competition, that doesn't mean it's not worth the Giants' time being involved. "When we find out what our road trips are, we do what we can to pull as much out of it as possible," explains Thornton. "If there's something around there that allows us to see what is the best in current practise, being able to compare ourselves, seeing the experiences of some of these European venues, how they recruit, what they do in the locker rooms, things like that. We have no shame, really, in stealing ideas. "We don't want to reinvent the wheel, we just want to do what we can all the time to give ourselves the best chance to win. Sometimes it's those small little one per cents, little things you steal, that make the big difference in the end." The Giants are back in the CHL off the back of another superb season that saw them win a League and Challenge Cup double, taking their haul to ten trophies in the last seven years. "It was certainly stressful," grins Thornton. "But it says a lot about the quality of the League right now. There's quite a few teams that are going to be in the mix year upon year now, and everybody was beating everybody for a good portion of the season, and I think that says that hockey is healthy in the UK. "Any time you win, it makes the summer that much better. So I think, reflecting back on last year after about a month of getting your weekends back, it feels much more like we won a double rather than we lost a triple. And I think that's a good feeling, because it's not easy to win." The Giants were taken down to the final period of the final game by a combined comeback from the Sheffield Steelers and Nottingham Panthers in order to win the League title, a 4-3 overtime success in Nottingham clinching the crown, and that mental load resulted in their Grand Slam bid ending with a shut-out loss to the Cardiff Devils in the Play-Off Semi-Finals. But as much as that stung, Thornton sees it as a positive that the fans were initially upset by the way the season ended, rather than focusing on the rest of the campaign. "We sweated everything possible out of that it was crawling to the line almost to get it was so close to winning nothing. And then the fact that we won two, you look at that as incredible success," he continues. "We're just so fortunate that we've had a good run of five or six years with trophies in the bank. And I'm kind of proud of the fact that there are a lot of people that judge us by winning the wouldn't have said that seven or eight years ago. "So anytime you win something, it's a good season. And it just makes it a lot easier in terms of building a team for the next year, keeping that culture.
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
SDHL Playoff Preview: Luleå vs Skellefteå
First place Luleå will look to win yet another SDHL title. To do so, they'll need to get through upstart Skellefteå first. Here's a look at their opening round SDHL playoff series. In the first round of the SDHL playoffs, which begin on Wednesday, regular season champions Luleå will face off against league newcomers Skellefteå. On paper, Skellefteå is outmatched; they dropped all four contests they played against Luleå this season, and were outscored by a combined 18-6. Luleå boasts five of the league's top 15 scorers and tallied 160 goals this season, 64 more than their eighth place opponents, Skellefteå. Petra Nieminen won the league's scoring title, with 45 points (25g, 20a). No SKE player hit the 30 point mark. Indeed, six of Luleå's players scored more than their opponent's top scorer. Luleå seems to only go from strength to strength: imports Sarah Bujold and Savannah Norcross, though added later in the season, immediately made an impact, each tallying 18 points in 14 and 13 games played respectively. The reigning SDHL champs unsurprisingly led the league in power play success rate at 29.4% and penalty killing at 94.3%. Despite Luleå's undeniable might, Skellefteå has reason to believe. The newest SDHL team has battled hard all season, and celebrated upset wins against both Frölunda and MoDo. They secured a playoff spot despite being docked wins and points in the standings when they league determined they had dressed too many imports for games in the first half of the season. Finnish wing Ida Kuoppala and Dane Nicoline Söndergaard Jensen have been heating up, with 11 and nine points respectively in the team's last ten games. Goaltender Camryn Drever has played exceptionally all season, her first in Sweden after a standout career at the University of Saskatchewan. Finns Aino Karppinen and Sini Karjalainen have shown flashes of brilliance, while Marah Wagner, Mikayla Lantto and young Nikita Bergmann have shown no fear (and a high degree of swag) against some of the league's fiercest opponents. Skellefteå will eventually succumb, but not without putting up a Prediction: Luleå wins series 3-0
