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'd 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 distance record surpassed mine. As it turned out, among the five of us, it was Carina who held the record on Swedish ice, 170 kilometers in 15 hours. But Johan and Arjen had both skated the 200-kilometer Dutch Elfstedentocht!
Originally published in two Vermont daily newspapers, the Sunday Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus.
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