By Henry Carey, with more to come from Matt Ho.
I left Orange County’s freeways, strip malls, and donut shops behind on May 30, and didn’t stop moving for 18+ hours. A transatlantic flight, a layover in Stockholm, then one final short hop north. Nine time zones ahead of Pacific, and by the time I landed, my body had completely given up trying to keep track.
The layover in Stockholm was the first sign that something was different up here. It was about 10pm, and yet through the terminal windows the sun was still sitting orange on the horizon like it had forgotten to go down.
The final flight north stretched that sunset out for nearly two hours. It just refused to end — amber, then deep orange that somehow never really disappeared from my window seat view. On June 1, the sun in Skellefteå didn’t rise until 2:47 AM and the night before, it didn’t set until 10:52 PM. The sky never fully goes dark this time of year. It just gets a little less bright, and then the whole thing starts over again.
I landed close to midnight. Stepping off the plane onto the tarmac, the first thing that hit was the smell — cold, clean alpine air rushing in after 18 hours of recycled cabin air. Farmland and quiet Nordic architecture sat just beyond the runway, and the whole scene was calm in a way that felt almost unfamiliar. Skellefteå is a city of about 40,000 people, and coming straight from Orange County the contrast was hard to miss. Trees instead of freeways, stillness instead of congestion.
The Wood Hotel rises up from the city center in warm timber and clean Scandinavian lines, built almost entirely from locally sourced wood. You feel it immediately walking in — the walls, the ceiling, the corridors all carry that same quiet warmth. Our room had a sloped timber ceiling and a huge window looking out over the rooftops of the city. After everything it took to get there, laying down in that bed was a well earned reward.
Jet lag got us up early, which turned out to be fine. Breakfast downstairs was exactly what you’d want after a journey like that — local berry jams, thick yogurt, crispy bacon, sausage, and wellness shots to help out my immune system.
The people are warm but low-key, but picking up even a few words seems to go a long way. Hej or Hiya for hello, tack for thank you. Lagom for not too much and not too little.
18 hours and 9 time zones. Worth every one of them. Matt will pick it up from here in the next post. What a long-winded but lovely start to the trip, I’m so grateful to be here.
