Above the Arctic Circle in late June, the sun never fully sets. We hunted elk in amber light at 2am, crossed rivers swollen with snowmelt, and slept for four hours while the sky stayed pale gold. A week in Swedish Lapland changes how you think about wilderness.
Above the Arctic Circle in late June, the sun never fully sets. The horizon glows amber at midnight, turns pale gold by 1am, and the birds — which never quite fall silent — begin their full chorus again by 3am. It is disorienting in the best possible way.
We arrived in Arjeplog on a Wednesday evening in late June. The hunting party: four of us, with Erik as guide and his assistant Lars handling the two Jämthund dogs. The target: adult bull elk in their summer territory before the velvet hardens.
Day 1–2: Learning the ground
The first day is always reconnaissance. Erik walked us through the terrain — mostly boreal spruce and pine, cut by two rivers swollen with snowmelt, interspersed with open mires where elk come to feed on aquatic vegetation in the long evening light.
"The mires are everything," Erik said. "In June, the elk spend six, seven hours a day in the water. Mosquitoes drive them there as much as food."
We glassed from elevated ground on the first evening and counted eleven elk on a single mire — cows with calves, a young bull, and one heavy mature bull at the far edge, wading to his belly.
Day 3: First approach
The wind was west-southwest, steady. We made a long arc through the spruce to approach the mire from the eastern edge. Lars held the dogs back 300 metres. Erik and I went forward.
At 2:17am, in full golden light, we were within 180 metres of the bull. He stood in water to his shoulders, head submerged, feeding on waterweed. We waited. He would not present a clean shot while standing.
At 2:44am, he moved. Walked to shallower water. Lifted his head. The shot broke at 195 metres, downhill, quartering away — textbook. He ran 40 metres and went down in the spruce.
What Lapland does to you
There is a quality to time in the Arctic summer that is unlike anything in ordinary life. Without dark to punctuate the day, you lose the usual markers. You eat when you are hungry. You sleep when your body demands it. You move when the light and the wind and the animals align, which is not at 6am or 6pm but at 2am and 11pm and 4am.
By Day 5, I had stopped looking at my watch entirely. I was, for the first time in years, living on natural time. The hunt was no longer a scheduled activity. It was a continuous state of readiness.
That, more than any trophy, is what Lapland gives you.
Erik Lindqvist
Wildlife Guide & Elk Hunter, Jämtland, Sweden