It's a popular misconception among people in Oz that polar bears roam through the suburban streets in Sweden. It's like those myths we endure from foreigners about kangaroos hopping down King William Street in Adelaide. Though at least ours could be a possibility as we do have kangaroos. According to all of the Swedes I speak to, there have been no polar bears in Sweden for over 12,000 years.

Or so they think.....

My friend Wilhelmina met a polar bear in Umeå this week. It's very appropriate in this case that the Swedish word for a polar bear is isbjörn - literally ice bear! It doesn't surpise me in the least that "ice bears" are appearing, as a quick glance at today's weather chart, shows that the Siberian express (a dramatic weather pattern when the jet stream from the pole dives to the south bringing arctic temperatures) has arrived in full force. This is pretty much as Lars-Göran predicted when I quipped about it being a mild winter. Me and my big mouth and my "snow making rituals".



I know we are living in different hemispheres, but my mind still boggles when I read on the same day that snow is covering a freezing Sweden, while in Adelaide the searing heat is taking a toll. In the northern Swedish town of Vajmat it was -40C (yes, that's minus folks) this morning and not much warmer elsewhere in the region. It has snowed continuously for the last two days - a heavy downpour of light, ethereal snow as soft as icing sugar. The howling winds are driving it horizontally across the landscape and outside of my window it looks like a sea of white fog, with big drifts of fluffy white angel dust covering every slope.

Mistress Lambi however was NOT impressed. She took a little coaxing to venture out of her warm bed. When we finally did go outside she immediately wished we were back inside, as her look told me that it seems God has forgotten to pay his heating bills. While my friend in Örebro tells me her little cairn terrier is busy bounding through chest deep snow drifts, Lambi refuses to dip even one of her manicured toenails into the snow. Typical poodle!

As you can imagine, the roads are treacherous, with major pile ups and chain collisions everywhere as people battle the zero visibility and the icy roads. The biggest one yesterday was very close to where we lived in Stockholm:



This accident eventually involved thirty two cars and four semi trailers and left at least ten people seriously injured. It was on the E4 (think Highway 1), just near the turn off for the airport. This road - the main north south route along the country was closed for six hours while rescue teams cleared the accident site. I looked at some of the cars and wondered how anyone came out alive.

Here in Nynäshamn, we are rugged up against the chill, but it's business as usual in centrum.