Flying into Lulea the earth looks like an endless stretch of snow and ice. Boat channels, carved into frozen estuaries, snake their way from the harbour of the small industrial town through a labyrinth of islands to the Gulf of Bothnia, a thumb of water linked to the Baltic Sea.
On the ground, reindeer prints mark the snow, slowly melting to slush as the spring temperatures gradually rise.
Established in the 17th century, Lulea was best known for its remoteness near the Arctic Circle, in far northern Sweden.
Then, in 2011, Facebook declared it was creating a data centre here, making the town a major data hub in Europe.
Hotels and cool lifestyle venues have followed.
The best-known of these is Treehotel (doubles from $670 including breakfast; see treehotel.se), a clutch of small eclectic and eccentric cabins floating inside a birch forest in Harads, an hour inland from Lulea.
One cabin, Spaceship, is a hovering UFO accessible by pull-down ladder; another, Mirrorcube, has walls that echo the surrounding landscape.
I sleep in the Cabin, a 24-square-metre cube of cosiness suspended high in the trees and accessible by a long wooden ramp.
With a double bed and two fat cushions, and views stretching over the Lule River Valley, it would verge on luxury if I didn't need to pee into a paper cup and venture outside to wash in the communal sauna.
Being with nature, in all senses, is just what owners Britta and Kent Lindvall want guests to feel.
The former public servants tramp around in gumboots discussing Viking things like fishing, hunting and Norway, the golden thorn in the Swedish side.
The joke goes: "We would like to declare war on Norway and then surrender and live off their public purse".
That night, Britta cooks a Viking meal using ingredients from a nearby farm, the forest and frigid ice-crusted rivers.
We start with Arctic char, caught the day before, marinated in beer overnight and served with lingonberries, a tart bright red fruit that grow on a stubby shrub.
It is followed by slithers of gamey and very tender braised reindeer topped with wild mushrooms and herb infused potato mash.
Back in Lulea, Simon Laiti has opened Hemma Gastronomi (hemmagastronomi.se) an interactive kitchen, deli, cooking school and restaurant.
Used to remote places, Laiti was 20 years old when he opened a 150-seat restaurant in a village of 20 people in the Arctic Circle. His goal now is to highlight the Arctic pantry; the products unique to this cold and inhospitable terrain.
There is gorgeous bright orange roe of the pike perch and thinly sliced smoked reindeer meat; delicacies recently awarded protection of origin by the European Union.
The toothsome reindeer salami, a slightly tart and salty sausage made from the Arctic's four-legged friends goes perfectly with a glass of red and a warm fire; fitting matches to the blustery spring cold.
The writer was the guest of Visit Sweden.
