Emily Thornberry MP's Blog

Slideshow

The Guardian has a slideshow of amazing photos from the Arctic challange. Click here to watch it.

All done

Woke very tired on Thursday. Our last trip was to the Trinations border where Norway, Sweden and Finland meet. We had wonderful views.

I climbed onto the border monument with the other MPs and had my photo taken with Martin Field, the fund-raising director of The Children's Society.   

There was a great sense of achievement. It has been hard work, but worth it. The journey back was very hard. It was very cold and all my adrenaline went. I could hardly hold onto the sled.

My final sled ride of the trek

I eventually back onto the coach for the trip back to Jukkasjärvi. On the way, we stopped at the Ice Hotel that was used by James Bond. It looked too much like an igloo for me!

It's strange being back with people outside the group I've been travelling with for the last week. We met the local journos and politicians. I have a copy of the local paper, but have no idea what it says!

Northern lights

We've seen northern lights for four nights in a row. On the second night it was quite spectacular.

The lights move, shimmer and drop as you watch them. The look like a Ballerina's tutu shimmering and waving. There were also huge swirls in the sky, like stirring cream into coffee. At other times the sky would glow dully and then suddenly sparkle.

There was a bit of colour in it - green and pink - though nothing like it comes out in the photos. The photos also don't quite capture the beauty of how the lights move and develop. You can have a look at the photos here.

Slow dogs

Wednesday was a really long day. We went to the top of the world on a mountain range. We got to the a plateau and had a 360 degree view of mountains glowing in the sunshine. We had lunch there.

Norwegian Mountains

Lunch on top of the world

I have five dogs rather than four,  but they've turned out to be slower that the four dog teams. King dog wants to be leader, but is rubbish at mushing.  He had to be put at the back, but he finds that too degrading and so can be a bit troublesome. I end up having to help push the sled up the hill, and also the flat. Tobias Ellwood, who is two sleighs behind me, even accepts that I have to work harder than everyone else. Since I'm keeping up with everyone it seems unlikely that I'll get faster dogs.

Arctic trek on ITV's London Tonight

ITV's London tonight will be showing coverage of the Arctic trek from 6pm tonight and 6pm tomorrow.

Tune in to see more snow, huskies and igloo building!

Valentine's eve in a spermaladeco

Valentine's eve was a hard day. It was cold with grey snow ladened sky.

The pulled muscle was quite undermining as it affects so much of what I wanted to do. I couldn't walk in deep snow or push on the sled very easily. I couldn't even get on the snow mobile for a lift because my leg just didn't work. Tobias said as I hobbled to the sled "How's morale Emily?". I said "awful Tobias, awful".

Having said that though, when we were due to leave, I was trying to get the anchor/grapple thing out of the ground and not doing all that well. I couldn't pull it out. In fact, I couldn't even get down to pull it out. It had also frozen into the ground. In the gym, Serbo was making me do dead-lifts of 80 kilos and now I couldn't even lift an anchor! Hugo, who is the guy in charge of the dogs, started shouting at me. Whilst I was shouting back at him that I was trying, Tobias came over and pulled the anchor out for me, which was really sweet of him.

Things really started going down hill when I couldn't find Margaret's St. Christopher. I realised that I had dropped it. I was either somewhere in the snow or in my suit. I managed to find it eventually and felt much better having done so. After lunch, I fell again when the slender lady dogs were up to their tricks. They kept stopping to file their nails and have a chat. The snow got very deep and I couldn't scoot to help them. It was hopeless.

The best part of the day was the fishing. Tiasto, a man who wears nothing but seal fur, was in charge of teaching us how to fish. He was very polite but clearly convinced that we weren't going to catch anything. We all gamely dangled our rods into holes in the ice. The fishing rods looked like toys, which underlined our attitude that it was all a bit of a laugh.

Tiasto looking for fish

But my line twitched. I told the man with me, who's name I don't know. He is referred to as "Marcus's sidekick" or "the Norwegian". He didn't believe me but the line twitched again and he was less sure. I started to reel it up anyway and blow me there was a fish on the end. I screamed. Fish and line and hook plunged back into the hole, but the Norwegian shoved his arm into the water and caught. It was a huge freshwater burbot. It was gutted and the fish liver and roe left out to freeze. The rest of the guts were about to be discarded and Nick Clegg said this would surely cement my reputation as a woman not to be messed with.

I felt enormously proud of myself. I had never been fishing like that ever before and had managed to catch a fish in ten minutes. My morale, Tobias, was pretty good by that stage.

I was exhausted when we got to the hut. No water or electricity. But we did have a fire, cooker, beds and a spermaldeco (Sami for "sperm box").

That evening, It turned out to be cooler inside Meerilees' sleeping bag than it is outside. This was because her bag has been in the sled all day and although we got to the hut at 4pm it still hasn't fully frozen.

We managed to get the fire going as we cooked for everyone. Everyone crowded in for supper and it was really warm. In fact, it was -26 C outside the hut and +26.5C inside! We had to cook with melted snow, by candlelight. We couldn't cook the fish because it had frozen, so we left it to thaw and had it for breakfast.

Frozen

My hair, eyelashes and eyebrows froze. Even the inside of my nose froze.

Arctic wisdom - day 7

Dog sled Kilpisjarvi - Trination Meeting Point - Kilpisjarvi

Today we make a return trip with the dogs to the meeting point of Finland, Norway and Sweden where we cross our third national border.

We will head back to the hotel to part with our thermals and say our thanks and goodbyes to our huskies.  Hopefully we will then be celebrate by eating in a local restaurant and explore more Sámi food. 

Traditional Sámi food can be summed up in two words: meat and fish.  These would be supplemented with herbs and berries when available. Being vegetarian wasn't really an option for the Sami. Much of the meat was from reindeer, which provided excellent nutrition. Every piece of the deer was used, even the skull and blood. The intestines and the reindeer’s stomach can be cleaned and used to make black pudding and buoidecalmmas (a type of smoked, minced reindeer meat mixture).  In the past, the reindeer were milked and cheese was produced, but this is not done any more.

The Sámi dishes have not changed, but new dishes have been added. Renkok is reindeer stew.  Fresh reindeer meat is cooked with a piece of fresh liver, bread baked with blood and rye flour, as well as black pudding made of reindeer blood and flour.  This is eaten with potatoes, soft, sticky bread and a drink of broth.  Dried reindeer meat must is also known as a delicacy.

In the summer months the Sámi picked all the edible berries they could find to gain necessary vitamins.  In the past a green porridge was made from mountain sorrel and/or buds of the angelica flower which were boiled to make a pulp, then heated with reindeer milk until it thickened.  This could then be stored in a keg for the winter months.

I am told that it was the men in the nomadic society that carried out all the cooking.  Only in exceptional circumstances were women allowed to stir the stew!

Arctic hut

We spent Monday night in this Reindeer herder hut, and saw the most wonderful northern lights. It had no electricity, but had water, unlike the next night. The four women shared this hut, and there were two other huts for the men.

Two horse race?

Monday's trek was cold. Hair, eyelashes, eyebrows and even the inside of my nose froze.

On the upside, I had a new turbo powered team of huskies for the morning. On the downside, my team got changed in the afternoon for one that wasn't quite so turbo charged. They didn't like hills. After a while they decided that they didn't like flat either. By the end of the afternoon, I felt like I had been carrying the poor dears, and the sled, most of the way.

I also got a groin injury. I thought you had to be a footballer to get one of those. It seems not though.

Towards the end of the day we had a bit of a Ben Hur moment. I was having problems with the dogs on the hills, and Jenny Willott's dogs kept trying to pass me. I had a flash of "it's a two horse race" pass before my eyes. Lucky for both of us that we were in the Arctic and not a Roman circus!