Trip to Sweden

[Matt Steinberg]

Hello Everyone,

I hope you all are well during this snowy February. I just recently returned from a 8 day skating trip to Sweden, centered around the Stockholm area. I was not sure whether or not to write up a report but several people asked me to and that in conjunction with the wealth  of information I learned from the Swedes convinced me to do so.There are a lot of things that are applicable here as our skating culture really starts to mature. They are very interested in what's happening in New England. More on that in a bit. 

We had a total of 7 days after travel and spent 6 full days skating. 5 days were on the Baltic Sea and one day on Lake Malaren, a large lake west of Stockholm that is slightly larger than Lake Champlain. Covered in a combination of very light snow cover, thick old black ice, and impressive pressure ridges, this provided a very Champlain-esque experience with very wide vistas and punishing wind. The main difference may have been the half dozen castles standing along the shore. 

The real treat and highlight of my skating life thus far were 5 days on the Baltic Sea. We were lucky enough to have the best conditions since potentially 2010. This was my first time skating on sea ice and I can honestly say I am now addicted. We generally averaged  about 35 miles a day skating from Island to Island in the Stockholm Archipelago and out to the ice line on the open sea. The sea ice has many fascinating characteristics. It is very flexible and stretches and bends significantly before breaking. Hence, there were almost no dry cracks of any significance in the older ice and rafted pressure ridges were almost non existent. The pressure ridges that were present were folded and wet but still insignificant compared to what see on our lakes. Due to the lack of cracks, the ice was very smooth for dozens of miles and even on the hardest black ice it was always just soft enough to keep edge bite so you could skate incredibly fast. On the thinner ice, you would sometimes find yourself in what the Swedes called "hammocks", i.e waves that developed between skaters and due to propagation of waves from the open sea under the ice so it had an almost trampoline affect of bouncing up and down several centimeters while skating. The surface patterns of the ice due to the salt content and how the salt is pushed out of the ice as it forms and the effect that has on the surface and skating was also fascinating to see. Lastly, I love open, vast vistas and skating along the ice line far off the mainland with an endless open ocean in front of you was incredible and humbling.

The Swedes have a 125 year culture of skating and it is highly developed. The Stockholm Skating Club and various subsidiaries have an extremely advanced and robust app based reporting system used by tens of thousands of skaters and various other tools such as an in house  developed site using cloud penetrating imaging to rate ice surface smoothness. There are advanced maps that correlate freeze up times in relation across all water bodies using historical ice in dates, depth, altitude etc and plots all known historically occurring cracks, ridges, hazards, and such things as portage routes and access points for all water bodies in their area. It is incredibly useful and allows members to easily predict conditions and plan routes. I am now a member of the club so if I can figure out my wire transfer for the small yearly fee tomorrow, I will have access to all of these. As mentioned above, the Swedes want to help bring New England into this system as they see us being a potential area for travel as their conditions change. More on this at a later time. 

There are also some lessons to be reviewed on safety. For example,  We have had several discussions this year about rescue. Part of being a member of their clubs is a demonstration of rescue ability and conformity to the same rescue standard. Everyone I met used a backpack for floatation. Attached to that pack was a safety line with a carabiner. Your safety rope sits in an easily reachable sleeve where you can throw it in an instant. If someone falls in and others are near, a rope is immediately deployed and the person in the ice clips it to their carabiner and then uses their pics to self rescue as they are also being pulled by the rope thrower. This is considered to be standard practice. On the other side, my friend and I wore out drysuits and many people we ran into were very interested and saw the usefulness of these and mentioned these should be considered as a safety tool moving forward. There is a lot of room for cross training between the different cultures. Needless to say this was an amazing experience and learning opportunity and I hope to pass along some of the things I learned to our group as well as continue to travel over there in the future and show them more of the beauty and special environment we are so lucky to live in. 

[Martha Cochran]

Wow, you are so lucky, Matt!  Can I ask how you arranged this trip?  Did you know someone over there?  Or did you go when you heard the conditions were prime for being on the Baltic Sea?

On Sun, Feb 22, 2026 at 6:17 PM 'john picone' via NHNordicSkating <nhnordi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

That’s sooo cool Matt!!! The ocean edge is a shockingly beautiful… your host club has been skating there since 1900, but it sounds like a futuristic and highly organized ice community : thanks for this report ( I hope we get to hear more!) John Picone

Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NHNordicSkating" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to nhnordicskati...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nhnordicskating/CAEBbUHWj%2BkrB4%3DYqw-AfEQMc47jSkTRetEOd5pT5GgoRzfL%2Bog%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NHNordicSkating" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to nhnordicskati...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nhnordicskating/202350244.867278.1771802222298%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Evan Perkins]

Awesome, thanks for the report Matt. Most of the best of our safety practices here in New England is because members of our community traveled to Sweden in the past. I think it is good to have regular reminders of the short distance. We have to go to continue to improve standard practices here.

      I think it is also great that you made some connections over there and it would be good. If you would potentially make a post sharing how other folks can make connections to join the clubs and in general what the logistics look like. I'm sure there are many in our community who would be interested in traveling to Scandinavia to Skate at some point. 

    Very cool adventure and I'm so glad you lucked out with your timing in terms of having great ice to Skate there. Evan.

On Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 11:52 AM Chantelle kite <chantel...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Thanks so much for the report and the images, Matt!  Very inspiring and exciting.  I'd love to hear more about how their club thinks the conditions will change that will bring them to our area?

Chantelle 

​​​Remember that Everything is Always working out for you--even when it doesn't feel like it.​  --Abraham Hicks

---

From: adknordi...@googlegroups.com <adknordi...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Matt Steinberg <fios...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2026 11:59 AM
To: NHNordicSkating <nhnordi...@googlegroups.com>; VTNordicskating <vtnordi...@googlegroups.com>; ADKNordicSkating <adknordi...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Trip to Sweden

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ADKNordicSkating" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to adknordicskati...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/adknordicskating/CAEBbUHWj%2BkrB4%3DYqw-AfEQMc47jSkTRetEOd5pT5GgoRzfL%2Bog%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ADKNordicSkating" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to adknordicskati...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/adknordicskating/DM6PR20MB3212A9A5F9C8A940938288C5D577A%40DM6PR20MB3212.namprd20.prod.outlook.com.