About the Book
As we raced wildly across a frozen lake in the middle of nowhere in Lappland, I kept a painfully tight grip on the back of the snowmobile. Exhilarated by the speed and wide-open space but glued to my seat, all I could do was yell. Like so many adrenaline rushes, this ride was also terrifying – I was deathly afraid of falling off and sliding across the ice like an errant hockey puck.
Robert and I had arrived two days before, flying from Stockholm directly to Kiruna and then picking up a car to drive to Gällivare. As we got into our rental, a cacophony of dog barking filled the air. We were next to the sled dog parking area and a team of huskies was eager to take off. I was also excited to be exploring north of the Arctic Circle. There was over two feet of snow on the ground and more was falling lightly as we drove, periodically sharing the otherwise quiet highway with snowmobiles. But we knew we were truly in the Arctic when we passed reindeer casually trotting down the road or with bottoms comically pointed up and heads buried deep in the snow grazing for food.
Traveling to the Arctic Circle had long been on my to-do list. With its springtime combination of long daylight, deep snow, pristine forest, reindeer and the infamous Ice Hotel, it seemed a more wild and exotic twist on Alaska to me. And after the long and dark Stockholm winter, I was eager to explore again.
Off-the-beaten-track adventure trips such as this were something that I never seemed to get enough of in my hometown of Cincinnati. But a move to Europe changed all that. Leaving behind family, friends, a career, house and temporarily a dog, I struck out with my Australian husband to live in Sweden and explore the globe. What happens next in my new life is what I chronicle in my travel memoir I am Not Lagom: One woman’s misadventures living in Sweden and traveling the world.
I am Not lagom is a lively travelogue for anyone who has wanted to travel the world, extend a holiday for a bit longer, learn about a new culture or live in a new land. The wacky adventures of a fun-loving Midwestern magazine writer living in Sweden and traveling the globe will inspire armchair travelers to get over their travel trepidations and break out their passports. The tales – both personal and hysterical – share sharp insight into how a short, dark-haired Cincinnatian fits in with tall, blonde and standoffish Scandinavians, surviving long dark winters while launching a new career and trying to learn a language with whom her only previous connection was the Swedish Chef Muppet.
The cultural immersion starts immediately. From understanding the nuances of how to toast and sing drinking songs at a Swedish dinner and doing the frog dance at a midsommar party to always leaving your shoes at the door and taking a fika break, there are a lot of new rules to learn about how things are done. These traditions are counterbalanced by sampling such Swedish oddities as tunnbrodsrulle – the late-night comfort food of mashed potato, hot dog, shrimp salad and relish wrapped in a tortilla – and the thrill of sailing among the islands of the archipelago in the midnight sun.
Life in Sweden is interspersed with tales of off-the-beaten-path travels to other parts of the world, including:
• four-wheel driving and encountering jumping crocodiles in Australia’s outback,
• cruising and camping in Norway’s troll-infested fjords,
• tracking lions on the kill and watching elephants bathe in South Africa,
• hiking to volcanoes and geysers in other-worldly Iceland,
• and swimming with sharks and encountering other things that will kill you in the Great Barrier Reef.
These are just some of the escapades featured in I am not Lagom. The book is written in a personal, conversational and humorous style that’s a cross between Elizabeth Gilbert, Bill Bryson and Frances Mayes. Check back here for updates.
All text these pages copyright ©2009 Sandra Carpenter. All photographs these pages copyright ©2009 Robert Corkery.
