A family business — through generations

Sven Engholm is Swedish, and in his early twenties he went looking for a place to build a life away from cities and everything that comes with them. He looked across Scandinavia and as far as Canada before he found what he was after in the far north of Norway: clean air, untouched country, an enormous amount of space — and, improbably, easy to reach, with airports at Alta, Lakselv and Ivalo within a few hours' drive. What decided it, he says, was the light: the exotic light, the darkness, and the great plateau.

The dogs came first, and by accident. In 1974 he needed something to help him haul his tent and equipment around the mountains, and the answer was a sled dog. Within three years he was racing. In 1979 he and his then wife Ellen started guiding dog sledding trips, and they first rented a house. Then, in 1986, they acquired a plot of land from the municipality and began building here along the Kárášjohka river — the beginning of what is now Engholm Sled Dog and Adventure Lodge.

What happened next put Karasjok on the sled-dog map. Sven and a handful of other mushers wanted a real long-distance race in Finnmark, and in 1981 they ran the first Finnmarksløpet, from Alta to Karasjok. He entered it every year until 1994 and won it eleven times — a record that still stands — and then retired at the top, taking the open class in his last race. He won Femundløpet in 1992 and 1994, finished third in the Beargrease in the United States, and went to Alaska four times for the 1 800-kilometre Iditarod, placing ninth in 1999. Between the races came the expeditions: Spitsbergen, Greenland, Siberia. Finnmarksløpet is now the longest sled dog race in Europe, and several generations of mushers have grown up in its wake.

The lodge grew in the gaps. Cabins are summer work — the season when it is too warm for the huskies to run — and Sven has built every one of them himself, slowly, one at a time. “You have to take it slowly,” he says, “otherwise it can overwhelm you.” The materials come from the country around the lodge: pine heartwood from the forest, slate from Alta, turf on the roofs, leather, antler and hide from animals that lived here. He finds things on summer walks and autumn hunts, marks the spot on a map, and comes back for them by dog sled once the snow is down. Every handle, table and bed frame in the eight cabins was made in the workshop behind the main house. None of them have televisions.

While Sven was away at the races and on the ice, Liv's mother Ellen ran the business at home. Liv grew up in it, went to school in Karasjok, trained as an officer in the Norwegian army, and has guided full-time since 2006; twenty years ago she and her husband Thomas founded Turgleder, the skiing and expedition side of the family. The two businesses are now one, which is why a dog sled and a pair of skis sit under the same roof.

Along the way the place has been named a National Geographic Traveler “Tour of a Lifetime”, listed by Rough Guides among the world's twenty best animal encounters and by Forbes Travel Guide among the five most stunning cross-country skiing spots on earth. Sven's own summary is shorter: “I built up to what we have today which has, with the years, become the success I had hoped for when I started 1979.”

Why we do this

We chose this path as a way of turning what we love into a way of living. We wanted to spend our time outdoors — skiing, mushing, being in nature — and we wanted to share it. That is the whole of it. We didn't step on a sled yesterday, and we didn't start mushing to make money: when Sven fell in love with it, dog sledding was not the popular thing it has become in this part of the world. Our job is not work. It is a privilege, and after all these years guests keep turning into friends and coming back.

It also means nobody here is a passenger. You drive your own team, you help feed and harness the dogs, you learn to read the weather and the snow. We would rather you left able to do something than merely having watched someone else do it. The dogs are not scenery either — fifty Alaskan huskies, bred for endurance, living outdoors all year, and every guest is welcome in the yard to meet them.

Leave no trace

Nature in northern Norway is wild and rugged, but also frail and precious. When we started in tourism it was always with the idea of leaving no trace and making the least impact possible — to preserve the thing we love most for the generations after us. To this day that is still the driving force behind the decisions we make for the business.

The Arctic is tough and unforgiving, and at the same time beautiful and vulnerable. It can be pure and perfect, and it is easy to spoil; any mark left in this landscape takes a very long time to heal, and that is something we ask you to carry with you while you are here. From our inception we have been conscious of enjoying nature on nature's terms — whatever we do, we aim not to disturb the environment around us or the creatures that call it home. It is one of the reasons we travel behind dogs and on skis rather than behind engines.

It is also why we keep the groups small. A small group leaves a smaller footprint on the environment and a bigger footprint in your heart. When we are fewer we have the chance to see and get to know each one of you, which makes for a closer, richer and more intimate experience of this place — and it is why the dining room seats twelve and not fifty.

The same thinking, indoors

It runs through everything else too. The cabins are built by hand from what the forest and the mountains here give, which is both the reason they look the way they do and the reason there are eight of them and not eighty. At dinner there is no farmed meat or fish: what is served is reindeer, moose, elk and lamb from this district, char and salmon and whitefish from these waters, berries and mushrooms from the ground outside, and vegetables from our own garden and greenhouse. There is one long table, one dish a day, and everybody eats together.

None of this is a programme or a certificate. It is simply how the family has worked here since 1979, and what the people who work with us take on when they join.

Handcrafted

Almost nothing here was bought. Sven built the cabins himself, one summer at a time, in the months when it is too warm for the dogs to run — and no two are alike. The pine came from the forest around the lodge, the slate on the floors from Alta, and the leather, antlers and hides from animals that roamed this same land. Much of it was found before it was made: a twisted birch spotted on a summer hike or an autumn hunt, far from any road, marked on the map and fetched home by dog sled once the snow came. In the workshop it became what you now sit on, sleep in and eat from — beds edged with twisting birch branches, tables and benches that hang from the ceiling, eggcups made from reindeer antler and door handles cut from birch burr.

The workshop never really closes. The sleds the teams pull and the fur-hooded leather anoraks that staff and guests wear on the trail are made here too, with traditional tanning and sewing, and mended here when the trail has had its say. It is why the lodge looks the way it does, and why it is called a design lodge — not because anything is minimal, but because everything was thought about, and made, by hand.