A Christmas Outdoors with Agnes Maltesdotter | Ulvang

As we approach Christmas, I feel it’s a time to return to what I’ve done since I was little: gathering family, tending to the home, baking, and decorating. I want Christmas to feel warm, and now that I have my son, it’s as if the season has come alive again. It feels incredible to experience it as a mother, side by side with him in our own winter wonderland. It’s as if I get to be that little girl I once was. She shines within me, and for the first time in many years, I see Christmas through my own childlike eyes again. It feels magical to give my son the white Christmas I always dreamed of while growing up in Stockholm, where winters were more often mild than snowy.

It’s the simplicity here that I love: keeping the stove warm with firewood we’ve chopped ourselves, moving through any weather in the freshest air, cooking something warm, and topping our porridge with berries from autumn. I really don’t need much more. If I get to choose, I spend Christmas right here. Among the mountains and pines, with my family close, good food, and miles on skis. We wake up in the cabin, fetch firewood, light the fire, and gather around it while the coffee brews. Then we head out on skis behind the dogs, kilometer after kilometer in the muted light that only the polar night brings. Porridge, Christmas food, games around the tree, and evenings under the stars – that is our Christmas.