26 May Friends Of #HFFH: Stefan Dahlqvist
We’re so lucky to be meeting some amazing people on our journey. When we first planned our trip, it was all about the places and experiences. We’re quickly realizing that it’s the people that make the places more memorable, and really make the experiences.
Our first featured friend is Stefan Dahlqvist.
We first met Stefan when we arrived in Alta, Norway. He looks exactly like what you’d expect a hip Scandanavian dog-loving musher to look like — well dressed with a heavy beard and 11 dogs in tow. Obviously. What you don’t get at first glance, though, is how amazingly talented he is.
Stefan has been a dog musher for the past 10 years. He’s visited some of the most scenic snowy places our world has to offer, including Iceland, Alaska, Sweden and Norway. Being Swedish, he’s had the opportunity to enjoy adventurous weekend trips his whole life, and it has brought him here, to the top of Norway where he stays at Trasti & Trine’s Northern Lights Husky lodge with a dozen of his four-legged Siberians.
But Stefan hasn’t only been a musher. When we first arrived at our cabin, we didn’t even drop off our bags before noticing the arsenal of photographic equipment resting in the living area. It was one of those golden (cue church choir) “aaaaaaaaaaaaaah” moments. Turns out the Panasonic Lumix GX7, GH4 and GH2 all belonged to our new friend, who is a seriously gifted photographer too. He also plays guitar, carves wood, bakes, tells great stories, and had the ability of inspiring us so much, that we’ve started to consider quitting the rest of our journey to become traveling Stefan groupies. Ha. Ok maybe not. But after trawling through Stefan’s gallery, all jaws hit all sorts of floors. Below are some of our favourites from Stefan (it was really, really hard to narrow it down to just 20 snaps), taken over his many adventures. They’re also all available for purchase, so if you find yourself wiping drool off your keyboard, you might just want to keep one (or several) for yourself.
Knowing that we needed to shine the lens on this deft guy, we’ve had some fun with portraiture, and below are our attempts at capturing Stefan and one of his favourite huskies, Taipa (don’t tell the others). We highly recommend you give his Instagram feed a follow too — but only if you don’t mind being gobsmacked with snowy husky wonderlands.
Thank you for taking the below shots of us, Stefan, and for proving that sometimes you just need to follow your gut and give up one life to live the one your heart knows you should.
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