Older residents are sure of their cause.
That the Kalixälven reopens after it has frozen has only happened three times in the last seventy years.
Bengt Lehtola, 66, says that he himself has only been part of it once. But he has been told again that it must have happened once in the 1950s.
The green color worries
But that’s not really what worries the most. It is the color of the water that the older people in the towns around the Kalixälven have reacted to.
In Sweden, scientists have sounded the alarm that the glaciers in the Swedish mountains have melted at record speed this year.
When the meltwater flows into the river, the water becomes cloudy and the color turns green. It is nothing unusual further up in the mountains and in the upper valley – but the fact that there is so much meltwater that the color comes down with it has never been more about Tage Fjällborg, 76, during the entire life he has lived by the river.
– This last summer was absolutely incredible. That we got green water all summer. And that it is still green in the river, he says.
“Everyone must be involved”
Bengt Lehtola agrees. For him, these changes in nature become a warning light that we must do more for the climate.
– It is worrying! We sort rubbish and try, but everyone has to be in the game. This is going fast, he says.
On Monday, scientists at the EU’s climate monitoring service Copernicus announced that 2024 will be the warmest year recorded since temperature measurements began.
In the next part of the series on climate change in Sápmi, you meet a reindeer herder and a meteorologist, both of whom testify to increasingly warmer winters.