Going north in Iceland

Northern Iceland used to play second fiddle to the Golden Circle around Reykjavík – but not any more. After Lonely…

Haute cuisine in Val Thorens

How Val Thorens, Europe’s highest ski resort, became one of the world’s least likely gourmet destinations (First published in N…

Feeling the (Kung) Fury

Quite a while ago, in a place quite far north in Sweden, twenty-something FX artist David Sandberg quit his job,…

Vinyl’s groovy comeback

The return of the LP has brought the good times back to Haarlem, the Netherlands, where the world’s biggest vinyl…

The god of small beers

Mikkel Borg Bjergsø started home brewing as a science experiment – then became the original “gypsy brewer” and a craft…

Feeling swell in Portugal

In the late ’70s and early ’80s, a hardy group of locals and an American backpacker turned Ericeira, just north…

Hooked on Lofoten

Tourism may be poised to overtake fishing as the main industry in Lofoten – but it’s still fishing that forms…

How neon lit up Vegas

Neon lighting may have been invented in France and popularised in Jazz-era America – but it reached its peak in…

Hungary’s piano man

This piano represents the first major redesign of the instrument in over a century. Its Hungarian creator has spent more…

Michelin heads outside Copenhagen

With the Michelin judges finally going beyond five Scandinavian cities, why some truly astonishing restaurants should soon be getting the…

Mountain, meet fjord

Until recently, Stranda didn’t have the infrastructure to match the off-piste skiing and stunning fjord views. Now that’s changed, could…

The man who saw the Lights

When Jussi Eiramo stopped his car here in 1973, Kakslauttanen consisted of two reindeer meat storage units. Over 40 years,…

How to make a ski resort

Canadian Paul Mathews is the world’s pre-eminent ski resort designer, having created more than 400 of them around the world.…