Jeroen(48)

After fifteen years as a lawyer at a large firm in Leiden, I was burned out. My doctor advised a sabbatical, my employer agreed. I had always photographed as a hobby — nature, landscapes, wildlife — and decided to spend a year in Lapland. Jokkmokk, a village of 3,000 inhabitants above the Arctic Circle, became my base.

A sabbatical in Sweden requires planning. As an EU citizen you can stay freely, but without work you don't qualify for folkbokföring. I registered with a samordningsnummer and opened an account at Nordea with my Dutch passport. Managing without a personnummer was tricky — no BankID, no Swish (the Swedish payment app) — but it worked.

Jokkmokk is the cultural center of the Swedish Sami. The annual Jokkmokks marknad in February attracts 30,000 visitors to this small village — a four-hundred-year-old tradition of trade, music and reindeer racing. I photographed everything: the northern lights above the Lule älv, reindeer in the snow, Sami artists with their duodji (handicrafts).

After six months I knew I didn't want to go back. I resigned by email, registered an enskild firma at Skatteverket, and started selling my photos through stock photography and my own exhibitions. Income was modest, but costs in Jokkmokk are low: my rent is 4,500 SEK for a one-bedroom apartment. Groceries are more expensive than in the Netherlands due to the distance, but the difference is manageable.

The climate in Lapland is extreme. In January it can reach minus forty. Snow covers the ground from October to May. But it's also magical: the northern lights appear hundreds of nights per year, the midnight sun in June is surreal, and the silence is so deep you can hear your own heartbeat. I've learned to photograph outdoors at minus thirty with insulated gloves and batteries in my coat pocket.

My advice: a sabbatical doesn't have to be an endpoint. It can be a starting point. I now earn a third of what I earned as a lawyer, but I'm happier than ever. I've taken out a-kassa as a safety net through Arbetsförmedlingen. My photos are published in National Geographic Nordic and Swedish nature magazines. Jokkmokk is my home — small, cold and perfect.