1. What was your overseas orienteering and study goal? 
I’d heard good things about orienteering and life in Sweden so I thought I’d try and experience this while still studying towards my degree.

2. How did you choose your exchange destination? What was the criteria? 
There were only a few destinations that allowed me to study civil engineering papers while on exchange. I’d heard good things about Uppsala and was thinking about studying here but this was not possible with my degree. Lund was an option in Sweden, so I thought I’d give that a go. 

3. What was it like joining a new orienteering club? What was your first event? 
I emailed someone from Lunds OK asking about trainings and joining the club and someone got back to me right away. It did take me a few weeks to actually go after getting used to the cold though. The club had a ride share Facebook group and managed to meet a lovely bloke named Jan to give me a ride to training, who gave me rides throughout my time in Lund. First event was a night star relay training, which happened to fall on a school holiday week so there were only about 10 people present compared to the usual 40-50 people. Despite this it was fun running in snow in the dark on a new map! The next weekend I went to my first race at the Sverigepremiaren orienteering event, which was surprisingly sand dune terrain like at home in Christchurch. This went well apart from the Friday evening Night-O mass start which took me about 2 hours to do 20km, with a dying head torch at the end!

4. What do you think the club specialised in, or did well?
Lunds OK felt like a family club like PAPO, with a good mix of ages running. It was a great community to be a part of during my time in Lund. They had a very good training schedule, with trainings twice a week. Orienteering on Tuesdays then intervals on Thursday, town in Winter and Forest in the spring/summer. The O trainings mainly used the Skyrlle forest just out of Lund by the clubhouse, but trainings moved around to other forests near Lund and Malmö. There were only a few other students, with most students at Lund hanging out at the student nations or according to Jan having no where to do laundry. So not many elites, with faster local runners running for nearby clubs such as Pan Kristianstad or moving elsewhere. Despite this Lund has some fast junior runners, with Lunds OK member Elsa Ehrenborg recently gaining 7th place at EYOC long for Sweden and being selected for the Sweden national team this year.

5. What were the local maps like to run on?
The maps around the Skåne region were quite continental, not the typical technical Swedish forest you would expect. A bit less detail, but very fast running and it was nice to be able to run on these maps in winter compared to further north when this would not be possible with snow. There were lots of ticks on these maps as well which was quite different to back home! Some maps to the east of Malmö were on hills formed by glacial deposits which gave some slightly hillier maps nearby as well.

6. You were on camera and met some video podcasters. Tell us more.
Being at most Swedish events meant most of the Swedish Orienteers you see on the World Cup and WOC broadcasts were competing. This meant having world champion runners in the forest around you such as Kaspar Fosser, Albin Ridefelt and Gustav Bergman! It was also cool to make it onto the YouTube channels of some prominent orienteering YouTubers who ended up following me for a portion of their race. These were Hugo lilleström at the Swedish ultralong champs and Göran Winblad in the first leg of Tiomila. 

7. What other memorable events, maps or terrain did you experience in Europe? 
Racing the last leg of Jukola in Finland was a great experience! I joined OK Pan Kristianstad’s second team thanks to a connection in Lunds OK, and it was great to travel with a great bunch of competitive orienteers from all around Europe. Finland was such a beautiful country, with lakes and forest as far as the eye could see on the drive to the event. The terrain in Idre fjäll for the first world cup was also very special, with lovely runnable forest and intricate technical contour detail in the Swedish wilderness. And of course the world rogaine champs in Spain with Will Tidswell was an amazing race to finish off my Europe experience!

8. What were your best results racing for your new club?
It was quite hard to get some good results racing against some of the best Swedes in their home terrain, but coming 136th out of 340 people on the first leg of Tiomila was good for Lunds OK. Considering the clubs start position was about 300th, and I only made one mistake this was good! Another highlight was coming 2nd in the Skåne sprint relay champs.

9. Have these experiences given you any ideas for orienteering in NZ?
The consistent orienteering training schedule the club had was quite good, as back home PAPO doesn’t usually have a consistent schedule of weekly Orienteering throughout the entire year. The Swedes also did a lot of night orienteering, probably due to the lack of daylight during the winter, which I found really tested your navigation and would be good to do more of. Another cool thing was that most Orienteering clubs in Sweden had their own clubhouse, so this could be a nice addition for PAPO at bottle lake.
I also found the Swedish Orienteering Federation had a great system for their events and administration on their eventor website. It was a great centralised website for all things orienteering including events, entries, club activities and trips, news and more, all in one place.

10 . If you were to go back overseas and join a club again, where would you choose next?
I really enjoyed the couple of weekends I spent in Göteborg staying with other orienteers. The terrain here was very rocky and fun, and the distance from the city to the bush was not very far at all. I’m not sure what club I would join there, but the city and orienteering terrain was very cool and I’d love to go back there!