'It changed the direction of our lives': Dublin cellist Kate Hearne on moving family to Swedish Lapland

Like the roll of a dice — what sent Dublin recorder player and Baroque cellist Kate Hearne to live 200km above the Arctic Circle with her husband, composer Fredrik Österling, and their two young sons. She tells Helen O’Callaghan about life in a place that sometimes feels 'like she has moved to the moon', about the beauty it has brought, the sense of adventure, and the feeling that anything is possible

Dublin recorder player and Baroque cellist Kate Hearne moved to live 200km above the Arctic Circle with her husband, composer Fredrik Österling, and their two young sons. Picture: Rebecca Lundh.

Some months into covid, my husband and I felt we needed a change. Fredrik was CEO of the concert hall and symphony orchestra in Helsingborg in southern Sweden. 

I had very little work, it had dried up for musicians, so I was home with our two boys, aged one and five. Fredrik applied for two jobs — one in Dublin, the other in Kiruna, 200km north of the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland.