Hakim Akbary was one of their number. I first spoke to him in early February before the resort had opened to the public. I asked how he’d felt when he arrived there last October.

He said: “Before I came here, I didn’t know exactly where Riksgränsen was. I was in Piteå because the migration office was trying to find some accommodation for us. Then a lady came and told us we were going on a bus and to take as many warm clothes as you can because we were going to move to a very cold area. I asked her to show it to me on the map but I didn’t really know what sort of place it was going to be.”

“I asked her to show it to me on the map but I didn’t really know what sort of place it was going to be.”

“The bus was around eight hours. We arrived here in the dark but you could feel that there was some snow on the ground; when we were walking you could hear it. The next day I saw the snow. I didn’t expect to see snow in October as we usually see it around December in our country [Afghanistan]. I was not confused but I was surprised. Also in Kabul usually we have snow just on top of the mountain, not all of the mountain.”

In Riksgränsen the sun sets at 5pm in mid-October and doesn’t show at all for much of December and January. I ask if he’d expected that? He says: “Perhaps a week after arriving, I was at the supermarket. There was a pair of sunglasses there and I said: ‘Ok let’s buy this for myself,’ but the cashier told me: ‘You’re not going to need it.’ I said: ‘What do you mean?’ and she said: ‘You’re not going to see the sun for a while, perhaps for two or three months, so the sunglasses are going to be useless.’”

“You’re not going to see the sun for a while…”

How did that make him feel? “When I was in my country I’d studied about some places in the world not seeing the sun for a while and I could not believe it was be true! But then I told myself: ‘Ok what use is the sun? I don’t want to see it. If it’s not going to be there I don’t care about it.’”

“But after a while, I was feeling like I missed the sun, I was thinking the sun should come up. I want to see it somewhere.”

When we spoke in February he’d just taken a day trip to the nearby town of Kiruna and seen the sun for the first time since November, as it had not yet appeared above the mountains in Riksgränsen.

He says: “I liked Kiruna because we could see the sun. The city and people in the city were nice and everything was clean. But the thing was that in my country if you go out at noon you see a lot of people walking in the street buying things but in Kiruna I rarely saw people walking in the street. I think as it was cold. If you walk for 10 minutes then you see one person walking but in my country you walk for 10 minutes and see at least 500 people.”

What about Hakim, was he tempted to ski? “The people in reception promised they’ll teach me how to ski so I’m excited to do that in the ski season.”

Back in February he told me he was hoping to stay and work in Riksgränsen as he’d heard the process for getting asylum was long and “I cannot waste time staying in migration accommodation.” He’d been trying to learn Swedish on Facebook and from the hotel staff.

Do the other refugees want to stay? “Yes! Some people have been driving me crazy to stay. I’m one of the few people who can speak English so people keep coming to my room and asking me to talk to the hotel and convince them. But the hotel cannot just employ over a hundred refugees…”

“People have been driving me crazy to stay… but the hotel cannot just employ over a hundred refugees…”

“They started moving people from here and the first group who were leaving were so excited as they were moving from a mountainous area to a village, but now [when we speak to them] they are saying Riksgränsen is much better.”

What has been so great about Riksgränsen?

“The kindness of the people. They are wonderful here, I admire them. They are the best that I have ever met, I cannot believe that they are this kind. Here they never look at us like refugees they always look at us like human beings who have been fleeing the war, not [people who have] migrated here just to be stupid or something.”

“Here they never look at us like refugees they always look at us like human beings who have been fleeing the war…”

“Everybody who is leaving… the last thing anyone asks is when you go to reception you have to tell them we will never forget their kindness and support. People here in Riksgränsen are wonderful, I really appreciate them.”

You sound very at home? Would you like to come back next winter. “Yes if I feel like there’s an opportunity I’d love to come back, because it’s a great environment here. But there are no jobs here at the end of the season, they close until next year.”

In the UK we often see negative stories about immigration in the news. I wondered if that ever filtered down to Hakim, and if so how it made him feel.

He said: “There was a Facebook page I was following. It was all about migration to Europe but it was giving mostly disappointing news so I stopped following that page because after reading the posts I was feeling sad. But I have heard they’ve closed the border in Macedonia and want to close it to Greece.”

Hakim tells me he feels extremely lucky to have been housed in Riksgränsen. He still speaks to his friends who were moved to different places and many aren’t as happy as him. I ask what he’d have done if he’d been moved to a place he didn’t like. He said: “I would probably isolate myself to my own bed something like that. Not leave my room except for eating food. When they make a decision about your case it’s going to be one or two years so to be isolated for that period you’d go crazy.”