Refugees in Sweden's far north

No one was here to greet them. Only a few lights flickered and swayed on the otherwise empty platform as women fruitlessly wrapped hijabs around their faces to protect themselves from the mountain blizzard.

"Where are we? Is this the final destination?" said Alakozai Naimatullah, an Afghan who worked as a U.S. military translator. He wore tennis shoes, buried in the snow.

His words went unanswered in the disorder of arrival. Their bare hands frozen, husbands, wives and children bent over to drag plastic bags filled with worldly possessions over a steep, snowy path to hotel lights a hundred metres below.

They joined around 600 refugees, mainly from Syria and Afghanistan, holed up for two months in Riksgransen. It is some 200 km north of the Arctic Circle and a two-hour bus ride to the nearest town - if the road is not closed by snow.

It is an example of the extremes Sweden is going to in order to house some 160,000 refugees this year in a country of 10 million people.

Shelters range from heated tents to adventure theme parks, straining resources.

The sun never rises in Riksgransen at this time of year and temperatures can plummet to minus 30 degrees Celsius. But the hotel offers food, shelter and security after a dangerous month-long trip from the Middle East by boat, train and bus.

The jovial hotel manager Sven Kuldkepp has helped arrange temporary classes and free sledges for children. There is a gym and boxing classes for adults. A room once used for meditation has been turned into a mosque. Yoga mats now face Mecca.

But the hotel mostly has the feel of an airport lounge with a delayed flight - with a two-month wait. Riksgransen will be home until the ski season starts in February, but many face more than a year's wait until they get news of asylum requests.

Some refugees, only a hundred metres from ski slopes, still dream of Syrian beaches.

Wael al-Shater was a chef at a 60-table restaurant called Sky View in Homs, specializing in chicken. He had aspirations and applied to study as a chef in Cyprus, but never got a visa. He had friends in Dubai but didn't want to live outside Syria.

"Life was so easy. I made $1,200 a month," al-Shater said. "It was so safe that my friends and I used to drive 60 kilometres to the beach just to have a coffee late at night at two in the morning and return home."

But war came. His work day was cut in half as fighting erupted in the streets, and his father died of a suspected heart attack during fighting in Homs.

"I could not take him to hospital. He died on the street," Al-Shater said. He paid $1,200 to be smuggled by boat to Greece some 25 days ago and ended up in Riksgransen with his wife, an English teacher.

"In the end I had no option but to leave or join the killing. Or become a protester and get killed. I had to leave."

Sitting along dark corridors, refugees' faces are illuminated by flickering smartphone screens. Some play video games, others Skype friends. Most, like al-Shater, are eager to share memories, using their phones to swipe through photos.

Trauma and illness abound. Flu and chicken pox already spread through the hotel. But the most common ailment is insomnia, a sure sign, say nurses, of war trauma.

To make matters worse, few refugees venture outside, spending days in rooms. Many fear taking children out in such freezing temperatures, despite tourists spending thousands of dollars to visit a place famed for views of the northern lights.

"This place is like a desert island," said nurse Asa Henriksson in a makeshift clinic by the spa's swimming pool. "It is surrounded by a wall of mountains."