James Proctor first came across all things Nordic as a student. After mistakenly wandering into a Swedish lecture, he soon realised that his native Yorkshire dialect, liberally laced with dozens of old Viking words, would make learning the off-beat Scandinavian language a doddle. So began a love affair with Sweden and other Nordic countries which has lasted 30 years (and counting). A former BBC Scandinavia correspondent who presents a regular show on his local North Yorkshire radio station, he has become an experienced travel writer specialising in Nordic countries. He has written or co-written Bradt’s Svalbard, Faroes, Lapland and West Sweden guidebooks and co-authored other travel guides to Iceland, Reykjavík, Sweden and Finland. He welcomes snow, ice and howling wind as exactly the charm of the Nordic region – it’s wild, it’s unspoilt and it’s relatively undiscovered. Planes that fly south are not really James’s thing.