The pictures I took aren't the best, so I thought I'd add that the shrub has yellow-green serrated leaves and pink buds that open to creamy white flowers.

Certainly looks like a hydrangea to me but I could not tell you which one.

One of the cultivars of Hydrangea paniculata....

Are you truly in a zone 1a?
If so, even paniculatas, most hardiest of all, wouldn't make it there in ground.

Technically we are zone 1a, some charts even say 0b. But because we get an enormous amount of snow cover, we can grow plants for zone 3 sometimes even zone 4.

Ha! I'm reading a book now called "If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name" by Heather Lende. Is it true your growing season is extended in the land of the midnight sun? :)

I don't live in the land of the midnight sun, so I don't know about the length of their growing season. But I imagine that their growing season is even shorter then ours. We go by frost dates, we don't plant out until after June 2, and then by mid to late September the frost starts to kill things. The snow cover has nothing to do with the length of the growing season, it just allows us to plant things up to zone 4 depending on the location (IE. how much wind protection the plant will get etc.) As much as I hate the snow, that is one good thing it offers, otherwise my perennial garden would be severely limited!