WHERE TRAIL WILL TAKE YOU
Want to walk on the wild side, but kip in comfort? Sweden’s 440km 'King's Trail', the Kungsleden, travels through some of Europe’s most spectacular scenery with simple but affordable cabins (plus a sauna or two) along the way. A royal adventure indeed.
Nothing eases the aches and pains of a long day’s walking like it...
The UK is an island of great beauty; no-one’s debating that. Rolling hills, drystone walls, homely pubs and long rambles give everyone cause to sigh at our green and pleasant land. However, if the UK is short of anything, it’s true, boundless, days-from-anywhere wilderness. Our population density is high, our land mass small, and sometimes it feels difficult to really get off the beaten track, especially once you’ve given the Scottish Highlands – our one exception – a thorough exploration. In England it’s an expedition just trying to find somewhere with no phone signal.
...the terrain just seems so ancient ...
Vast mountainscapes; deep, verdant valleys; large land mammals – this is where my mind wanders on a weekday morning while I’m cycling through the London smog. How far, I often wonder, can one physically get from public transport of any kind? However, despite my desires to ‘pull a Proenneke’ (look it up), I’m no Ray Mears (or Bear Grylls, depending on your allegiance). I want to explore the wilderness, but without nearly killing myself in the process – I want to push myself physically in a way that is exciting, not backbreaking.
Enter: the Kungsleden. The Swedish ‘King’s Trail’ is a hiking route that runs from Abisko, a small village about 250km inside the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland (that’s around latitude 68 degrees north, GPS geeks) to Hemavan, some 440km further south. The trail trickles down through some of Europe’s last remaining wilderness, passing through high mountain ranges and vast forests along the way. A couple of things got me particularly excited when I first began reading about it.
Firstly, the latitude. I’ve always been obsessed with the far north (I guess I’ve always found it to be very magnetic… anyone?). Conditions are simply so different up there that this in itself makes for a stimulating travel experience. The weather is extremely changeable, often at very short notice. The skies are enormous, and the stars spectacular, not to mention the Northern Lights, which are increasingly common the further north you go. Also – and this is a little tricky to articulate exactly – the terrain just seems so ancient. The mountains are so bare it feels as if the tectonic plates have smashed into each other and bent, curling clumsily skywards, only moments before your gaze hits them. The heather, wild flowers and brushy little shrubs synonymous with arctic tundra are so low it’s as if they’ve forced their way through the cracks in the rocks just before you turned the last corner, and will recede sleepily the minute you’ve passed by. Add to this the relative isolation of the trail, and the entire environment feels like it exists purely for your own personal indulgence.
Secondly: cabins. Cabins are the epicentre of any true would-be-wood-sperson’s daydreams, doodles and delusions. The Swedish wilds are peppered with cabin accommodation owned by the Swedish Tourist Association (the STF), and the Kungsleden’s are manned and operating from mid-June to the end of September. They are situated sensibly along the trail, always an achievable day’s hike apart. This means walkers have the opportunity to undertake ambitious, multi-day hikes without having to carry a tent, roll mat or even a sleeping bag – dorm rooms contain bunk beds with blankets and pillows provided; just bring a sleeping bag liner and it’s zzz's ahoy. Carrying your food, a change of clothes, a small stove and a few other essentials only requires a 45 litre pack weighing around 10kg. If you want to take it further, most of the cabins have small
butiks, or shops, where you can feed yourself each night using the gas and kitchen provided in the dorms. It’s credit card hiking and this option isn’t cheap. But everything sold during the winter is brought in on snowmobiles, so fair enough.
Besides the sheer practicality, these cabins do feel like an adventurous alternative to camping as opposed to a comfy cop-out. They are heated entirely by wood burners, meaning that sawing and chopping fuel is a communal responsibility (and this isn’t the UK so don’t expect an axe safety induction). Equally the buckets of delicious, glacial water that sit on the side in the kitchen need to be filled periodically from the stream or lake, and the waste water buckets under the counter have to be emptied too. No-one enforces these chores, and noone will say anything if you freeload; yet I didn’t see a
single person roll into camp who didn’t swing the axe for 20 minutes before dinner and carry some wood inside. Many of the cabins also afford their guests the luxury of a wood-powered sauna; in fact my partner Alice and I managed to engineer it such that we availed ourselves every night of our trip! There are typically separate female and male sessions for the sake of Brits and Americans; and then a longer, mixed session afterwards.
Everyone wears their birthday suit and communally keep the wood burner going, intermittently sloshing river water onto the hot coals. In an adjacent room, water heated on the wood burner can be used to have a wash afterwards. Every 20 minutes or so you’ll get hot enough to actually follow the Swedes as they jog jauntily and still naked down for a quick plunge in the river. Nothing eases the aches and pains of a long day’s walking like it, and Swedish saunas are incredibly social spaces where news of the trail ahead and anecdotes of the trail gone by rise with the steam.
Alice and I hiked the northernmost 105km, the bit most frequently walked by first-timers on the Kungsleden, and the part generally considered to be the most awe-inspiring in its scenery. Sections of the trail further south are at lower altitudes and are greener, buggier and more forested. This northerly section that runs from Abisko down to Kebnekaise (the first
place you can exit the trail and also the base camp
fjällstation for Mt Kebnekaise, Sweden’s highest mountain) is mostly wide, open, alpine terrain. The trail follows a series of valleys south (or north – you can walk it either way) so the hiking is usually parenthesised by towering mountain walls with snowy peaks just visible. It is mainly rocks and mud, hardpacked in places; loose and shingly in others. Anywhere it runs through muddy, boggy or impassable terrain, boardwalks keep your boots dry and some of the following rocky sections offer welcome relief.
There is excellent marking all along the trail, such that it is basically impossible to lose your way. Rocks or trees are emblazoned with red paint and the winter trail, which runs alongside the summer trail much of the time, is marked by red wooden crosses on tall poles, making things even easier. Add to that the fact the trail follows the aforementioned valleys and you’d have to go on a serious uphill trek to accidentally get lost.
We started and finished our hike from Kiruna, Sweden’s most northerly city and home to the world’s largest iron ore mine (a mine so voracious in appetite that Kiruna and its 20,000 citizens are moving 3km east to dodge the path of the mining). Starting and finishing our hike in one place allowed us cheaper travel costs and the luxury of left luggage. Kiruna is good for a solid platter of reindeer and a few beers at the end of a week of hiking, but not much else, and I’d recommend getting straight to the trailhead.
We flew to Kiruna from Heathrow with an hour layover in Stockholm; but the Arctic Circle sleeper train from Stockholm to Narvik, Norway also stops at Kiruna. From there, two buses a day travel to the trailhead in Abisko, about 80 minutes north-west. Our flight got in during early evening and after the last bus to Abisko had already left so we stayed at Kiruna’s STF hostel. Unlike the STF cabins along the trail, this hostel is the same as you would find in any other city – basic, sparse rooms but clean, inexpensive and with a full kitchen for selfcatering. It’s the cheapest place to stay in Kiruna and is only a ten-minute walk from the bus station.
From Abisko it’s several days’ beautiful hiking back south to Singi, where you leave the Kungsleden and walk two days out, past the Kebnekaise mountain station to Nikkaluokta, where buses run back to Kiruna. There’s no mobile signal until you get to Kebnekaise and definitely no Wi-Fi – heaven. We quickly fell into a blissful routine of rising early (but not too early), breakfasting on our pre-portioned oatmeal and granola, and heading out onto the trail during the morning rush hour. After a couple of hours, the difference in pace between us and our fellow hikers would take hold and we’d spend most of the day in complete solitude, talking only to each other. Only a brief “Hi-hi” dispensed and received upon passing a hiker headed the other way. The informal Swedish greeting became a bit of an event while we hiked, usually greatly anticipated as a distant speck on the horizon edged closer and closer, gradually taking human form. After a week’s practice we learnt the correct delivery is that of an enquiring stranger in need of advice or guidance; the recipient of your greeting, especially if they’re British, should feel conflicted