Through Lapland fells

By William Fiennes

We met at the Abisko mountain station, 16 hours north of Stockholm on the night train, crossing the Arctic Circle in our sleep. We walked south, single-file on a narrow trail through birch woods, or on boardwalks above a boggy undergrowth of crowberries and blueberries. We crossed ravines on tremulous chain and cable bridges, grey-blue snow-melt gushing beneath us. We imagined Norway on the far side of the mountain wall to the west, while plump ptarmigan with feathers down their legs like trousers skulked among the willow shrubs. We reached the cabins at Abiskojaure in late afternoon, stowed our packs in triple-decker bunks and split logs for the sauna at the edge of the lake.

For a long time I'd dreamed of walking the King’s Trail: days without roads, an Alaskan vastness. Over 100 years ago, the committee of the Svenska Turistföreningen (the Swedish Touring Association) proposed a north-south walking route through the Lapland fells. Now the Kungsleden runs 400km between Abisko and Hemavan, and I'd joined a group to walk the first week to Nikkaluokta. We were nervous, thrown together like this: Kent and Elisabeth, Jurgen and Joachim, Kristina and Maria and Karl. Karen, a microbiologist from Sheffield, recognised the wild flowers: avens, gentian, meadowsweet. Our Finnish guide, Ingrid, was a mountain-bike champion with thigh muscles standing out like loaves.