Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
9
Stage 3
There are cabins en route at Sitojaure, Aktse, and
Pårte; at Kvikkjokk there's a
fjällstation
mountain lodge.
Stage 4
Accommodation en route is at Tsielejåkk,
Vuonatjviken, Jäkkvik village, Pieljekaise, Adolfström
village, Sjnjultje, Rävfallet and Ammarnäs. The only
bookable cabins are at Jäkkvik (
Kyrkans Fjällgård
;
T
0961
210 39,
W
kyrkansjallgardjakkvik.com) and Adolfström
(
Adolfströms Handelsbod & Stugby
;
T
0961 230 41,
W
adolfstrom.com).
Stage 5
There are no fell stations on this stretch of the
trail; cabins en route are at Aigert, Serve, Tärnasjö, Syter,
Viterskalet and Hemavan.
The Torne Valley
Along the border with Finland, the lush, gentle slopes of the
TORNE
VALLEY
(
Tornedalen
in Swedish) are among the most welcoming sights in northern Sweden.
Stretching over 500km from the mouth of the Gulf of Bothnia to Sweden's remote
northern tip, the three rivers, Torne, Muonio and Könkämä, mark out the long border
between Sweden and Finland. The valley is home to Swedes, Finns and
Sámi
, who
speak an archaic Finnish
dialect
known as
tornedalsfinska
(Torne Valley Finnish, an
official minority language), though Swedish is widely understood and is the language of
choice for the youth. Refreshingly different from the coast and the heavily wooded
inland regions, the area is dotted with small villages, bordered by flower meadows. To
either side of Route 400, the main road along the valley, lie open fields providing
much-needed grazing land for the farmers' livestock.
Arriving from Gällivare or Kiruna, you can enter the valley by
bus
at its midway
point,
Pajala
. From the south, buses also run daily from Haparanda (see p.278).
Pajala
Over time we understood that Pajala didn't actually belong to Sweden… we'd made it by chance. A northerly
appendage, desolate swampland where a few people just happened to live, who only partly managed to be
Swedish … no roe deer, hedgehogs or nightingales. Just interminable amounts of mosquitoes, Torne Valley Finnish
swearwords and Communists.
Popular Music
, Mikael Niemi, on growing up in Pajala during the 1960s and 1970s
The valley's main village is pretty
PAJALA
, a place that has earned itself a reputation and
a half throughout Sweden on two counts: first, the inordinately successful book, and
now film,
Popular Music
, is set here (see p.374), and second, the locals' need of women
(see box below). In order to appreciate the former claim to fame, you really need to have
read the topic
(one in eight Swedes owns a copy) or seen the film, which played to
sell-out audiences in cinemas across the country. Based around the life of Matti, a
BRIDES OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE
The predominance of heavy labouring jobs in the north of Sweden has produced a gender
imbalance here - around three men to every woman (a fact which also explains the
ridiculously macho behaviour that seems to prevail in these parts). So, to celebrate the village's
four-hundredth anniversary in 1987, the local council placed advertisements in the national
papers inviting women from the south of the country up to Lapland to take part in the
birthday festivities. Journalists outside Sweden soon heard of the ads, and articles about the
unusual invitation began to appear in newspapers across Europe. Before long, busloads of
women from all over the continent were heading for the village. The anniversary festivities
proved to be a drunken, debauched bash that tiny Pajala wouldn't forget in a long time, but
they did help to redress the gender problem: dozens of East European women lost their hearts
to gruff Swedish lumberjacks, and began new lives north of the Arctic Circle. Naturally a
succession of winters spent in darkness and in temperatures of -25°C takes its toll and some
women have already left; to date, though, about thirty have stayed the course.
