Lonely in Lapland

by G. B. Spenceley

I read somewhere that Lapland, covering an area as great as the whole of the British Isles, had a population of under three million. That fact alone was enough to entice me away from the crowded huts and telepheriques of the Alps. Northern mountains might not be as high but they were lonely and isolated and distances great; getting to their foot would in itself be a challenge. Lapland seemed to be the only place in Europe where a holiday would have something of the flavour of an expedition and yet where I could travel and climb alone, safely if modestly.

For some weeks I travelled in spirit over hundreds of miles of territory on the map of a Library atlas. There was so much to do. I had thought of starting from Tromso, but in the end it was that knot of mountains behind Narvik that held my attention, and from there I could journey south-east across the frontier to the massive of Kebnekaise, Sweden’s highest mountain. I knew of many who had climbed far north in Norway, but in no club journal could I find reference to these highlands of Arctic Sweden. It seemed to be an area much neglected by British mountaineers and south of Kebnekaise were the Sarek mountains, even less known.
From the Svenska Fjallklubben I got kindly information and advice and I was surprised to find that there was a chain of huts fifteen to twenty miles apart, and at Kebnekaise a fjellstation, where meals and provisions could be bought. But in spite of these unexpected amenities I was warned not to venture alone into these wild and uninhabited parts.

The only available maps of the area, supplied to me by the Svenska Turistferingen, were on the rather inadequate scale of 1:200,000. Norway, although less organised for the tourist as far north, had better maps. Those on a scale of 1:100,000 are readily available from their London Tourist Office, but I was advised to approach the Norges Geografiske Oppmaling for the new 1:50,000 N.A.T.O. sheets. Ultimately I was well provided with maps, including some of Finland showing no roads, tracks or habitations, just hundreds of square miles of forests, swamps and lakes with unpronounceable names. In practice they all proved outdated, vague and inaccurate but it added to the fun.

Departing every night from Bergen is the Express Mail Service, saihng round North Cape to Kirkenes which carries, not only wealthy American tourists on the round twelve day Midnight Sun Cruise, but all the mail, supplies and people going from one isolated point to another, along a thousand miles stretch of coast. On July 27th I left my camp site, an excellent place at the summit of the Fl0ienbaner with a vast panorama of Bergen below, and boarded the HarkonJarl. The four days’ journey to the Lofoten Islands is remarkably cheap at £6, but I had no cabin. With clear skies and a sleeping bag one is not unduly concerned by this until the nightly washing of the decks and again a few hours later when, in all the noise, commotion and excitement of calling at Flor0, Trondheim or Leka, someone falls over you. The great granite peaks of the Lofoten Islands were capped in grey cloud, but it was less the attraction of a scramble the next day, than the desperate need for sleep, that made me decide to spend twenty-four hours in Svolvaer before catching the boat for Narvik.

The weather was no better in Narvik otherwise I might have made one of the easier ascents that can be done from there in a day. Instead I decided on a reconnaissance into the mountains further inland and so, loaded up with three days’ food and along with weekend fishermen and hunters, I took the train on the famous Swedish ore line which climbs spectacularly up above the Rombakotn to Bjornfell on the frontier. One hundred and fifty miles north of the Arctic Circle, yet far below in the fjord there was an open swimming enclosure.

I got off at Katterat—a station and three houses—walked through a tunnel, crossed the torrent on the railway bridge and made my way slowly up the Sordalselven, pursued by a million mosquitos. A footpath was marked on the map but I found little evidence of it. At first I pushed my way through thick birch forest with no view and only the river to guide my direction, then through dwarf birch and polar willow with silver grey satin leaves, before breaking out into the tundra where only swamps and an occasional torrent delayed my progress. The cloud was low and now it was drizzling, there was little to tell I was not in some Scottish glen.

I was delightfully free; no definite plans, no timetable to keep. When I got tired I stopped, put up my tent and made my evening meal. While doing this the sky cleared. High above, a rock pinnacle appeared, poised seemingly unattached, floating on a sea of cloud, then on all sides glaciers and other peaks to remind me that this after all was not Scotland. Commanding the scene a few miles up the valley was Salkacokka. I would make this my first peak.

As a solo climber I knew I must act with the utmost prudence and as yet these northern glaciers were an unknown quantity. I had been told that in August I should find little snow cover and that in any case the crevasses were too small to fall into. In fact these statements proved to be only partly true; the upper half of the glaciers were invariably covered in snow and occasionally I did see crevasses into which I could certainly have fallen. But if a few such perils did exist, their position on the glacier was easily seen and avoided.

Many of these mountains I knew I could not climb safely alone, not on account of the glaciers, but because of the steep rock with which, on all sides, their summits were defended. Salkacokka had no such complete defence it seemed. Great granite walls there were indeed, but between them, facing down the valley, was a ridge, a rock ridge but wide and broken, and set at an easy angle I thought. A few hours pleasant scrambling and the top would be mine.

Of course there was no darkness and I should have set off straight after my meal to take advantage of the wonderful colour­ings of an all night sun. But that first day I was tired and I decided to sleep.

I set off at 5.0 a.m. after my usual breakfast of uncooked porridge and powdered milk, walked a few miles up the valley to where I could ford the river and climbed up the snow streaked slope opposite to a level waste of moraine and partly frozen pools that extended for four or five miles along the eastern side of the mountain. A httle below this waste was the glacier, and a mile across it, the ridge up which I had intended to scramble. Now viewed closer and partly in profile it did not quite present the easy line of ascent that it had earlier promised. The whole ridge was perhaps 2,000 feet high, the first half of which I could climb easily, but what I had not been able to see so far distant, was that in its upper section it steepened and narrowed, at one place becoming almost an arete.   For certain there would be real climbing of a difficulty which I was not prepared to tackle alone.
Facing me was the great east wall of the mountain, but half way up the glacier there was a break. A broad snow couloir which would bring me out onto the summit ridge. This seemed a safe alternative route.

It was now hot and the glacier alive and noisy with a thousand rivulets but I was half glad of the sun for when I had crossed the bergschrund it made the snow of the couloir admirable for step kicking. So I slowly mounted for a couple of hours, relieving the monotony of the final slope by taking to an island of rock where I could enjoy moderate rock climbing on rough reliable granite.
I came out on the ridge at a saddle some way along its length and walked up to the north summit of my first Arctic peak. There was a small heap of stones to show that it had been climbed before; how long since the last ascent I wondered, how long before the next? There were a hundred peaks around me and more stretching away into blue inestimable distances north and south. I sat there for an hour in warm, still air, utterly content; a modest peak, httle over 5,000 feet in height, climbed without difficulty or excitement, but it had given me immense satisfaction. Perhaps that is one of the rewards of climbing alone.
I was sitting on the north top of the mountain; separated by three miles of easy ridge was the south summit, the highest point, to which I now walked. From there two hours later I looked down 3,000 ft. of steep rock to the brown water of Salkajavrre still in a grey and dead valley, devoid of colour or vegetation. Far across to the south-east was Storsteinfjell, an enormous elevated snowfield from which sprang thirteen rock summits, some separate, others linked by crazy ridges. Only a few years ago had the last of these peaks been climbed.

I did not linger here. I knew I could make an easy descent down a shallow couloir at the head of the glacier but already the sun was low and I was anxious to be down before the snow had time to harden. When I got back to the camp I calculated I had been out for seventeen hours so that the next day I was content to be engaged on more restful activities.

The length of my journeys from civilisation was limited only by the weight of food I could comfortably carry. I would live off the country I decided and I was now the owner of a light spinning rod. Encouraged and tutored by a kind friend, I had already had a modest success at home and I felt confident that in the abundant waters of these northern rivers my supper and breakfast would be easily caught. And so after an afternoon of botanising I went down to the river in high hopes, but three hours later I had succeeded only in losing both my temper and my spinners. This was a blow indeed but I was later more content to learn that because of the waterfalls there are no fish in the upper reaches of the Sordalselven.

This first journey was intended only as a reconnaisance to get the feel of the country. Later I had planned to walk from Skjomen, a lonely community to the south of Narvik, several days journey up the Norddalen to the frontier, and to some of the most isolated mountains in Norway. But the same mountains could be reached from the valley in which I was now camped by crossing a pass to the head of the Oallavagge.

I would have climbed another mountain but the next morning it was raining so I returned to Narvik for a week’s food so that I could carry out this modified plan. At Katterat the Station Master stopped specially for me the Stockholm-Narvik Express and dishevelled and dripping I climbed up to a train of surprised passengers.

Back again the next evening I moved the camp a few miles up the valley but so appalled was I by the load I now had to carry I decided to spend another day locally. Curling round the back of Salkacokka was the Hunddalsbotn, a valley at the head of which, among an array of fine peaks, rose the Domstind, parti­cularly shapely, so pointed indeed that it seemed it might fall outside the narrow hmits I had set myself. But if the ridges of Salkacokka proved more formidable and steep at close quarters, those of the Domstind receded. A fearsome south face it presented still, but the main ridge, a great horseshoe, I gained easily enough up slopes of scree and snow and with only twenty feet of actual chmbing on shattered red rock I gained the summit. One half of the mountain was of this red friable rock, the rest of the more usual grey granite. The strata was vertical and the two met on the summit itself.

Preferring the granite to the crumbling mass up which I had just scrambled, I prospected the opposite ridge. I found it delight­ful. Broad but with near vertical walls so that it was airy enough, I descended walking down great slabs set at an easy angle, separated by five to ten foot steps. I was soon at the bottom where I came to the httle glacier embraced by the two ridges of the horseshoe, and suddenly, round a bluff of rock, there were a dozen reindeer. As nearly always when I saw them, they were on the snow to get most value from the short summer sun.

Now the weather deteriorated; the next few days were dull and I could not make photography an excuse to ease my overburdened back on the long marches that followed over the col and down the Oallavagge and Salkajokka to Storvatn Cuno Javrre. In a place of the utmost isolation, beside the torrent which fed into the lake and within a couple of miles of the Swedish frontier, I camped for two days hoping for an opportunity to attack one of the summits of Storsteinfjell. I was now catching fish. Half an hour’s work and I would have a fine three pound sea trout which fried hi butter made delicious eating. But even with this addition to my food I knew I could not linger too long. When on the third day I could still see nothing of the peaks around me I decided to start moving down the long valley of the Norddalen. If the weather improved I could still climb my mountain from the opposite side.

It was not on the mountains that I had most cause for fear, for I acted with great caution, but my greatest alarms were in an element much less familiar; in the fast or deep waters of torrents and rivers. Once, thigh deep in white water I had felt utterly helpless and very frightened and the prospect of the return crossing had put a shadow over the whole day. Here I would have been faced with a serious problem, but, where none was marked on the map, I was relieved to find a bridge, a flimsy wire construction in itself quite alarming. Although so isolated, I learnt that where there is a good fishing lake, sufficiently large for a seaplane, such provisions are sometimes made, there may even be a hut. A further day’s march down the Norddalen at a tributary, where on the map a bridge was clearly marked, none seemed ever to have existed and I had to face another alarming performance.

It was a long day with the cloud continuing low so that it was not until the evening that I got a view of Huinarcokka, a granite pyramid and the best of all these peaks, but interesting, for the valley was full of wild fowl and bright with Arctic flowers. I lengthened my walk in order to get to a building named in large letters, Stations Holmens, So prominently marked I felt certain it must be a place of importance with someone living there and I was now eager for company. But I found only a deserted Lapp Kata, a primitive conical structure of birch branches and peat.

Again the next morning there was no view of the mountains so in a long day but with a light load I walked down to the farms of Skjomdalen and the first human company I had seen for a week.

Rested and reprovisioned I set off on the five day trek to Sweden’s Kebnekaise. It was a route that was to take me across a fine expanse of high tundra and by many lakes, Kabbvatnet, Baatsvatn, Gautelisvatn, Vannaksvatn and a dozen more. Each is remembered for some little incident; the attack of a fearless but fierce lemming, a particularly large charr that I caught, the fishermen I met who had flown up by seaplane and whose catch would pay for its charter, the sophisticated Lapp with modern mountain tent and Primus, watching through binoculars his reindeer herd. On the fourth day I passed by five lakes, none smaller than Grasmere, that were not even marked on the map. I descended then into a prominent valley.

For the first time I was on a well trodden track for this was the Kungsladen, the Royal Trail, which extends 150 miles from Jackvik to Abisko through Sweden’s wildest and finest country, and for the first time too I met tourists and at Singistugan there was a hut, one of the chain along the route, belonging to the Svenska Turisforeningen. There were long legged Swedes with enormous rucksacks and Swedish girls, fair haired and sunburnt; enchanting creatures who bathed naked not very far away. A progressive country Sweden!

I enjoyed my evening at Singistugan. The next night, after a Sauna bath, I sat down to an excellent dinner at the well appointed Kebnekaise Fjellstation still 50 miles from Kiruna and roads and railways, but connected from there by a daily hehcopter service. Supplies for the station are brought up by sledge during the Spring months.

Around the valley of the Ladtjo Vagge were grouped the finest peaks I had seen in the north. The Fjellstation deserved to be popular, but the chief attraction, rising so steeply above it that little could be seen, was Kebnekaise, 7,000 feet and Sweden’s
highest mountain. Each fine summer day it is climbed by guided parties. I had not the money to hire a guide, nor in fact was one necessary. Although the peak is held in some awe in Sweden, its ascent by the east route presents no difficulty in good conditions.

I was away at 4.0 a.m. long before the guided parties were astir but already the tops were flushed with gold. From the glacier at 4,000 feet I could see the eastern face extending for a couple of miles below the twin summits of the mountain. A mountaineer could pick out a dozen engaging routes up buttress ridge or sharp snow arete. But these were not for me; tracks across the snow led to a break where a snow slope mounted towards a dip in the ridge, the two separated by only 500 feet of easy, broken rock. A staircase of bucket steps pointed the way.

I came out on the ridge near a small hut, the Topstuga. Out­side gathering their ropes and ice axes were three friendly Swedes, the only mountaineers I ever saw on this holiday. They had spent the night there and were now setting forth on the traverse of the mountain, an expedition which I was cordially invited to join. The Sydtoppan, a confined snow crest and the highest point was easily climbed. Alone I could have gone no further, for ahead, over the Nordtoppen and beyond, was a sharp snow arete of truly Alpine character. We roped up and walked along its undulating crest with the whole of Lapland it seemed at our feet. For two hours we continued, now and again leaving the crest to avoid the cornices, until we were off the snow and looking down vertical and overhanging rock to a col below. We reached it by climbing down easier rock to the west. We had completed the traverse and we now descended a couloir, steep, so that for most of its length we moved one at a time, to the glacier whose snout overhung the Tarfaladalen, a valley of wild beauty dominated at its head by the fine rock peaks of Kaskastj andTarfaldtj.
It had been a wonderful day and it was made complete for me that night by an unusual sight. Close on midnight I took a last look out of the tent and found, filling both level bed and the steep sides of the valley, a vast herd of reindeer. There must have been several thousand of them; driven by no Lapps or their dogs, for half an hour or more they moved slowly down on natural migration.

These highlands are quite uninhabited in Winter, only in Summer will you see the tourists on the Kungsladen and the occasional Lapp. Few of these Lapps are truly Nomadic; some are fisher Lapps only and live in permanent villages, others who are herdsmen have two homes many miles apart. Winter is spent deep in the coniferous forests but as soon as Spring is on the way the herd is restive, full of the urge to move away from the coming swarms of mosquitos and gadflies and the heat of an Arctic summer. With their possessions piled onto boat-shaped sledges (pulkas) the Lapps and their herds move to the mountains on their Spring migration, a journey which is halted in May for the calving.

When he has arrived among the fjells in mid-June the Lapp repairs his birch and sod Katas and settles down for five months. His herds are left to browse at will, while he can be busy at his crafts and hunting and fishing. My Swedish friends told me where I might find one of these summer settlements in a valley three days’ march to the south-east.

Except for the tourist on the Kungsladen and at the Fjellstation I had met no other travellers. But I was not the only solo wanderer in Lapland. On the third day of that march I met a kindred spirit walking in the opposite direction. She was a weather-beaten, middle aged Swedish lady, like me with tent and sleeping bag, who told me that for six weeks she had been travelling alone and except for the Lapps, from whom she bought food, I was the first person she had met. A stout hearted soul, I thought.
That day I was crossing almost level tundra not unlike Rannoch Muir, with views to the peaks of the Sarek ahead. After twenty miles of such going I looked down over a vast expanse of birch forest and lakes and below me, beside the Kattumjaure, smoke curled up from a group of rough birch huts—the Lapplager of Tijuonjokk.

Except for an occasional seaplane with its fishermen, few tourists pass this way and as with all simple people, little touched by civilisation, I was received hospitably. Before I was allowed to pitch my tent I was taken to the head of the family, a colourfully dressed old lady, and was seated on birch branches in the main kata, a fire on the floor, smoke going through a hole in the roof, the whole family gathered round, while I was entertained to coffee. That night, after a meal of delicious smoked charr, I slept on a pile of reindeer skins.

I now had to travel down the birch forested banks of the Kaiturm alv, a river of considerable size. Just how long it would take me to reach the railway line and civilisation, I did not know for I was soon to walk off the limits of my map. I did know however that I only had to follow the river and I should come to the line and the small halt of Fjallasen. I hoped I could do it in three days.
It was early on the second day’s march after a night with another Lapp community that I joined up with Rupert. Rupert was a reindeer calf astray from his mother and the herd. Perhaps he had not seen a human before for he certainly showed no fear. All day he followed me, lying beside me when I rested, sometimes falling behind to graze but soon running to catch me up. Only late in the day when I crossed a river did we part company.

I might indeed have made the journey in three days but lacking a map I had to follow every bend and twist of the river. All too often my way was barred by swamp, bog or deep sullen river and if I did find a track, it was of elk or bear for it led nowhere. I pushed on as far as I could on the third night, not really expecting to come suddenly out on to the railway, but hoping to find more Lapps for I now had a taste for their company, even if no word of their language could I understand. But when I had been going for twelve hours I made camp, but not before I had climbed a tree for the view ahead. I could see nothing but endless forest.

One can have too much of solitude and forest. There was much beauty, if no wide vista, and the weather was good, but the scene changed little and the swamps were tedious as now was the constant diet offish, however excellent it may first have tasted. On the fourth day I was really longing for the railway and yet at every bend the river stretched ahead bounded by limitless forest, no sight of dwelling, railway track or bridge. I did not stop for lunch and in any case my provisions were running low, but in the late afternoon, rather weary and discouraged, I halted to make a soup. I was just hghting the fire when I heard in the distance the hoot of a train, it was the same note that I last heard nearly four weeks before in Narvik. That night I dined well if expensively in the iron ore boom town of Kiruna.

The most strenuous part of my expedition was over. I was to go into the forests and smaller hills of Arctic Finland, further north than I had already been, but never again did I see mountains or have quite the same solitude. In retrospect it was the solitude and isolation that were the most satisfying part of the expedition. There are many finer mountains than these, but few places so wild. If it was not the mountains that were the challenge it was the country, its wildness, its loneliness, its wide expanses. To travel for days in such a land, alone and self supporting, was in itself sufficient reward.