The first thing that hit me about northern Sweden in October wasn’t the cold ‘ it was the solitude. After a 19-hour train journey from Stockholm to Abisko, armed with only a basic map from the local supermarket and nursing a persistent cold, I set off.
My preparation had been minimal. The night before leaving home, I’d run up and down stairs with my 21-kilogram pack, testing its weight. The load was daunting: 2kg of spaghetti, 1.5kgs of cheese, 1kg of dried fruit, 24 chocolate bars, and enough camera gear to fill 88GB of storage. “Really heavy, like painfully heavy, like oh my dear god my shoulders,” became my mantra in those first days.
The journey’s first crisis came early. My trusted Trangia stove ‘ which I’d proudly told a friend could survive “wind, rain, hail, snow, thunderstorms, and acts of God” ‘ refused to light in the freezing air. The methylated spirits were too cold for my spark lighter to ignite them.
At an unmanned hut, I made what I still consider my most morally questionable decision: “I stole half a box of matches,” I admitted in my video diary, “eight matches and half a striker… I feel very guilty and indebted to the STF [Swedish Tourist Federation].”
At Unna Allakas – another unmanned hut – I unexpectedly bumped into a German family with children aged 9 and 7. The dad confessed his pack had weighed 32 kilograms when they started ‘ suddenly my load felt lighter. The hut was small, with just two beds in the room with the stove, but that evening, we played dice games with the children and shared stories around the table and I felt welcomed like family. I slept in the woodshed ‘ “not as bad as it sounds. It’s a building, and it’s dry.”
After they left the next morning, heading the way I’d come, I spotted some intriguing tracks in the snow. My initial excitement led me to wonder if they were bear prints, though in retrospect, they were more likely from a wolverine. It got me thinking about the risks of solo hiking.
“Aren’t you scared going on your own?” people often asked. But out here, the dangers felt different. Without people, there was no theft to worry about, no unpredictable drunk people, no human threats.
Originally posted on Instagram