This
page is about the holiday in Sweden I had during summer 1999. Me and my
sister (Aukje) traveled through Sweden using the so called inlandsbanan.
This railroad crosses Sweden from north to south. It starts in Mora and
runs all the way up (1000 kilometers!) to Gällivare. It takes one
and a half day to travel this railroad. During the summer a special train
transports tourists along the railroad. Each day during the period the
inlandsbanan is operated, a train leaves from Mora to Östersund and
travels back to Mora. Östersund is at about one third of the rail
track From there it is possible to travel on to Gällivare (takes
about 14 hours). The train stops at several places and it is also possible
to get of the train at other places on request. Of course it is not much
fun to travel the whole track in one and a half day but luckily we had
tickets which were valid for two weeks so we were able to get of the train
and hop on later.
We took many pictures on our two week holiday and a selection of the pictures can be viewed here. I've tried to geographically order the pictures. Unfortunately I realized now that I should have created this page right after I got back and not more than half a year after.
We started our trip in Ronneby where we took the train to Mora where we camped for the night. The next morning we got on the inlandsbanan and traveled to our first stop: Sveg. Much can be said about this place, but lets face it: it's nothing but a bunch of trees in the middle of nowhere. So, the next morning we jumped on the inlandsbanan again and traveled on to Östersund where we stayed in a youth hostel near to the station. The next morning we went on to Storuman where we stayed two days. After that we traveled to Jokmokk. Then we decided we had seen enough trees and went all the way to Gällivare. I suppose if you like mosquitoes, Gällivare is the place for you. Clearly we were not happy in our tent near the river with billions of hungry mosquitoes trying to drain us of all blood. The little suckers went straight through my jeans! The jungle oil which was recommended to me by Jan-Mark de Haan helped a great deal. Unfortunately the mosquitoes always managed to find places on my body that I had not applied the oil too :(.
Encouraged by stories from other travelers we decided to go really, really north. So we took the train to Abisko. Abisko is start (or the end depending on which side you start) of a hiking trail. It is located northwest of Gällivare and Kiruna (which is the most Nordic city in Sweden). Abisko is located along the railroad to Narvik (in Norway) which was created to transport the iron mined in Kiruna and Gällivare to the harbor in Narvik.
Abisko
was definitely the nicest place we visited. The nature there is really
impressive. We were lucky to catch the last glimpses of midnight sun on
top of a mountain. We also played tourist and went on a guided tour along
the old transport road for the railroad
workers During this excursion we shot lots of beautiful pictures of which
I selected the best for inclusion on this page. The 15 kilometer walk
along the old track gave us some spectacular views and brought us to the
start of the fjord to Narvik. A boat took us to this town and we drove
back by bus.
We also met two colleagues (Magnus & Ian) from Ronneby with whom we had some pleasant evenings. They left Abisko one day before us but we would meet them again later on our way to Östersund. This time we did not get of the train and traveled the whole way to Östersund in one day, which takes about 14 hours.
Back in Östersund Magnus arranged a nice place for us to sleep. We were able to rent the lower floor of a nice Swedish villa at the youth hostel Apparently the owners of the villa rented this floor to travelers. We never met the owners but we had quite a fun time there. Again Magnus and Ian left before we did but not before we visited the open air museum.
From Östersund we traveled back to Mora where we used our tent once more before we traveled back again. This time the train stopped in Stockholm and in our 45 minute break we managed to get some snapshots of Stockholm and meet Magnus and Ian once more. After this 45 minute break we said good-bye to Stockholm and Magnus & Ian (for the third and last time) and arrived back in Ronneby late at night.
Some pictures are not (yet) sorted but can be found here. We also took some pictures before and after we left for our trip on the inlandsbanan. Some of the pictures feature my parents who had their own trip by caravan through the south of Sweden and were kind enough to provide my sister transportation to Ronneby.