Muddus

Muddus — Muttos in Lule Sámi — is the lowland counterweight to the mountain drama of Sarek and Padjelanta: nearly five hundred square kilometres of old pine forest and open mire between Jokkmokk and Gällivare, protected since 1942 and part of the Laponia World Heritage area since 1996. Laponia was inscribed as a living Sámi cultural landscape as much as a natural one, and Muddus is where that reads most clearly — this is working reindeer country, its string mires and forest heaths part of an annual grazing round far older than the park.

The southern half is horizontal: vast, silent mire complexes threaded with forest islands, one of the largest intact wetland systems in Europe, where cranes, whooper swans and waders breed in numbers that made the core wetlands strict bird sanctuaries, closed to entry from mid-March to the end of July. The northern half breaks the flatness dramatically — the Muddusjåhkå river has cut a chain of gorges through the bedrock, with sheer-walled Måskosgårsså the deepest, and drops over the 42-metre Muddus falls, the landscape's one loud moment.

Between water and mire stands the forest that makes connoisseurs quiet: dry pine heath with trees seven hundred years old, fire-scarred and iron-hard, one of the finest old pine landscapes left in the country. Bears den in the park, and the old-forest birds are all present in strength.

What's worth knowing before you go

The main entrance, Skájdde, is reached by a signposted side road off route 45 between Jokkmokk and Porjus; from there a well-built trail runs in to the falls — a comfortable day return — and a longer loop with simple cabins and shelters opens up the gorge country. The mires mean mosquitoes in high summer and the sanctuaries constrain spring routes, which makes late August and September, with the birches turning and the bogs firm and berry-laden, the insider's season. Jokkmokk, the Sámi cultural capital, is the natural base, and its Ájtte museum the right prelude.

The connoisseur's detail: Muddus sees a fraction of the foot traffic its Laponia neighbours get. It is the easiest genuinely big wilderness in the north to have to yourself.