Padjelanta

Padjelanta — Badjelánnda, "the higher land" in Lule Sámi — is Sweden's largest national park: 1,984 square kilometres of open, treeless plateau rolling west from Sarek's peaks to the Norwegian border. Where Sarek is vertical and hostile, Padjelanta is horizontal and strangely gentle — wide tundra, soft summits, and at its heart two enormous mountain lakes, Vastenjávrre and Virihávrre, the latter routinely called the most beautiful lake in Sweden, a claim that survives actually standing on its shore.

The gentleness has a geological floor under it. Padjelanta carries unusual lime-rich bedrock, and lime in the mountains means flowers: the park holds the richest alpine flora in Sweden, with rarities that grow nowhere else in the country crowding the meadows above Virihávrre in July. It also means grazing, which is the deeper story. Protected since 1962 and part of the Laponia World Heritage area, Padjelanta is above all living Sámi summer land — the communities that herd here move their reindeer onto the plateau each summer as they have for centuries, and their camps at Staloluokta and elsewhere, with cabins, chapels and boat landings, are not exhibits but working villages.

Walking here is correspondingly unlike the rest of the high mountains: big skies, long easy miles, inhabited horizons — closer in spirit to crossing an upland country than to mountaineering.

What's worth knowing before you go

There are no roads. You walk in — commonly from Ritsem across the Áhkájávrre lake by boat, or from Kvikkjokk — or take the summer helicopter to Staloluokta and start in the middle. The Padjelanta Trail runs about 140 kilometres from Ritsem to Kvikkjokk through the whole park, with huts run by the Sámi communities themselves a comfortable day apart; the season is July to early September, and the trail is widely considered Sweden's friendliest long mountain walk — which does not make the weather friendly, only the gradients.

The connoisseur's stop is Staloluokta: buy smoked Arctic char and gáhkku flatbread from the lakeside cabins, eat them looking across Virihávrre, and understand why the herders have summered on precisely this shore for a very long time.