Pieljekaise

Pieljekaise was set aside in 1909 for the least dramatic and most characteristic of all Scandinavian mountain landscapes: the mountain birch forest, the crooked, silver-trunked belt that wraps every Swedish fell between the conifers below and the bare ground above. Most parks treat the birch belt as the approach; Pieljekaise, 153 square kilometres just south of the Arctic Circle near Jäkkvik, made it the point. The park is essentially one long, unbroken birch forest draped over the mountain that names it — Bielljekájsse, "the ear mountain" in Sámi, for the shape of its double summit.

The forest is lusher than birch has any right to be. Snow-rich winters and damp slopes make this so-called meadow birch forest, with an understory that stands waist-high by late July — globeflower, angelica, alpine sow-thistle, northern wolfsbane — closer to a subarctic garden than to the lichen-floored birch heath further east. Above it, the summit rises just clear of the trees for the view; below it, the park runs down to lake shores and old Sámi grazing grounds, this being, like all the mountain parks, working reindeer land.

Fame passed Pieljekaise by, which is its second distinction. The Kungsleden runs straight through the park on its Jäkkvik–Adolfström stage — one of the quietest stages of the whole trail — and the park may be the least-visited place on Sweden's most-walked path.

What's worth knowing before you go

Access is genuinely easy by mountain-park standards: the trailheads at Jäkkvik and Adolfström both sit just off road 95, the Silver Road, with buses along it in season. The crossing of the park is a normal day's walk, or a long day if you add the summit, and there are shelters but no staffed huts inside — Jäkkvik and Adolfström bracket the park with beds and provisions. Mid-July for the high-summer flora; the first week of September for the birch forest turning gold end to end, which is the park's great show.

The connoisseur's fact to carry through it: everything you walk through was the reason for the park — in 1909 someone thought the ordinary birch forest itself worth a national park, and a century later that decision looks better every year.