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Swedish Mountains
Route: Kittelfjäll-Fatmomakke
”Kittel” is the Swedish word for pot and “fjäll” means mountain, and that give us a hint that the village Kittelfjäll lays in a valley surrounded by mountains. Giebne, Borkafjället and to the left in the picture, Henriksfjället, and to the right Bergsjöfjället.
 
The route that passes between this two villages are quite frequentely used and make a distance on about 30 km (18-19 miles). 2 km/h (1,25 m/h) is a calm walking pace, which makes it possible to walk the distance in 15 hours, even with a 20 kg (44 lb) backpacker (rucksack).
 
With this pace you can walk for three hours a day and relax and enjoy the trip for the rest of the day if you want. This will give you and your friends a nice and cosy mountain trip with an extraordinary beatiful nature in 5 days if you take it easy. Maybe something for the family with smaller children, or for those who like to build basecamps and who doesn’t mind having the tent on the same spot for more than one night. If you like to do it this way, you can spend a couple of days just walking and the rest of the time do some filming, peak climbing, photographing, or whatever that you find interesting.
Risfjället (the mountain of brushwood) with Offerkullen (the hill of sacrifice) glimpsing in front of it. The lake is named after the mountain, Rissjön.
 
It’s not only humanbeings that apreciate the beatiful viewes up on the bare mountain. These reindeers belong to the Saami people, the original inhabitants in Lapland. In the 16th and 17th centuary the king or “the crown” started to tax the Saami people. It became more easy to pay tax for those Saami who had more reindeers and that is one of the reasons that the reindeer culture developed to what it is today. The small herd on the picture are in their summerarea and will be moved down to the woodland when the winter comes.
On Offerkullen (the hill of sacrifice), on the other side of the lake, has it most likely been a seite, an object or a natural formation to which the lapps gave their sacrifice before christianity put en end on those rituales. It’s not always possible to find a seite out in the mountain, especially not those who were made of wood. Those who were made of stone is still possible to see, with a little bit of luck and skill.
When you have come up on higher ground the view is brilliant even if some bushes or smaller trees are telling you that you still haven’t passed the line to the “bare mountain”.
We’re passing beatiful valleys where the magical light are giving further dimensions to the already fabulous tour. Despite that we’re in the middle of September, the first snow have made it’s entrance on the upper parts of the mountain.
 
 
When we’re passing the “bare mountain line” it’s quite obvious for everyone that the temperature is sinking. During this tour the temperature was varying between 0 degrees at the highest altitude and 15 degrees celsius in the valleys (32-60 F). The increasing wind is also adding it’s cooling effect and just before we’re passing the line, we put on our shelljackets. On the highest spots the snow is about one inch thick (2,5 cm), but most likely it will thaw away before the snow will come more permanentely in Oct-Nov. Marsfjället (the Mars mountain) are enthroning majestic and as a hiker you’re aloud to feel small and insignificant in the shadow of the Mars mountain.
 
The Empetrum hermaphroditum (the berry) and the Eriophorum scheuchzeri is two of the plants that like the barren and the wind pierced mountain.
 
The lemmings, lemmus lemmus, is another species that is adapted to the poor environment. Some years they completely explode in numbers, which lead to the legendary lemming migration where the small rodents are abandoning the mountains and coming down to the civilisation. The unafraid lemmings are not stopping for anything on their way, but are passing both water and roads without getting afraid of neither drowned or smashed friends of species.
 
The way down from the Mars mountain leave a feeling of emptiness in the stomach and it’s with longing we’re breathing the last of the mountainair as we’re putting up our last camp right next to Marsfjällskåtan (the Saami hut of the Mars mountain).
 
 During the last stage of the tour we’re passing some larger streams, where a passage over would have been a risky projekt without the bridges that have been built over them.
The tour gets a fitting end in the old Saami churchvillage Fatmomakke. To this place did the Saami people go a few times of the year to celebrate the big christian festivals, but also for baptism, wedding and funerals. A large amount of Saami huts are placed in this village, somtimes next to more regular cabins, but mostly by them selves or in smaller groups. There is also a regular church and a large “praying hut”, as you can see on the bottom picture to the right.
 
 
To get to Kittelfjäll, it’s possible to take a bus from either Storuman or Vilhelmina, and if you make the tour back again to Kittelfjäll you can take the bus home again.
To Fatmomakke there are no busses, so if you want to make it a one way trip, you can either make a deal with someone to pick you up in Fatmomakke or let someone drive you to Fatmomakke and then the tour will end up in Kittelfjäll, from where you can take the bus.
The last alternativ is to rent a car and then decide where to start. If you do it this way you have to make it a round trip whatever your choice of starting point is.
Then I would recomend you to start in Fatmomakke, and you could make a round trip without having to go back the same way you came from. That trip would only be slightly longer than the original and you could stick to the 5 day schedual without any problem.
For further information contact the webmaster.
Text and photo Josef Arnfjell
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