Abisko National Park and Lapporten

Pictures get to do their “thousand words” thing in this posting.

First are several pictures, from different places and times of day of the striking landscape feature “Lapporten”, which is a large glacial U-shaped valley. The name translates as “Gateway of the Lapps”, indicating that they drove their reindeer herds through this area.  Whether this has any basis in reality is unknown.  The first three shots are taken from our hotel at widely different times. The latter two were taken from the shore of Törnetrask.  The mountain on the left is Tjuonatjåkka, and on the right is Nissuntjåro.

Many of the highway signs here are in both Swedish and Northern Sami (the most common of 9 languages spoken by native inhabitants of Lappland, which extends through northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia’s Kola Peninsula).  We have no idea how you pronounce this, nor the names of the mountains given above.

Abisko National Park has a very scenic river running through it. The water is so clear that rocks on the bottom are clearly seen.

As we walked the path along the Abisko River Canyon we were impressed by the contrast between USA national parks, with their massive barriers to keep visitors from falling over cliffs, etc. and the nearly total lack of such along this canyon. The first picture below shows a narrow, two-plank (each plank about 15 cm wide) walkway along a near-vertical cliff, just like the cliff seen on the other side. This continued for 100s and 100s of meters of path. We came to one area of overhanging cliff that did have a protective barrier, seen alongside Sheila in the middle picture. In the 3rd picture, just off Sheila’s right shoulder ,you can see how this “protective barrier” is constructed.

Yes, we have lots of flower pics.

But no, we don’t have lots of flower names to go with them.

Here are some shots from a nice day in Lappland.

At the end of the day we took a short walk to a reconstruction of a Lappish spring and autumn camp. The “one legged” log cabin is for storage of valuables while they are in the upland pastures where the reindeer migrate each summer. The turf house on strong stilts is either for storage while away from this camp or for living in in winter, when snow depth can be up to the bottom of the hut. The shaggy green mound is a turf house, commonly built where large tree are not common. The little log cabin is typically built in areas with large trees.

After seeing these examples of original Lappish housing, we went back to our car and drove back to our modern Swedish hotel and once again had reindeer for dinner – Rudolf’s relatives are delicious!!