…just till over there! E-Book

Klaus Heyne

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 216

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The Sarek Nationalpark - mystical vastness within the universe of trekkers in Northern Europe. According to the desire of the nationalpark management to keep this alpine mountainscape in its originality there are intentionally no huts , no chuck depots and only a few bridges, that were established for the local Sami. The Sarek Nationalpark was previously seen as the „last wilderness of Europe“. The park is still bearing the impress of being exactly that. Those, who arrive here making the claim to satisfy their craving for recognition by „conquering the wilderness“ are truly out of place – the routes are not more difficult than elsewhere. But who wants to wander through the Sarek because of the marvelous landscape will get his money‘s worth. 2012: in the year of the divined doomsday a 3-head-strong crew (father, son and friend of the family) embarks on a trekking tour into the wild beauty of the arctic nature – before it is too late. The destination is the Sarek Nationalpark in Swedish Lapland. The journalized recordings of the 20-days-tour are shot through with quotes from the works of Knut Hamsun and Carl von Linné as well as with interesting background information about the country and its people. Finally the trekking newcomer gets to know some useful tips , which may be helpful for a positive experience an outdoor stay of this type can give. The recordings were made from the point of view of one of the protagonists and are no guide book for hiking, but want to put across the reader an amusing impression of the more or less happy events. Included now: stage statistics.

Leseprobe

Småland gave birth to me

I was travelling through Sweden

Watched the bowels of the earth 450 ells deep

Rose in the wind’s heights about one mile

Watched summer and winter on same day

And spent that day therein

Perambulated clouds

Visited the end of the world

Watched the sun’s night shelter

In a year’s time walked 1000 miles

On land.

Carl von Linné

For Niklas, my incomparable son

Important note:

Triggered by the wish to make my travel experience available even for overseas readers, I translated the text part of this book from German to English by myself.

As English is not my mother tongue I would like to apologize in advance for any confusion resulting from translation errors.

Please be gracious! If you find any hair-raising mistakes, don’t hesitate to contact me by email (see last page) and provide me corrective indications for not letting me die stupid.

For a moment I was with you

rested for a while

And now my friend, my dear bird

it is time to leave again

It is always like that towards the end

And I take out the white reindeer fur coat

not so new any more

but not worn either

And I take out the mottled fur shoes

new shoe strings

nice dark fur leggings

the silver belt the gákti

the silk scarf the cap

the fur gloves

And the food pack

I leave

to arrive

go away

to be closer

To the space of your thoughts

to your heart

I crawl

into the heart

I journey

on the sea of time

follow

the tracks of the wind

Nils-Aslak Valkeapää [Valkeapää1]

Klaus

Niklas

Jens

Table of Contents

Day’s marches

Sunday, July, 15

th

: Arrival

Day 1 | July, 16th: Complications

Day 1 | July, 16

th

: From Saltoluokta up to the Treeline

Day 2 | July, 17

th

: Treeline till short before Sitojaure

Day 3 | July, 18

th

: Sitojaure till Rengärde before Aktse

Day 4 | July, 19

th

: Rengärde till Place-of-2-Bridges

Day 5 | July, 20

th

: Place-of-2-Bridges till High Plain of Ijvvárlahko

Day 6 | July, 21

st

: High Plain of Ijvvárlahko till Bridge across Gådokjåhkå

Day 7 | July, 22

nd

Bridge across Gådokjåhkå | 1

st

Rest Day

Day 8 | July, 23

th

: Bridge across Gådokjåhkå | 2

nd

Rest Day

Day 9 | July, 24

th

: Daytrip to Rapaätno

Day 10 | July, 25

th

: Daytrip to Gådoktjåkkåh

Day 11 | July, 26

th

: Bridge across Gådokjåhkå | 3

rd

Rest Day

Day 13 | July, 28

th

: Bridge across Gådokjåhkå | 4

th

Rest Day

Day 14 | July, 29

th

: Bridge across Gådokjåhkå – Vindskydd Rittak

Day 15 | July, 30

th

: Vindskydd Rittak | 5

th

Rest Day

Day 16 | July, 31

st

: Rittak - Aktse

Day 17 | August, 1

st

: Aktse - beyond Sitojaure

Day 18 | August, 2

nd

: Sitojaure till Vindskydd Autsutjvagge

Day 19 | August, 3

rd

: Vindskydd Autsutjvagge till Saltoluokta

Saturday, August, 4

th

: Departure

Tips

Tips for Beginners

Tip: Arrival

Tip: Planning

Tip: Physical Preparation

Tip: Procuring Provisions

Tip: Jazzing up Provisions

Tip: Collocation of Provisions

Tip: Packing Provisions

Tip: Compress Provisions

Tip: Send Provisions Ahead

Tip: Medicines

Tip: Rope

Tip: Prophylactic Measures against Blisters – Toes/Heel

Tip: Treatment of Blisters

Tip: Toilet Things

Tip: Toilet Paper

Tip: Full-body Ablution

Tip: Going for a Pee and the Other Thing

Tip: Wading

Tip: Fire

Tip: Quack Remedies for Mosquito Fighting

Tip: Keeping-Mosquitos-Away-Socks

Tip: Keeping Calm in Mosquito Assaults

Tip: Carry-on Walking despite of Mosquito Clouds

Tip: Mosquitos inside the Tent

Tip: Mosquito Net (for the Head)

Tip: Mosquitos and Defecation

Tip: Mosquitos and Keeping Still

Tip: Recommendation of the Laps

Tip: Navigation

Tip: Equipment

Tip: Cash

Tip: Stuffing the Tent

Tip: Spare Clothing

Tip: Transporting Denaturated Alcohol

Tip: Kitchenware – Wire Whip

Tip: Washing Pots and Pans

Appendix

Realized Route 2012

Planned Route 2012

Why, oh why again to Lapland?

This question can only be asked by someone, who was not (yet) touched by the charm of the Far North. Possible yes, but difficult to imagine for me.

Those, who are suckers for merely endless vastness without any streets, roads or other achievements of civilizing is in good hands here. The abundantly sung about credo „back to the roots“ will be happen right in front of your eyes. A walking tour, i.e. to experience a landscape by own physical effort, means a complete different experience than to reach (travel) destinations by usage of comfortable aids (e.g. chairlift to the Alpine peak).

It was only beyond the hotels and the paved ways, the real Lapland was stored for us. But most of the tourists will never learn about this treasure for free, handicapped by their luggage and their need for comfort. Instead of walking through the open door the arctic offers them, they Like it more to get in the car and will bring back home only a few crumbs of the polar endlessness.

[Crottet2, pg. →]

Only the fact to be on one’s own separates the wanderer in „the wilds“ from the common tourist. One learns to scale down his needs and to concentrate on the basics. One will be happy, if the sleeping bag remains dry and the pot is warm and well-filled. The total abstinence from all these things that affect us bugging and oppressing in a hundred different kinds every day (phone, TV, road traffic, …) clears your mind and gives all the feelings you get on such a journey an intensity that an all-inclusive package holiday will never bear.

In this context I do not grow tired of quoting the German cameraman Dietrich B. Sasse, who said in the 1950ies: „Who once was wandering in Lapland, fell under its spell. The only way to break the spell is to return.” And Robert Crottet wrote: „I have travelled to nearly all countries of the world, but only here I found something like a little paradise“. [Crottet1, pg. →].

And that’s it, why it must be Lapland again.

In the great silence of the polar world,in view of the northern lights it will be tangible to man, that there are powers beyond his individual reality controlling and directing his life.

[Crottet1, pg. →]

But this time there is another good reason for choosing especially this travel destination. My dearest wish came true. Niklas, my 17-year-old son, will be with us. I’ll jump for joy to share truly my rage for this kind and destination of travelling with him and to let him experience the land beyond the northern polar circle with the peculiarities of the Arctic. Be it the phenomenon of the midnight sun or endless fields of boulders and trackless birch tree forests or mosquito pestilential swamps or eternal snow on the mountain tops. – I hope, the unique nature, Hamsun’s “Totality of Nature“, will make his presence felt and channel his desires on the actually important things. Even if – or even then – one will go outside the envelope and will bring himself to continue walking – … just till over there!

*

During all those years being in the northern lands, I often recognized that people living in Middle European latitudes, actually were not able to class Lapland geographically. At school, one usually does not come across that area. I remember just a single mention of Lapland in geography lessons in the first or second class of grammar school, when the teacher talked about ore mines in Kiruna. Indeed, there is no greater public or political interest in that country. Even the media coverage about the radioactive cloud of Tschernobyl at that time, which was reason for the emergency slaughter of thousands of reindeer, did just run to the mention of the Gulf of Bothnia. Everything else was only named “further north”. Well, anyway, Lapland is not a sovereign state with commonly accepted national borders, but the living space of an ethnic minority, that spans over the northern regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland up to the Russian Kola Peninsula. An area, that reaches up to the Norwegian Sea and where the Arctic Circle belongs to the south.

„Lapland donates everything and demands nothing.“ But that is incorrect. It is not true, that Lapland does not demand anything. On the contrary, it demands a lot, namely no less than a kind of suicide. One ought to put off that self brought from the socalled civilized countries and drown it in the Lake Inari (…). It didn’t take long when I discovered that I couldn’t teach them [the Laplanders] anything. With hardly recognizable irony they made it clear, that they were the teachers and that my whole intellectual luggage weighed much too light. When they did not know Shakespeare nor Goethe, Rembrandt or Bach, it was not important for them. All around them and within them, there was music, poetry, painting. They need not to be creative, because they were so close to creation.

[Crottet2, pg. →]

Who is going to deal with that subject will inevitably be confronted with the terms Arctic, Lapland, Sapmi, Sami and Nordkalotte, which must not be used synonymically and might lead to confusion. Lapland in a strict sense only includes the Swedish landscape (landskap) Lapland (an administrative province till 1634) and Finland’s northernmost province Lapland (Lapin lääni). The Norwegians exactly regard these two provinces as Lapland. It is uncommon to use the term Lapland for the Russian Kola Peninsula, either.

In distinction from that there is the actual settlement zone of the Sami, the Lapp natives, namely Sápmi, which reaches far beyond the historical Swedish province Lapland from their point of view. Even though the Sami have been forced back on and on to the North during the last centuries, today Sápmi spans from the Kola Peninsula down to Idre in the (middle-) Swedish province Dalarna and Engerdal in the Norwegian district Hedmark.

On the other hand, the term Nordkalotte identifies the northernmost regions of the Scandinavian Peninsula around the Arctic Circle and the area north of it.

The region of the Arctic is defined by climatic criteria: for example the treeline or the July-isothem of 10°C are normative for the delimitation of the areas in the southern regions of the earth. In former times the Arctic was simply determined as “Area north of the Polar Circle” (66°33‘ latitude north). However, the climatic zone of the Arctic is not restricted by the polar circle.

If Nils Holgersson would fly once again on the back of the grey wild goose Akka of Kebnekaise high above her home, he would see in the far west the high mountains of the Skanden (Scandinavian Mountains) covered with glaciers and a coastline rugged by hundreds of fjords. He would see in the eastward of the mountains a tundra like plateau, interveined by swamps and rivers. He would see vast boreal forests, which spread from the plateau deeply into the valleys.

One can process these mere facts with a geographical basic knowledge and compare it to the world map before his mind’s eye. That’s no problem. But it will be much more difficult to clarify the vast extent, loneliness and nativeness of the landscape. For many of us the lack of streets or other infrastructure is totally unimaginable. I often heard remarks as: „ Well, if you get tired, you can walk to the next highway and hitch a ride to the next village”, which is the expression of a standard idea of a landscape. My response to that explaining that there are no highways, no villages, regularly will not really reach my counterpart. One will recognize his vacant expression showing it clearly. This imagination is that far away from his empirical world that his brain refuses to accept such unimaginabilities. The non-presence of towns and villages falls into the same category.

Tell someone of your circle of friends and acquaintances, you were walking about seven days in one direction and you didn’t meet any other person, didn’t see any road, any house or power pole – and then pay attention to his face…

Then you will surrender, going into raptures over the beauty of the endless vastness, making him understand why an infertile valley, full of shredded leftovers of former mountain tops can be fascinating. Why it is worth to experience walking on physically extremely demanding paths.

He will never understand and of course will not be able to do so as far as he will not have first-hand experience thereof. Sometimes it needs an outer initial push. Even today I am delighted about my friend Oliver, having a lasting effect on me in this affair.

Can you hear the sound of life

in the roaring of the creek

in the blowing of the wind

That is all I want to say

that is all

Nils-Aslak Valkeapää [Valkeapää2]

Sunday, July, 15th:

Arrival

In the last days I thought and thought of the northland summer’s perpetual day.

[Hamsun, pg. 869]

Ready at last! The recent weeks had been filled with a thrill of anticipation and sweat-soaked test runs through the woods of Göttingen and the Elfringhauser Schweiz (near Hattingen in the Ruhr Area) carrying a 30-kg-piece of backpack. This period came to an end today. Instead of this begins the worrying about the successful convalescence of about only 14 weeks after my knee surgery (arthroscopy), i.e. was this recovery phase sufficient for the coming operation?

Nevertheless: the day of departure is now! The plane will take us from Düsseldorf to Stockholm. An additional domestic flight will carry us to Gällivare, which is an urban treasure within the natural site World Heritage Laponia

Sonni kicks her boys (husband and son) out at the departure terminal and Niklas and I move the jam-packed baggage cart in the full to overflowing check-in area, where at least 200 persons/families are queuing fanhold – and all of them are ahead of us. There are only 30 minutes left until the end of the boarding time. We will never make it!

But the routine of the dispatchers enables us having even 5 minutes in reserve. Thus, we can stroll to the gate without a hurry.

Check-in, fly off and land in Arlanda, Stockholm‘s airport. We are going to meet Jens here, who will be arriving from Zurich. Asking the lady at the information desk for some news about the plane from Switzerland, we learn that it landed just a few minutes ago. Niklas and I detect the right gate for departure to Gällivare in the meantime and are still waiting for our so far missing friend. Even using a strategically significant point does not help. But he does not appear. In addition to that we didn’t get any answer to several SMS’s.

„Son, I’m afraid the Swiss confederate missed his plane. He doesn’t answer not at all!“

„Nonsense, he is going to come to light! Listen to me!“ my optimistic offspring argues.

And thus it happens. At 10:30 h he passes by, maundering at an idle speed and meets us anywhere on the airport area, where we had changed our position many times in the meantime.

As things turn out, he has some problems with his luggage. The rod system of his trolley, which had to be checked in as a separate item of luggage, was not on the baggage conveyor belt after landing in Stockholm. That is why he had an odyssey to the counter of SwissAir and the information desk andandand in the meanwhile. Alas, without any success.

Jens found something in the internet that appears to his mind as a serious alternative to the classical backpacking: namely a vehicle similar to an Indian sledge, but having a wheel at the end. This construction needs to be fixed to the body by means of some harness and to be dragged behind oneself. He expects a vast relief for the back of using it. For this purpose he reconstructed a mountain bike trailer and tested it in the Swiss mountains. And he found it good. One part of the trolley is just the drawbar, which consists of two aluminium tubes – and these ones are missing now.

Jens and his trolley

It is time now to check in for the domestic flight to Gällivare. At the counter we ask the lady on duty for the missing tubes - but no success again. They remain undiscoverable. Only Jens‘s backpack is present. May be the tubes will arrive with next plane? Nobody knows. Jens is to call the airport in Gällivare in the evening. Probably there will be new details in this affair.

Well, we want to stay overnight in Gällivare anyway. I booked a small cabin on the local camping ground beforehand. The worldwideweb makes it possible.

Gällivare – a small town, yes, yet still one of the biggest in the northern region – is in the northern Swedish province Norbottens Län resp. the historical province Lappland and 70 km north of the Arctic Circle.

The Arctic Circle is determined by the latitude of 66° 33‘, where the sun reaches the highest meridian altitude on the day of the summer solstice (June, 21st). That means that the sun is in full view for 24 hours a day. The duration of this spectacular period increases, the farther north one goes. At the Arctic Circle this phenomenon can be watched roughly said between June, 12th and July, 1st at the North Pole between March, 20th to September, 23rd. That is not to say, that at the Arctic Circle there will be complete darkness beginning with the 2nd July. Starting July 6th the upper edge of the sun disappears behind the horizon – but there will be twilight from dusk till dawn. Darkness will set in as we go along.

Their Moxa is made of a fine fungus found on the birch, and always chosen from the south side of the tree. Of this they apply a piece as large as a pea, upon the afflicted part, setting fire to it with a twig of birch, and letting it burn gradually away. (…) It produces a sore that will often keep open for six months afterwards, nor must it be closed till it heals spontaneously. This remedy is used for all aches and pains; as the headache, toothache, pleurisy, pain in the stomach, lumbago, &c. (…) It is the universal medicine of the Laplanders (…).

Kattie is a kind of drawing or ripening plaister (…): the fine loose scaly bark of birch is set on fire, and immediately quenched in water. It is then chewed, (…) and afterwards mixed with fresh turpentine from the spruce fir, both being kneaded together by the hands, till the mass becomes a black uniform plaister. This (…) is successfully applied to hard imposthumes, &c.,(…).

An ointment for burns is made of fresh cream boiled to a thick consistence, with which the sore is anointed. It removes the pain, and admirably promotes the healing of the ulcer.

For chilblains, the oil or fat which exudes from toasted reindeer cheese, rubbed upon the part affected, is a sovereign cure. Some persons use dog's fat for the same purpose.The latter is also used for pains in the back, being rubbed in before a fire.

[Linné1, pg. 275f]

Gällivare has about 8500 inhabitants, a historical train station and a hospital – of which more later.

Jens and I start at the camping ground, looking for something we can waste for dinner – during the taxi ride from the station to the camping ground we passed a supermarket that is opened today, on a Sunday up to 22:00 h. One of the two cash machines in Gällivare, oh well, even here at the last toehold of civilization you find them, doles out a dose of money, that will be converted into bread, sausage and spaghetti the next minute.

Meanwhile Niklas nurses his right foot. Only 3 days before leaving to the wilderness someone of his comrades poured nearly boiling water thereon with the result that a hefty burn blister spreads over two of his toes (diagnostic analysis: second-degree burn).

At home our Doc made an expert job on curing the wound and handed us a wide range of things for taking care of it, when we would be on the road (e.g. gauze, desinfectant, Betaisodona, aspirins, mull, tape). One will not find all of this medicine in nature (see text in the box above).

Back at the hut, Jens contacts the airport again. Again, no news on that topic. Jens girl-friend Sabine contacted the airport in Zurich and got to know, that the rods have left Zurich anyhow and thus must lie around somewhere at the Stockholm Airport. Probably some kind of jackass put them into a corner somewhere and forgot it afterwards.

There is need to ask again in Stockholm tomorrow in the morning. That means, that we will not take the bus at 9:50 h, but the last one at 13:50 h, if the package actually will arrive with the midday-plane.

Niklas‘s Burn

Day 1 | July, 16th:

Complications

The hut is stuffy and warm. Therefore it is no good idea to shut the window. On the other hand, this allows free access to the mosquitos, to which we have our first closer contact here.

The trees here produce Usnea arborea (Lichen plicatus), which the Laplanders apply to excoriations of the feet caused by excessive walking. They line their shoes with this moss, a practice which might with ad-vantage be adopted by soldiers on a march. The Laplanders also line their shoes with grass, consisting of various species of Carex. This grass they comb with iron or horn combs, bruising it between their hands till it becomes soft and pliable. When dried they cram it into their shoes, and it answers instead of stockings for defending the feet from cold.

[Linné1, pg. 260]

Early in the morning Niklas wakes me, standing totteringly near the bunk bed, from which I chose the upper part last evening.

„I think, there is something wrong“, he murmurs, staggering 3 paces in direction to the living room and collapses there. He is unconscious for some seconds. His forehead shows some bulbs that might be caused by bug bites.

While Jens keeps an eye on Niklas, I am running to the reception gathering for help. As it is quite early in the morning nobody is there.

An older Swedish woman is sitting on the front porch of another guesthouse that is close to the reception building. Drawing closer to her, I ask for a doctor. I can communicate with her as she has a few scraps of English available and she dials the emergency call on her mobile phone. She tries to explain something to someone, but as she doesn’t know any details, she handed the phone to me so can I speak to a lady at the other end of the phone

All this takes quite a while and as I do currently not know how Niklas is doing at the moment, we agree on a pickup by ambulance car. But this may take a while, depending on the availability of the vehicle.

In the meantime, the husband of the Swedish woman has appeared on the scene (only speaking Swedish) and tells me gesticulating, that he can drive us to the hospital. That is the local SJUKHUS – tcha, that’s the way how to learn foreign words.

The connection to the emergency central is still up and thus, I unsubscribe the ambulance car and declare we will get to the hospital by our own. I lead the way to our hut, where the kind Swede is going to give us a lift. My son lies on the bed and obviously his condition has increased in the meanwhile.

As things turned out, the hospitals is just round the corner – less than 3 minutes car drive from the camping ground. We thank our chauffeur and go to see the emergency department.

Sister Amanda takes care of us and our names and addresses and sends us to the waiting area. Niklas looks quite normal again and feels so, too. Well, as we are here now, I think it best to clarify the situation. The morning bus has left anyway and thus, Jens has room enough to worry about the shaft of his trolley.