This Woman Took Her Family on an Epic 110-Mile Trek Above the Arctic Circle

This is a guest post by Amanda Henck Schmidt.

As we got off the train in Abisko after an 18-hour trip from Stockholm, it didn’t feel like we were leaving for a wilderness trip. Other hikers poured out of the train doors with us. Most were dressed in what we grew to call the “European Trekking Costume” — long pants (often with reinforced knees), tall leather hiking boots, and a long-sleeved button-down shirt — and carrying gigantic backpacks. We aren’t ultralight backpackers by any means, but we had on what we started to call “US Thru-hiker Outfits” — shorts, t-shirts, trail runners, and Dirty Girl gaiters — and moderate sized packs (30L for the kids, 45L for adults).

Dozens of other hikers had boarded at the various stops the train made over the last three hours or so of the journey. Hundreds of us had changed trains together five hours before. Once we got to the Abisko Tourist Station, there was a crew setting up a giant tent, and signs everywhere announcing the Fjallraven Classic.

We were a little worried that everyone was going to be on the same hike we were, but it turns out that most people were either participating in the Fjallraven Classic, a hiking festival that happens every August, or were doing part of the Kungsleden, a famous Swedish long-distance trail. We were headed the opposite direction, and hiking 110ish miles to Finland, via Norway. We crossed paths with only a few people doing this same stretch in the same direction we were, and around ten people going southbound.

The Arctic Trail: 300 Miles Above the Arctic Circle

I had found the Arctic Trail (Nordkalottruta in Norwegian, Nordkalottleden in Swedish, or Kalottireitti in Finnish) almost by accident. I was looking for a long-distance trail in a very different environment, preferably one not heavily traveled since we were going to be there in August. The Kungsleden is the most famous Scandinavian long-distance trail, but I was worried it would be too popular.

Once I told the kids that I had found a trail entirely above the Arctic Circle, mainly above treeline, and across three different countries, there was no reason to look further. The children would not let me. We completed the middle section of this roughly 300-mile trail. There are only two major towns you pass through along the way, each about 100 miles apart, and we did the stretch between them.

We spent the night at the Abisko Tourist Station, a Swedish Tourist Foundation (STF) hostel. We had a nice dinner that night and slept in our tents overlooking the lake.  We started our hike on our second day, where we crossed north above treeline. Besides a few short stretches in low valleys, we would not drop below treeline for the next 11 days.  It was neat to be so exposed for such a long period of time — our daughter kept a running tally of glaciers we saw. She stopped tallying snowfields after she got to 100.

Terrain and Navigation

Even though the area is exposed, the hiking was not as challenging as we thought it would be, especially after trekking the Maine section of the Appalachian Trail as a family in 2023. Most of the time we were hiking along valley bottoms and over low passes between the valleys. Elevation gain and loss each day was moderate. Because we rarely had big climbs or descents, it felt like less total elevation change than we had actually completed.  

The trail is well-marked with red blazes (mainly on cairns) and easy to follow. Borders between Norway and Sweden (we crossed 4 or 5) were marked with really gigantic yellow cairns. On the last day, we passed the Three Kingdoms Cairn, which is a huge cement block in a lake. It’s the most western point of Finland, the most northern point of Sweden, and also part of Norway.

A single map, which we bought in Abisko, covered our entire route. I also downloaded GPS tracks to my phone, so we always had two sources of information on where we were and where we were going.

One surprising thing about the trail was that it was basically either extremely muddy or extremely rocky. There are no bog bridges; rocks aren’t rearranged into easy to walk on sections to keep you on the trail; bridges were rare. We had soaking wet feet every day. But thanks to fast-drying trail runners and the opportunity to dry things indoors at huts, our feet started each day in dry shoes (and mostly in dry socks).

Nearly every day, someone we passed would warn us that coming up the trail was really difficult, usually because it was rocky. However, we never found anything that was technically challenging to us, and, even in trail runners, the rocks and stones weren’t a problem.

We talked a lot about trail maintenance and philosophies around trail building. In the northeastern US, we have bog bridges, water bars, and other built sections of trail to keep us on the trail and minimize erosion. The kids and I remembered hiking the Franconia Ridge in summer 2023 and noticing how the rocks had all been arranged to be smooth on the trail, incentivizing hikers to stay on the designated path.

None of that was true on the Arctic Trail. We always vaguely knew where to go because of the red-blazed cairns, but picking through rocks or across muddy areas led to many people taking different routes. We eventually concluded that because the tundra is so vast and so seldom traveled, there was no reason to restrict people to ea strict treadway.

Day by Day

Each day was between roughly 10 and 15 miles long. Even though we were walking in the bottoms of valleys most of the time, we were still above treeline nearly the entire trip and had spectacular views the whole way.

The first day we were in scrubby trees and mainly walked along the edge of a huge lake, past a small ski area, and then across a road and up into the mountains. We camped above the same large lake.

The second day we started hiking over a high mountain pass. That day we were caught in our first rainstorm (we had to hide among boulders under a cliff because it was so windy, cold, and wet) and saw our first reindeer before we crossed over the pass and started descending towards a tourist town on a large reservoir. That night was the only night we wild-camped, although it wasn’t that remote: we were across a small river from a seasonal Sami village.

The third day we hiked next to a cascading river draining down the glacial valley towards the reservoir, and the trail largely followed a road being constructed to the Sami village. That day we crossed the second, and final, road of our trip. We hiked along a reservoir for a few miles, then headed back up a valley through to another mountain pass. From that point on, the trail largely connected glacial valleys via low passes between them. We hiked in marshy areas at the lowest elevations and over rocky slopes at higher elevations. 

I am a geomorphologist (a geologist who studies why the surface of Earth looks the way it does), and I couldn’t get enough of identifying the various glacial landforms. I took endless photos of glacial landforms that I teach about but had never previously seen. My kids probably know more about glacial landforms than most introductory geology students. On this trip they got really good at identifying the rocks we were walking across and would happily explain to anyone who will listen what a garnet-mica-schist is and where we found them on our hike.

We hiked a bit faster than planned and got two days ahead of schedule. The first extra day we used to hike a prominent peak, Bárrás, visible from the hut we were camping at (Gapohytta). There was actually a trail up the mountain, but other hikers recommended we get to it by cutting overland, so we went cross-country and intersected the trail that we eventually followed to the summit. At one point we almost turned around because we were scrambling up an unprotected class three route. Fortunately, we found the trail and comfortably made it to the summit. The effort was worth it: we had 360-degree panoramic views with a several-thousand-foot prominence because of the steep gorges down two of the three sides of the peak.

On our other “extra” day, we did a day hike up to a small summit above the hotel/hostel/campsite in Kilpisjarvi, and then continued around the mountain and a nearby lake.

Camping and Huts on the Arctic Trail

Most nights we camped at DNT (Norwegian Trekking Association) huts; we also spent one night at an open (free) Swedish Mountain Hut and wild camped one night. The Swedish Mountain Huts we saw are very simple: wooden sleeping spaces, a wood-burning stove, and a small kitchen area with a few basic cooking tools. Some have stoves, others do not.

The DNT huts are amazing. Like the AMC huts in New Hampshire, they are mountain huts with beds, kitchens, and outhouses. The similarities basically end there. We were in the Troms-Turlag district and only visited unmanned, locked DNT huts. Each hut location has one to four huts, a woodshed/storage shed with composting privies (usually two or three), and a clean water source.

Each individual hut holds four to twelve guests per building in private bunkrooms. Some huts have beds in the main room as well, and all huts have couches that can be used for beds. Each bed has a mattress, sheets, pillows, and comforter.

The common area has a kitchen with range and oven, cooking equipment, dishes and utensils, tables and chairs, couches, a wood-burning stove with drying area around it, and cleaning supplies. The common areas, which frequently have panoramic views, have games, books, and toys for children.

With our family DNT membership, we borrowed a key for a small deposit and then were on the honor system to pay for any huts we used; the deposit was returned when we returned the key at the end of the trip. The kids were free for all uses of any huts, and adults paid much less for camping at a hut site and using facilities (including the kitchen and common spaces), so we used this option.

It is definitely possible to do the entire trip staying at DNT huts, which would mean that you don’t need to carry a tent, stove and cook gear, or a warm sleeping bag. Before leaving, just make sure everything is cleaned up and ready for the next guests.

Having a real stove opened up food possibilities we hadn’t considered ahead of time, and we really regretted not having more ingredients with us. It was rough watching other guests eating pancakes with freshly picked blueberries while we were eating rehydrated food. On the other hand, most people we met were eating the same brand of freeze-dried food and were jealous of our homemade backpacking food, so we weren’t bad off.

We did stay in one DNT hut overnight because the winds were too strong to set up our tents. The tents had gotten soaked in the process of trying to set them up, and it was helpful to dry them out overnight in the woodshed/privy building (it was big and clean – we weren’t hanging our tents in privies, just in the building that had the privy stalls).

Hiking Community

One of the best parts about staying at the DNT locations was meeting other hikers. The first two nights we didn’t meet anyone, and barely even saw other hikers. After that we chatted with at least one other hiking group each night, and often others during the day. Most of the people hiking were Norwegians and Finns out for shorter trips. They were surprised to see Americans (we only met one other American the entire trip), and especially Americans with children, on the hike.

One highlight was meeting the caretaker for Vuomahytta and learning more about the local culture and hut system. Bjorn, his daughter, and his best friend were checking on the hut and fishing some small, local lakes. Bjorn was a one-man cultural ambassador program. He taught us about resupplying the huts, which is primarily done in the winter.

Vuomahytta, where he is one of three caretakers, is in a national park, so they have special permission to take in a few snowmobiles every year for supplies. Interestingly, each individual hut at a site has a different set of caretakers. They divide common tasks related to the woodshed/privies, but each only care for one hut otherwise. In fact, each individual hut has a different name, even though they are at the same site! This confused us a little at first.

The summer season is short and doesn’t start until the mosquitos and flies die down a little. Bjorn explained that we were already there towards the end of the high season, because soon it would start to get too cold and dark. The other popular season is late winter, when there is still snow but also some daylight.

Dogsledding is popular, so there are outdoor, insulated kennels and also specific “dog huts” where owners can stay indoors with their dogs; the dogs still stay in kennels, but they are indoors. Bjorn also told us about the local pastimes, especially hunting, which he really enjoys. We learned from him that if we see reindeer, which we did nearly every day, then there are Sami people herding the reindeer, but they are really good at staying hidden from hikers. We never saw any Sami, but had reindeer wandering right next to our tents regularly.

Food and Foraging

Although we only crossed roads on the first three days of the trip, we learned from people we met that we were rarely more than a few hour hike from roads. This meant that the weekend we spent on the trail coincided with huts that were relatively more crowded. As a bonus, though, we were offered moose stew as a second dinner one night.

Another night we cooked in a hut shared by two groups hiking the same stretch of trail, but in the other direction. The older Norwegian women in one of the groups had collected mushrooms during their hike that day. One of the men in a group we grew to call “the Stockholm guys” used our spices and oil and the women’s mushrooms to sauté a delicious after dinner snack. They were surprised that we were willing to eat wild mushrooms, but our philosophy was that if they were eating it, we would also be fine.

In addition to the wild mushrooms, we foraged for some berries as well. Wild blueberries were still in season, and we regularly ate them while we were walking. One day I convinced the kids to collect about a pint of blueberries, and we ate them with our pudding for dessert.

Another day we met two Norwegian fishermen who told us where to find cloudberries. Cloudberries look a little like raspberries, but they are yellow and grow in swamps. Apparently, they are extremely expensive due to the short growing season, poor transportability, and difficult picking environment. We had some trouble seeing the cloudberries, but once we found them, we saw them everywhere. They were in a swampy section that had us sinking ankle deep in muck. Our daughter, 10, thinks the cloudberries taste like rotten eggs; our son, 12, thinks they taste sweet and musty. Needless to say, only the adults ate them for dessert. We mashed them up with brown sugar and made a kind of jam.

Trail Culture

Towards the end of the trip, we ran into a few groups several times. This was fun because we could compare notes about the trail, see what variations people had taken, and share food. Some older Finnish women were very concerned about our children after we met them on the super windy night when we couldn’t tent camp. Running into them again a few days later, when they could see that our kids were warm and dry, was really exciting for all of us. We met two German girls thru-hiking the entire Arctic Trail on our third night and ran into them a few more times. When we finished, and knew they had another section of trail, we gave them our leftover food.

Trail names are a uniquely American thing. However, because we didn’t learn most people’s names, we made up our own trail names for them: the German Girls, California (the one other American we met), the Stockholm Guys, and so on. We told the German Girls about this when we gave them our leftover food, and they said they always called us “The Family”. We exchanged first names at that point, but our family still refers to them as the German Girls.

Our children were 10 and 12 when we completed this trip. They successfully hiked from Grafton Notch to Katahdin, carrying frame packs, when they were 9 and 11, so we had no doubt that they could do this trip. However, even though Scandinavians have a reputation for being super outdoorsy, and the huts in all three countries are really popular, we saw no other children except one older teenager.

This surprised us a bit because the huts always had a toy basket and other kid supplies. People told us that children are more likely to be taken to huts closer to roads. When I went to the DNT office to pay our bill, the women at the desk were so impressed that our kids had done the hike. They gave me all sorts of swag for them, so we now have special DNT Children’s Club patches.

We ended our trip with a boat ride across a lake from near the Three Kingdoms’ Cairn to Kilpisjarvi, where we spent about 24 hours and squeezed in a day hike. We then caught the daily bus to Tromsø, the largest city north of the Arctic Circle, and spent two nights there (one full day) before returning to Stockholm to retrieve our luggage from my friend’s apartment.

Although part of me wants to go back and finish the Arctic Trail, I am torn because there are so many other really fun things we could do in the region, including hiking the Kungsleden, skiing from hut to hut, climbing Finland’s tallest mountain, or completing a route we piece together on our own. We definitely will be back.

About the Author

Amanda Schmidt, her husband Josh, and their children, Colby and Lua, live in Oberlin, OH where Amanda is a Geosciences professor at Oberlin College. She is also a team member at Tales of a Mountain Mama, where she writes about skiing, cycling, backpacking, and other outdoor adventures. When she’s not busy being a geoscientist or playing outside, she can be found reading, doing jigsaw puzzles, or volunteering for the Baháʼí Faith.

Featured image: Amanda Schmidt