Europe’s wildest pilgrimage route: a trek through the mountains of northwest Sweden

I wasn’t one of the “Best of Sundays” but I did some effort. Well, I changed my underwear for the first time in a couple of days and took a bath with baby wipes. However, when we entered the chapel at Alcavar, I felt more like a member of the expedition than a parishioner. We sat on low wooden benches, rustling our waterproof jackets and stamping our leather walking boots on the stone floor to keep warm. Luckily, priest Mogens Amstrup Jacobsen turned out to be a “gore-tex man” as well as a fabric man as he unzipped his black jacket to reveal a dog collar. As the service began, arctic winds whipped through cracks in the dry stone walls, insulated only with reindeer hair, and candles flickered in brass candlesticks.

I set out in Alcavare on the Preststigen, or “Priests’ Trail,” a 37-mile (60 km) route from Kvikkjokk that could lay claim to being the wildest pilgrimage route in Europe and certainly one of the most beautiful. Präststigen follows the path that priests once walked to the chapel, built in 1788, to perform a service every summer, and today, on the last weekend of July, intrepid tourists and persistent pilgrims can attend the same service.

Alcavare lies on the western edge of Sweden’s Sarek National Park, home to many of the country’s highest mountains and steepest valleys, but there are no campsites or backpacker huts, just sparse sections of the more famous Kungsleden trail. There are no other marked trails, and hiking here means a wild hike, a heavy backpack, and a sense of adventure. In 1926, the famous Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld described him as Vår Sista Stora Vildmark – “our last great desert.”

“I hate it when people use the term ‘wilderness,’” Christian Heimroth of Laponia Adventures, a local guide, told me when I joined him at an exploration exhibition as part of a new Präststigen group trip starting next year. “This is a living landscape, people have lived, worked and shaped this land for thousands of years.” Indeed, Sarek National Park (as part of the wider Laponia region) was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996 for both its cultural and natural value.

The Sami, the last indigenous people of Europe, are woven into these landscapes as tightly and beautifully as a tin thread in their traditional traditions. crafts. The Sami word for the territory of Laponia is Sapmithe same word they use to refer to themselves, emphasizing the inextricable connection between people and their environment. Sarek is located on traditional Sami reindeer herding lands. Although they may now use motorcycles and snowmobiles to chase and herd deer, their knowledge of and affinity for this landscape remains unchanged.

So, not wilderness, but definitely wild. To even get to the start of Präststigen, I crossed the Arctic Circle on the road north of Luleå, met Christian at his warehouse in Jokkmokk (where the famous Sami winter markets take place every February) to load up our backpacks for the six-day trip, and headed an hour further west to the town of Kvikkjokk. From there the trail was a short boat ride across Saccat Lake.

The first section of the trail climbed steeply, the dirt roads wound tightly through the birch forest; The road was strewn with wild blueberries and cloudberries. We eventually left the forest and reached a ridge to get our first proper look at Sarek. To the north was the cloud-covered peak of Bordetjohkko, where Swedish geologist Axel Hamberg built an observatory in 1911 for meteorological and glacial research.

We slept soundly, immersed in the rhythms of wild camping: water drawn from a clear lake, a hearty dinner of venison stew, and an eye mask to protect us from the midnight sun. The next day we went deeper into Sarek through Vallevagge, the sky was blue as the Swedish flag, the silence was broken only by the occasional breath of wind.

We followed Hans Fovelin’s guidebook, The Priest’s Path (currently only published in Swedish), and although there was no marked trail, Fovelin had outlined a cairn path for us to follow. While some were stout, square towers, most were little more than one rock pressed against another, mere whispers of markers on scree and moraine.

Alongside the familiar buttercups and heather were bright blue mountain gentian flowers, red partridge berries and otherworldly-looking wild angelica, a source of vitamin C for the Sami. Sarek was visited by the botanist Carl Linnaeus during his epic expedition through northern Sweden in 1732, and the first part of the Priest’s Trail is sometimes called Linnaeus’s Trail.

On the fourth day of our hike, the Alcavare Chapel appeared on a cliff above the glacial blue waters of Alggayavre. a lake surrounded by high peaks and valleys. It was incredibly beautiful. For most of the day, I had a smile on my weather-beaten face, which did not fade even when crossing a river (a common feature of hiking in Sarek) in shin-deep glacial melt water.

Having crossed the Mielljatno River in one of the boats left by the park rangers on each bank, we walked up to the chapel late on Saturday evening, where Jacobsen greeted us with a beaming smile.

Over tea, he told us that he and his family had been dropped off by helicopter at Alcavar on Friday morning, and that this was his first time leading the service here. Others in the diocese no longer volunteered. “It’s physical, hard work, and the days are long,” he said, before heading off to re-tar the chapel roof and repair one of the rowboats, which broke away and floated down the river, later returning bobbing under a helicopter.

The next morning, Sunday Mass began promptly at 11 a.m. for our small group of pilgrims (there were 11 of us in total, including the priest). On the altar was a simple wooden cross and fabrics borrowed from the church in Jokmokk. They were on the poster palette of traditional Sami clothing and were a reminder that the chapel was originally built specifically for the Sami – not as an act of charity, but as part of the forced Christianization and eradication of their shamanistic beliefs in the 18th century.

After the service we sat outside for coffee and pastries before heading home. Christian was interested in us going through a difficult point in Sweden or otillgänglighetspunktennear the border with Sarek in Pagelanta National Park. This is the point of the country furthest from any road or town, about 31 miles (50 km) in fact, and is also often referred to as the most remote in Western Europe. Marked by no cairn or monument, just a circle of quartz rocks and three antlers, it seemed no more or less remote than most of the hikes of the past week. And I was struck by the fact that Sarek and Präststigen were special not only because of the scenery, as beautiful as it was, but also because of the people – Sami, Hamberg and Linneaus – and the diverse community we briefly joined, and this route definitely deserved more visitors. “I told you,” Christian said, grinning, “this is not a desert.”

The trip was organized Adventures of LaponiaWhatI will will lead a small group guided trip along the Priest’s Path in Alcavar in July 2027 and offer equipment rentals and advice for independent hikers. For more information about Sarek National Park and northern Sweden, visit arcticsweden.com.