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A strange Saturday morning en route to the Arctic

A strange Saturday morning en route to the Arctic


Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.

Birch trees in their thousands (millions, perhaps) prove mesmeric as they race past the train window. Sometimes they are jostled out of the view by stands of pines. Occasionally the view opens up to reveal a lake. The monochrome surface, as sullen as lead, reflects a sky blanketed by cloud. Colour is provided by the cottages and farmhouses that straggle beside the railway line, uniformly painted in “falu red” – the rust-toned paint that appears to be a national obligation in Sweden.

The shades of grey lighten on the eastern edge, where the sun is seeking to prise open a gap close to the horizon. To the west, a vast lump of rock (“mountain” would glorify its slumped silhouette) is patched with snow even on the first Saturday in June. The earth’s deep north feels like another world.

An hour ago our smart Norrtåg electric train – the 6.34am from Boden to Kiruna – crossed the Arctic Circle, drawn magnetically towards the Pole. And when I say “our”, I can be specific about who exactly is aboard beside me. Charlotte, my wife and travelling companion; Ann-Kristin, the train manager; and David, the train driver.

Today in the UK, many passengers have no trains because of the latest strike by train drivers belonging to the Aslef union. In far north Sweden the issue is that the trains have no passengers. Charlotte and I are on an Interrail adventure, with the “Iron Ore” international line from Luleå to Narvik in Norway one of the planned highlights. The line bisects Scandinavia, connecting the Baltic with the North Atlantic. It was originally built to move precious iron ore from the mine in Kiruna – the biggest in the world – to the ice-free port of Narvik, and later extended across Sweden’s Norrland.

We turned up at Luleå station, beside the Gulf of Bothnia, at 5am to board what the essential Interrail app promised would be a train to Narvik in Norway. Screens in the unstaffed-but-warm waiting room indicated it had been replaced by a bus due at 5.13am, which itself had been cancelled.

Luleå is the biggest settlement at the top of the Gulf of Bothnia, which you can think of as the armpit between most of…

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