Return To Sweden, Part 12

This 12th installment update submitted by David Anderson includes a trip up to the Höga Kusten, or Sweden’s High Coast and a ski chair lift ride to the top of the resort – Skuleberget.

If you missed the near real time trip updates webpage, go to Trip Highlights .  Editor

13 June, Friday

Here I am in Sweden at the height of the all too short sunny warm summer.  Summer in Sweden is like my trip – too short.  Three weeks may sound like a long time to spend in one country away from home, but it really is not.  There are just too many things to see and do in a short period of time.  I have no comprehension of winters in Sweden.  For me I think they would be brutally cold and dark.  I can’t imagine them, or how people survived in small, cramped, smelly, tsugans.  They often didn’t survive the harsh winters as death records attest since pneumonia, tuberculosis, scarlet and typhoid fevers were common causes of death.  Summer is all too short.

Debbie has gone home.  Her view of the world is different now, now that she has travelled beyond the confines of North America. 

Billboards are not allowed in Sweden, and generally are taken down pretty quickly.  Maybe.  The parking of trailers in a field, alongside the road isn't against the law, and so what if there is something on the side of it??  The farmer doesn't mind!

Jonne and I have travelled up to the Höga Kusten, or Sweden’s High Coast.  He wanted to show this area to me, and I wanted to see something new and different while in Sweden.  The High Coast is a world heritage site, one of 14 such sites in Sweden.  The reason this area has been so designated is that during the last ice age the 3 kilometer thick ice sheet depressed the earth’s crust by as much as 800 meters in places.  As the ice melted that land began to rise.  And in some places it has risen 286 meters (over 900 feet).  At the small 290 meter high hill named Skuleberget the former sea level is marked at the 286 meter elevation.  The changes in vegetation at this level is quite noticeable.  Above 286 meters there is a layer of glacial till that allowed plants to take footholds, while below that the ocean washed away what till was there, and plants have had a harder time colonizing the bare granite substrate.

 

The top of 290 meter tall Skuleberget (a ski resort) provides great views of Sweden's Höga Kusten.  You can hike up, or take the ski Life up - the easy way up.    (that is me!).