It’s 10.30pm at Stockholm Central and the D70 night train to Duved is in a state of restrained excitement. Passengers joke as they squeeze past each other in corridors. Carriage stores are full of skis.
In carriage D42, we (that’s me, plus Andreas — a guy doing a long-weekend bunk from the office, and two affable thirtysomethings) allocate berths in our six-bed second-class compartment. The thirtysomethings clamber up a ladder to the top bunks. Andreas opts for the middle. I’m to disembark first, at Ostersund, so take the bottom bunk. The others are hoping to snatch a few precious extra hours of sleep before arriving at Sweden’s premier ski resort, Are, almost 400 miles north, where snow is falling and pistes are opening for the season.
The freedom of Interrail is the opportunity to explore the network’s limits: Cadiz, Athens or Istanbul. Ostersund, in central Sweden, is as far north as you can go on Interrail’s high-speed network. (Regional trains continue across the Arctic Circle to Kiruna, then Narvik in Norway.) It represents an idea as much as a destination — an express ride to the snow that transforms interrailing into “winterrailing”.
Interrail pass or not, the Swedish national operator SJ requires that you pay to reserve overnight places. The two-quid fare is cheap but costs plenty in sleeplessness. A private first-class double compartment provides an en suite with a shower plus breakfast (£42pp), while a second-class sleeper for three buys you a handbasin (£33pp). For £17pp you can book a bunk in a simple, clean, six-berth compartment with blankets, ironed sheets, a carton of water on each pillow and the easy camaraderie of real Swedes making real journeys.
The train from Stockholm to Duved takes around nine hours
Andreas plans a weekend’s skiing before he catches the Sunday sleeper for a Monday meeting at 8am. He makes the trip several times during ski season. “Six hundred kilometres’ drive back after skiing? That’s too far. On the train I can sleep, have a beer.”
The train sways out through city streets at 10.39pm sharp. I leave the compartment to watch rural Sweden slide by, with birch trees strobing in the darkness and the ding-ding-dong-dong of bells as we speed through level-crossings. Up the corridor, an open door reveals a card game spread across a bunk. In the bistro, two men eat microwaved meatballs.
When I return to our compartment there’s silence. Smartphones may have killed the romance of conversation with strangers but they make for quiet nights. I’m lulled to sleep by the rhythm of the tracks. Eight hours after embarking on a mild Stockholm night, I’m on a platform thick with snow.
Ask Swedes about Ostersund and they’ll wax lyrical about the surrounding region of Jamtland Harjedalen — it’s almost the size of the Netherlands yet has just 132,000 inhabitants and serves as a winter adventure playground with the lakeside city as its hub. They’ll probably also mention the mythical Storsjoodjuret, Sweden’s answer to the Loch Ness monster, said to live in Lake Storsjon. A Viking runestone found here depicts Storsjoodjuret as a serpentine sea dragon. More than 500 sightings have been recorded since 1635.
It’s possible to go cross-country skiing on Lake Storsjon in winter
HÅKAN WIKE / IMAGEBANK.SWEDEN.SE
Monsters aside, from late January you visit Ostersund for the Winter Park (free; vinterparken.se). Families tow toddlers on sledges, friends swish companionably on skates and pensioners ski with the dog (the local Intersport rents equipment). As soon as the lake freezes, deckchairs are set on a “winter beach” and residents flit happily from hot tub to ice bath (bring a towel; £18pp). It’s Sweden doing what Sweden does best: embracing winter.
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I shop along a high street that glows in the half-light — a folksy Nordic tea towel here, some smart fur-lined boots there. In simulated firelight at the Jamtli museum I watch fantastical figures dance across Viking tapestries (adults £11, children free; jamtli.com). I also take a 20-minute taxi to Moose Garden (£4; moosegarden.com). Sune Haggmark was a psychologist before he jacked it in to open a centre that rehabilitates moose injured or orphaned by traffic collisions, providing food and space to roam far from roads.
In his spare time Haggmark makes paper from moose poo. (The paper is odour-free, thankfully.) “One moose poo is 15 pages and they poo ten times a day,” he says. Each page sells for £11. Unsurprisingly he appears a very happy man.
Moose Garden is a rehabilitation centre for injured and orphaned moose
ANNE ADSTEN / JÄMTLAND HÄRJEDALEN TURISM
On a hillside behind his rust-red farmhouse five animals wait patiently for lunch. Moose appear to be one of God’s comedy creatures, their droopy noses, doleful eyes and elongated legs a punchline to some forgotten joke made during creation. Swedes, however, know them as the “king of the forest”. A moose can run at 35mph and hear a branch snap a mile away. Despite their half-ton bulk, they’ll hurdle a two-metre fence with ease.
“Psychology was problems all the time,” Haggmark says as he fills the animals’ troughs with potatoes. “Moose are no problems. They’re very gentle. It’s a balm for the soul to talk with them.”
We pat their necks as they feed. Folklore says the Storsjoodjuret emerges from the lake at night to ravage potato crops, leaving fields covered in slime. Nobody’s mentioned the obvious explanation: the moose. They like spuds and slobber when they eat. What more evidence do you need?
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As Haggmark and I talk I catch myself gazing west. Fresh snow has fallen on the mountains. Even to this so-so skier it’s irresistible. So the next day I take a 90-minute train to Are.
That Scandinavia’s biggest ski resort — say “aura” and you’re close to the pronunciation — is known here as a glitzy party town only serves to illustrate the Swedish concept of lagom, a cultural preference for modesty in all things. While weekend après-ski can be boisterous, Are is an oversized village at heart. Hotels are low-rise, either family jobs or classy design numbers. In the centresmart Nordic jumpers are displayed alongside skiwear in shops such as the rental outfit Outdoor Buddies, the winterrailer’s friend (outdoorbuddies.se). The can-do attitude of a remote mountain community has nurtured local chocolatiers and candlemakers. You’ll eat well too. I can recommend Granen for sophisticated modern Swedish dishes (mains from £17; aregranen.se) and the rustic former farm Buustamons for plates of reindeer fillet with homemade schnapps (four courses £83; buustamonsfjallgard.se).
Ski lifts ascend from the village centre to 56 miles of pistes laid over domed peaks — mostly blue and red runs, plus a few blacks used in the Alpine World Ski Championships. Unlike in the Alps, adequate snow is not a problem.
As we clip on skis my instructor, Magnus Olssen, tells me that while I was on the overnight train skiers were camped beside lifts to be first on the slopes. He prefers Are in March: “The snow, the mountains, the sun. Just beautiful.” Frankly the slopes are snow-dome pretty right now, their conifers smudged in snow, fat flakes falling on pistes that flatter after an overnight dump of powder. “Good!” Olssen calls as I follow him down cruisey runs. “Very good!” if I parallel drift a turn.
James Stewart on the slopes
ANNE ADSTEN / JÄMTLAND HÄRJEDALEN TURISM
What you notice most about Swedish skiing is how relaxed it is. No one snarls at beginners or races dangerously close. There’s an easygoing togetherness that strikes me as distinctly Swedish. When I apologise for crashing beside a group that has paused to admire the view, a blond Viking replies: “You’re doing great. Keep going!” I would (goodness knows I need the practice), but it’s too beautiful. Below, beside a frozen lake that looks like pewter, Are twinkles in the reluctant 10am daylight.
Since the railway was completed in 1882, city dwellers have arrived by train to hike and breathe Are’s clean mountain air. And on my snowshoe hike in the high forest at Froa Gruva with Are Nature Adventures it still looks like a winter fairytale (£200pp; adventureare.com). Snowy birch boughs are bearded with moss, evidence of the air’s exceptional purity. Lights shimmer in red cabins. At 2.30pm sunset flames the clouds in a luminous sky.
After an hour in the forest we arrive at an open-fronted cabin. Four pairs of cross-country skis are propped outside. Inside, their owners are cooking lunch over a fire. Logs are stacked on one wall for passers-by to burn. We brew a pot of coffee and then sit on reindeer-skin rugs with a heap of saffron buns. Should the mood take us we could stay for … well, as long as we fancied, actually. It is the birthright of every Swede to unroll a sleeping bag and bed down in a public cabin like this, cooking food, drinking coffee. This kind of footloose travel and free accommodation is the interrailer’s dream. Yes, southern Europe may provide winter sun, but for the magic of winterrail, I’ll take Sweden every time.
James Stewart was a guest of Visit Sweden (visitsweden.com), the Clarion Hotel Grand Ostersund, which has B&B doubles from £104 (strawberryhotels.com), and Aregarden in Are, which has B&B doubles from £159 (aregarden.com)
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