Vildmarksvägaen (or The Wilderness Road) is a 500-km loop in central Sweden, chockfull of wonderful wilderness to discover (and some old buildings and activities). I was hopeful of seeing reindeer, as it was mating season, but was also really hanging out for bears, lynx and wolverines. In hindsight though, you’d need to spend longer there and go much more off track. Outside of June–September, the Wilderness Road isn’t a loop as the most north-western part of it is closed due to the snow so my dream of being able to do the whole lot didn’t come to fruition, but it was still worth the trip.

We landed in Östersund on Wednesday afternoon and picked up the car. I’d rented an EV, but thought it would be something small. Turns out it was an SUV, a Skoda, so big and beautiful to drive with everything that made it almost like the car was driving itself. It was my first time driving an EV and I enjoyed it…except for the initial panic that came from watching the battery deplete and the fear that you might not be able to charge it again before it conks out. On Thursday, I managed to get it to just under 20%, which felt very dangerous, but also still had about 100km on the car… By that stage, I had calmed down, but the 1.5 hour drive from Ostersund to Stromsund felt a little frightening, like we’d be lost in the wilderness and have to cook reindeer over a lithium fire.

We pulled into Hotel Nordica in Stromsund around 5:30/6pm and checked into our room. There was a suitable EV charger outside in the carpark, but I had to wait a while before one of the two became available. The frustrating thing about the chargers though is that they’re registered to different companies who have different rules and ways of accessing, which became much more apparent in Trondheim, but for now, on the Wilderness Road, we were fine.

The room was comfortable and the hotel put on free smorgasbord dinner and breakfast, which was very welcome. I went and picked up some flyers and brochures for our drive along the Wilderness Road, then we sat and had dinner outside. Again, the sun never seems to set and it was still up when we went to bed around 11pm.

Chasing waterfalls

The next morning I talked to the tourism people about what chances we’d have at seeing some animals (reindeer: likely, bears: unlikely despite there being a whole road called “Bear Road”) then we packed up some stuff and headed off. Prior to coming to Sweden, I’d expected the temperature to be something like 5°C in this part of the country, but it was instead a balmy 22°C/23°C and there was absolutely no need for thermals, beanies, gloves or scarves (though the woman at the tourist centre did say it would be cold up the northern end of the road)). Luckily we had the car so bringing a whole lot of stuff – Glen’s suitcase, for instance – wasn’t really a problem.

First stop was Norråker to see a waterfall. The Wilderness Road – E45 – is solid asphalt road in excellent condition. Then there are the gravel roads which are still a lot more roadworthy than the ones back home with barely any corrugation. We had to take these gravel roads at times, but that meant we had greater chance of seeing wildlife. The first waterfall just outside the town was great, with a nice little spot to stop for a picnic. I was tempted to get in, but didn’t as it was quite a torrent. We walked around for a bit and took some photos. There were frogs. It was magical.

From there I took the backroads past another awesome waterfall, beside lakes that I should have dived into, and over roads that were still partially covered in snow. Fortunately, previous drivers had already carved tracks through them so we were fairly safe. The best part of this back-country travel came as we crested a hill and saw a female reindeer on the road up ahead. We stopped and watched her for a while before she headed into the forest. Reindeer: tick!

We eventually reconnected with E45 before heading off again to go to the main waterfall, Hällingsåfallet, stopped at the lower reaches of the course before going up to the top, which was really something to see. Big, big waterfall, with lots of water running down a jagged, deep rocky channel. We wandered through the forest on one side to get some good views, and then to the other where we saw a strong double rainbow and then the full rainbow arc. Beautiful!

After that it was to the town of Gaddede where we stopped at the supermarket to charge the car for a bit and get some lunch. It didn’t charge much, but it charged enough to allow us to comfortably do the rest of the what I had planned. We also stopped into the tourist centre and I asked again about reindeer (I wanted to see a male) and bears (which got pretty close to an eye-roll because they’re so secretive).

We continued up the road, stopped at another waterfall called Brakkåfallet, that still had snow all around it. In fact, the snow stopped us from exploring the whole thing as we weren’t equipped for it. The water was ice cold. Then we continued around to the town of Stora Blasjon. Though I wanted to see where the road was blocked, I decided it would be more of the same scenery so we headed back. I was also the only one who’d brought their licence and so was the only one covered to drive so adding an extra hour or two of driving onto an already eight hours of driving was pushing it.

We took the Bear Road (Bjornvagen) back, which was gravel, but had no bears. The only other animals we saw on the trip was a very big, white and black rabbit, and two deer (one doh and one calf, with spots on their rump). No more reindeer either unfortunately. We got back to Stromsund around 6 or 6:30 so we were out for about 9 hours. Lots of driving and I was a bit cooked at the end, but happy with the journey and what we had seen (though always wish I could see more. Next time.).

There are other things to see on the journey like churches and woods and lakes and canyons, but there’s only so much you can do in a day. Doing the whole route would be great.