🇸🇪 Sweden · Dalarna and Swedish Lapland
Abisko is one of those names that make the eyes of aurora hunters around the world light up. This tiny village lost in the far north of Swedish Lapland, on the shore of the enormous lake Torneträsk and a step from Norway, has a reputation as the best place on the planet to see the northern lights. The reason is a quirk of geography: the mountains around it create an exceptionally dry and clear microclimate — the famous 'Abisko blue hole' — so the sky here opens up on far more nights than elsewhere in the Arctic, precisely when everywhere else is clouded over.
But Abisko is not only auroras. It is also the gateway to a splendid national park and the starting point of the Kungsleden, the 'King's Trail', the most famous long-distance path in Sweden, which winds hundreds of kilometres through the Arctic mountains. In summer, when the sun does not set for weeks, the village fills with hikers starting their crossing here, and the landscape of the 'Lapporten' — the distinctive U-shaped gateway between two mountains — presides over the scene. Here the Arctic is walked, breathed and, with luck, lit up in colours in the sky.
This guide covers Abisko with a practical and warm eye: how to get there (the night train from Stockholm is a classic), when to go depending on what you are after — auroras in the dark nights, hiking and the midnight sun in summer — how the famous Aurora Sky Station works, what walks to do in the national park, and what everything costs in this remote and expensive corner. A destination for lovers of nature, of Arctic silence and of the magic of the northern lights.
Abisko is, above all, a place of nature, and its modern history is tied to the railway and to science. The area was for centuries the territory of the Sami people, who used it as reindeer pasture (the name comes from the Sami 'Ábeskovvu'). Everything changed at the start of the twentieth century with the construction of the Malmbanan, the iron ore railway that links Kiruna with the Norwegian port of Narvik and passes through Abisko: the line, completed in 1902, opened this remote region to the world. In 1909, Sweden created Abisko National Park, one of the first in the country and in Europe, to protect its unique Arctic nature. Shortly afterwards the Abisko scientific station (Abisko Naturvetenskapliga Station) was set up, a research centre on the Arctic and climate change that has been running since 1913 and is one of the oldest of its kind in the world. The STF mountain station (the Swedish tourist association) made Abisko a base for hiking and, later, for aurora tourism. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓From the free farmers of Dalarna — cradle of Gustav Vasa, of Falun copper and of the painted horse that is a symbol of Sweden — to the Arctic Lapland of the Sami people, the iron of Kiruna and the auroras of Abisko: two hearts of the country, one folk, one polar.
Read the history of Dalarna and Swedish Lapland →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before the railway, the national park or the mountain station existed, the Abisko region was — and in many ways still is — the land of the Sami people, the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia. These shores of the great lake Torneträsk, at the far north of Swedish Lapland, were part of their reindeer herding routes and of their ancestral territory, Sápmi, long before any state or industrial presence arrived.
Abisko's own name is a reminder: it derives from the Sami 'Ábeskovvu' or 'Ávaskoiedno', tied to the idea of a forest beside the water or the sea. The place names all around — Torneträsk, Nuolja (Njulla), the Lapporten, Kebnekaise — have Sami and Finnish roots, and speak of a landscape named and travelled for centuries by its original peoples, who knew every valley, every mountain pass and every season of the reindeer migration.
The Sami of this region lived from semi-nomadic reindeer herding, following the herds between the summer pastures high in the mountains and the winter ones in more sheltered areas, in a way of life perfectly adapted to the Arctic. Reindeer herding is still alive today: many of the reindeer visitors see in Abisko park and around it belong to Sami herds, and the activity remains a pillar of their culture and their economy, at times in tension with the railway, mining and tourism.
The 'Lapporten' — the spectacular U-shaped gateway between two mountains that presides over the Abisko landscape — is, not by chance, a place loaded with meaning: its name means 'the gate of Lapland', and it marked a natural pass on the Sami routes through the mountains. Understanding Abisko's history means starting by recognising that this is, above all, a Sami landscape.
Abisko's transformation from a remote corner into an accessible place is owed to a colossal piece of engineering: the Malmbanan, the iron ore railway. At the end of the nineteenth century, Sweden decided to build a rail line linking the enormous iron deposits of Kiruna and Gällivare with two ports: Luleå, on the Gulf of Bothnia, and above all Narvik, on the Atlantic coast of Norway, a port that does not freeze in winter. That line had, inevitably, to cross some of the wildest and most remote mountains in northern Scandinavia, among them the Abisko region and lake Torneträsk.
The construction, in extreme Arctic conditions, was a feat. Thousands of workers — the 'rallare', railway labourers legendary in Swedish memory — laid the tracks across tundra, rock and snow, enduring the cold, the winter darkness and the isolation. The line between Kiruna and Narvik was completed in 1902, and at last brought this edge of the map into contact with the rest of the world.
The railway changed everything for Abisko. Suddenly, a place previously reached only by the Sami and the odd explorer was connected by train with the cities of the south and with the Norwegian coast. Abisko station became a point of access to an extraordinary natural world that, until then, had been practically beyond the reach of travellers. Without the railway, neither the national park, nor the scientific station, nor the mountain and aurora tourism we know today would have been possible.
That same train, still carrying Kiruna iron to Narvik more than a century later, is today also the legendary night train that brings travellers from Stockholm to Abisko and the Norwegian border, on a journey of almost a whole day through the Arctic landscape. The history of tourism in Abisko begins, literally, on those rails.
Barely a few years after the railway opened up the region, Sweden took a pioneering step in protecting nature. In 1909, the Swedish parliament created the country's first national parks — among the first in all of Europe — and among them was Abisko National Park. Sweden thus became one of the nations at the forefront of the then novel idea of setting aside natural areas to protect them from exploitation and to conserve them for the future and for study.
The choice of Abisko was no accident. The area around the valley of the Abiskojåkka river and the shores of lake Torneträsk brings together Arctic and sub-Arctic nature of great value: birch woods, tundra, mountains, a spectacular canyon, a rich flora adapted to the extreme climate, and wildlife including reindeer, birds and other northern species. Moreover, the recently built railway made the area accessible both for scientists and for the first visitors, something unusual in such a remote place.
The creation of the park confirmed Abisko's vocation as a place of protected nature and a point of reference. Over the twentieth century, the park became a destination for hiking, nature watching and, in time, for aurora tourism, always on the premise of conserving its wild character. That such a space was protected as early as 1909, when environmental awareness was barely emerging in the world, speaks of an early sensibility that today seems admirable.
That same spirit of protection coexists in Abisko with the 'allemansrätten', the right of access to nature that applies across Sweden and that lets anyone move about, camp and enjoy the countryside responsibly. In a national park such as Abisko, that freedom is combined with specific conservation rules, in a balance between public access and care for the environment that defines the relationship Swedes have with their nature.
Abisko is not only a place of natural beauty: it has also been, for more than a century, a world reference centre for the study of the Arctic. In 1913 the Abisko Scientific Station (Abisko Naturvetenskapliga Station) was founded, a research centre devoted to the natural sciences of the north, which became one of the oldest continuously operating Arctic research stations in the world. For more than a hundred years, scientists from all over the planet have come here to study the flora, the fauna, the climate, the glaciers, the aurora and, in recent decades, the effects of climate change in the Arctic.
That long series of measurements and observations — one of the oldest and most valuable in the Arctic world — makes Abisko a key place for understanding how the planet is changing. The permafrost, the vegetation, the cycles of snow and ice, all of it is studied here with a historical perspective few places can offer. Science is thus part of Abisko's soul as much as the auroras or the hiking.
In parallel, the Swedish tourist association — the Svenska Turistföreningen (STF) — developed in the region the infrastructure that would make Abisko the mecca of Swedish mountain hiking. At the start of the twentieth century, the STF laid out and equipped the Kungsleden, the 'King's Trail', a great long-distance path that starts precisely at Abisko and runs hundreds of kilometres through the Arctic mountains to Hemavan, with a network of huts (fjällstugor) spaced a day's walk apart. The Kungsleden, together with the Abisko mountain station (Abisko Turiststation), made the Swedish high mountains accessible to generations of walkers.
So, over the twentieth century, Abisko kept adding layers to its identity: the protection of the park, the science of the research station, and the mountain tourism of the STF and the Kungsleden. A small, remote place that grew large through the nature it protects, the knowledge it generates and the crossings that begin there.
Contemporary Abisko is, despite its tiny size, a destination of international fame, above all for two reasons that draw travellers from all over the world: the northern lights and hiking. Its reputation as one of the best places on the planet to see the aurora is owed to the so-called 'Abisko blue hole': the rain shadow effect of the mountains around lake Torneträsk keeps the skies exceptionally dry and clear, so auroras are seen here on far more nights than in other parts of the Arctic. That fact, backed by decades of experience, made Abisko a magnet for aurora hunters.
The symbol of that tourism is the Aurora Sky Station, the viewpoint on top of Mount Nuolja reached by chairlift, considered one of the best spots in the world to watch and photograph the northern lights. Every winter, from September to March, travellers from every continent arrive in Abisko — many on the legendary night train from Stockholm — hoping to see the sky light up in green and violet.
In summer, Abisko changes face completely. The midnight sun bathes the village and the lake 24 hours a day, and the village fills with hikers who start the Kungsleden here or explore the national park and its surroundings, with the Lapporten always cut out on the horizon. It is also a base for attempting Kebnekaise, the highest mountain in Sweden, not far away.
To all of this is added its scientific role, with the century-old research station still taking the pulse of the Arctic and of climate change. Abisko is today a place where protected nature, science, hiking and the magic of the auroras live side by side, all in a setting of silence, mountains and extreme light, on Sami land, at the northern edge of Sweden. A destination small on the map but enormous in experiences, for those looking for the wildest and most beautiful of the far north.