Route Kittelfjäll-Fatmomakke. Chapter 1. From Kittelfjäll

Route: Kittelfjäll - Fatmomakke in the Swedish mountains of Lapland - We follow the backpacker Josef Arnfjell on this adventures in the Swedish mountains.

Route Kittelfjäll-Fatmomakke

Chapter 1

From Kittelfjäll

”Kittel” is the Swedish word for pot and “fjäll” means mountain, and that give us a hint that the village Kittelfjäll lays in a valley surrounded by mountains. Giebne, Borkafjället and to the left in the picture, Henriksfjället, and to the right Bergsjöfjället.

      

The route that passes between this two villages are quite frequentely used and make a distance on about 30 km (18-19 miles). 2 km/h (1,25 m/h) is a calm walking pace, which makes it possible to walk the distance in 15 hours, even with a 20 kg (44 lb) backpacker (rucksack).

      

With this pace you can walk for three hours a day and relax and enjoy the trip for the rest of the day if you want. This will give you and your friends a nice and cosy mountain trip with an extraordinary beatiful nature in 5 days if you take it easy. Maybe something for the family with smaller children, or for those who like to build basecamps and who doesn’t mind having the tent on the same spot for more than one night. If you like to do it this way, you can spend a couple of days just walking and the rest of the time do some filming, peak climbing, photographing, or whatever that you find interesting.



Risfjället (the mountain of brushwood) with Offerkullen (the hill of sacrifice) glimpsing in front of it. The lake is named after the mountain, Rissjön.

      

It’s not only humanbeings that apreciate the beatiful viewes up on the bare mountain. These reindeers belong to the Saami people, the original inhabitants in Lapland. In the 16th and 17th centuary the king or “the crown” started to tax the Saami people. It became more easy to pay tax for those Saami who had more reindeers and that is one of the reasons that the reindeer culture developed to what it is today. The small herd on the picture are in their summerarea and will be moved down to the woodland when the winter comes.



On Offerkullen (the hill of sacrifice), on the other side of the lake, has it most likely been a seite, an object or a natural formation to which the lapps gave their sacrifice before christianity put en end on those rituales. It’s not always possible to find a seite out in the mountain, especially not those who were made of wood. Those who were made of stone is still possible to see, with a little bit of luck and skill.