Abisko Nationalpark - Swedish Lapland
- Matthias
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 12 hours ago
I spent four days in Abisko, and from the very beginning it felt like a conscious pause in my journey north toward Norway. After the physical intensity and raw isolation of Sarek, Abisko offered a different rhythm. More accessible, more open, yet still deeply connected to the vastness of the far north. It was a place to stay, not just to pass through.
Abisko National Park lies along the northern shore of Lake Torneträsk, in a landscape shaped by immense glacial forces. Over thousands of years, ice carved wide U-shaped valleys, smoothed mountain flanks, and exposed layered rock formations that remain clearly visible today. The geology here feels calm and expansive. Where Sarek rises sharply and demands constant attention, Abisko unfolds horizontally, inviting a slower, more contemplative way of moving through the landscape.
This geological openness changes how time is perceived. Distances feel larger, horizons broader, and the sky plays a dominant role in shaping each moment. Light moves freely across the terrain, weather shifts quickly, and the land seems less about resistance and more about endurance. For me, Abisko became a place to observe rather than to conquer, to walk without urgency, and to let the landscape reveal itself gradually over the course of several days.
The Abiskojåkka Canyon is one of those places where geology becomes tangible. The river cuts deeply into the landscape, revealing layers of stone shaped by water, frost, and gravity over immense spans of time. Walking along the edge of the canyon, the sense of scale shifts. What appears solid and permanent is, in fact, constantly changing.
The rock formations here are sharp and fractured, their surfaces marked by cracks, lines, and subtle colour variations. In some places the stone feels almost sculptural, as if shaped deliberately rather than eroded slowly by natural forces. Water rushes through the canyon below, dark and persistent, carving its path without urgency. It’s a quiet reminder that time, not force, is the dominant element in this landscape.
Light plays a crucial role in how the canyon reveals itself. As clouds move quickly across the sky, shadows slide over the rock walls, emphasizing textures and depth. Certain moments feel fleeting, lasting only seconds before the scene transforms again. Photographing here becomes less about capturing a view and more about responding to rhythm, contrast, and structure.
In the Abiskojåkka Canyon, Abisko’s geological story feels condensed and exposed. It’s a place that invites close observation, where the vast timescales of the north are written directly into the stone.
The ride up to the Aurora Sky Station already felt like a journey in itself. The cable car is old, a little rough around the edges, and unmistakably functional rather than comfortable. As it slowly climbed above the valley, the ground dropped away beneath me, and the familiar sense of scale shifted almost immediately. There was something slightly surreal about ascending in this way, suspended between sky and land, knowing that I would later return on foot.
My intention for going up was very clear. I wanted to use the elevation to work with telephoto lenses and isolate the snow-covered mountains in the distance. From this vantage point, the landscape no longer reads as a continuous scene, but as layers of form, light, and shadow. This approach closely follows the visual language of my Lights, Shadows, and Glaciers project, where compression, abstraction, and selective framing play a central role.
From the station, I spent hours watching the weather move across the mountains. Clouds rolled in fast, sometimes obscuring everything, only to break open moments later and reveal sharp ridge lines and snowfields glowing briefly under filtered light. With the telephoto lens, small sections of the landscape became complete compositions on their own. Dark foreground slopes, luminous snow patches, and heavy skies stacked into quiet, dramatic images shaped entirely by light and timing rather than location.
Instead of taking the cable car back down, I chose to hike from the Aurora Sky Station back to the Abisko Turiststation. The descent felt like a deliberate contrast to the mechanical ascent. Step by step, the compressed, distant views gave way to changing vegetation, texture, and detail. I was even got spooked my two moos crossing the hiking path. It was a slow return from abstraction back into physical space, allowing the images made above to settle while reconnecting with the ground beneath my feet.
Alongside my hikes and landscape work in Abisko, I began a small side project that emerged almost unintentionally. Scattered across the open land and along the shores of Lake Torneträsk, I started to notice ice fishing huts left behind from winter. Outside the frozen season, they feel oddly displaced. Small, quiet structures standing on bare ground, disconnected from their original purpose.
What drew me to them was their stillness. These huts are simple, almost anonymous in design, reduced to function and shelter. In summer and early autumn, they become something else entirely. No longer tools, but markers. Subtle reminders that people pass through this landscape without ever fully shaping it.
For these images, I made a conscious decision to work with the Sigma 50mm F/1.2, shooting wide open at f/1.2. I wanted to give these huts a very specific visual presence. The shallow depth of field allowed me to separate them gently from their surroundings, creating a softer, more intimate look within an otherwise crowded landscape. The combination of minimal forms and selective focus helped reduce the scene even further, letting the huts exist quietly within the frame rather than competing with their environment.
In a landscape as expansive as Abisko, these huts felt like pauses. Small interruptions that didn’t demand attention, but rewarded it. Slightly out of place, yet quietly belonging to the rhythm of the north. One day I would like return in winter to see the ice fishing huts in their natural habitat on the ice.
Just outside the boundaries of Abisko National Park, near Björkliden, I visited the small waterfall known as Silverfallet. It’s an unassuming place, easy to overlook, yet quietly compelling. You notice it first by sound rather than sight, the steady movement of water cutting through the stillness of the surrounding landscape.
Silverfallet is not about scale or spectacle. Water flows continuously over dark, layered rock, shaped by the same geological forces that define the wider region. At the point where the river slows and spreads toward the lake, the shoreline is covered with flat, glacially rounded cobbles. Smoothed and polished by ice, river flow, and gentle wave action over thousands of years, these stones lie scattered almost rhythmically, as if carefully arranged rather than shaped by natural processes.
After days spent working with wide valleys, distant mountain ranges, and abstracted telephoto views, this place brought my attention back to something immediate and tactile. Movement, texture, and repetition replaced distance and horizon. Light reflected softly off wet stone surfaces, emphasizing their subtle colour variations and worn edges.
Standing there, watching the water carve its path, it became clear how closely connected all these places are. The broad valleys, the canyon walls, the snow-covered peaks in the distance, and this quiet cascade at the edge of the park all belong to the same slow rhythm of erosion and change. Nothing here feels static. Everything is in motion, even if that motion unfolds over centuries.
Silverfallet felt like a fitting place to pause. Not at a dramatic viewpoint, but at the margin. A reminder that some of the most meaningful moments in the landscape don’t announce themselves. They simply flow, quietly and continuously, waiting to be noticed.
Leaving Abisko behind, the road led me onward toward Norway, where the landscape would soon change once again.
Stay tuned for more.
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