A heli-ski lodge in Europe's last wilderness
In the mountains of Swedish Lapland, 200-odd kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, four skiers are experiencing a seriously first-world problem. We are in a tiny helicopter above a band of sun-specked powder snow, heading for the summit of Påssustjåkka, pondering the turns we might carve into it. But the pilot is pointing at something and shaking his helmeted head. Following his arm, I spot a herd of reindeer moving in tight formation up the mountainside. The helicopter banks away sharply and we watch the reindeer, and those potential tracks, recede into the distance.
Jörgen Karström, our craggy-faced, ponytailed guide, turns around in his seat next to the pilot and gives us a ‘What can you do?’ shrug. Five minutes later we’ve been deposited at the top of a mountain across the valley, to ponder yet another field of snow flashing in the April sun. ‘Sorry about that,’ says Jörgen, as the roar of the chopper gives way to a low hum. ‘We can’t land too close to the reindeer. It disturbs them, and we might get a phone call from one of the Sami herders.’
If there were only one or two runs to be had, a herd of reindeer getting in the way might almost be a cause for regret. But here, on the western fringes of Europe’s largest wilderness, the supply of powder is not an issue. There are 60 or so skiable peaks that run south and east of Riksgränsen towards Kebnekaise, one of Sweden’s highest mountains, via the Abisko National Park. The mostly curved, glacial mountains contain around 5,000 square kilometres of wide-open powder fields, couloirs and steep faces, with runs of up to 1,400 metres, all yours with a tap on the shoulder of your helicopter pilot. I gorge on it – each unsighted dip reveals yet another expanse of powder. We do 12 runs in the day, and around 8,000 vertical metres. At the end of most of them, we cruise right up to the helicopter.
Riksgränsen is a cluster of red-barn buildings sandwiched between the mountains and the frozen Vassijaure Lake, not far from the mining town of Kiruna. It came into existence in 1903, when Swedish and Norwegian navvies built a train station to service a new line bringing iron ore from Kiruna to Narvik, 47km west on the Norwegian coast. Some of those same navvies strapped on snow shoes, schlepped into the surrounding mountains and were amazed by what they found. Still, it was not until 1952 that Riksgränsen got its first chairlift.
By the 1970s it was a relatively exclusive retreat, where dinner at the vast Hotell Riksgränsen involved smoking jackets for gentlemen and frocks for ladies. When it became reachable by road in 1984, it started to see a new kind of visitor, and when snowboarding hit Europe in the 1990s, many of the sport’s iconic early videos – featuring Scandi pioneers such as Terje Håkonsen and Ingemar Backman carving powder or launching into limpid skies – were filmed at Riksgränsen. Word spread that there was this near- mythical place in the Arctic where you could ski at midnight in May, where the runs rivalled those in Alaska or Kamchatka, and where the heli-skiing was limited only by fuel – unlike in neighbouring Norway, where it’s far more strictly regulated. It became the hangout of Europe’s best free-ride skiers and snowboarders.
Niehku is a brand-new 14-bedroom heli-lodge built in a disused railway roundhouse on the edge of town, where the vibe is more avalanche pack than smoking jacket. In some ways, it fits with a growing trend for places where the adrenalin levels are even higher than the thread count such as Deplar Farm, on Iceland’s windswept Troll Peninsula, and Alaska’s new Sheldon Chalet, an hour’s helicopter ride from any kind of civilisation.
But Niehku, which means ‘dream’ in northern Sami, has the feel of a very personal pet project for its two founders, who are best friends and local ski-bums made good. Johan ‘Jossi’ Lindblom is one of Sweden’s top mountain guides, and Patrik ‘Strumpan’ Strömsten is a skier and restaurateur who is the only person to have twice been named the best sommelier in the country. In the early 1990s, when the elfin, charismatic Strömsten was a waiter and the taciturn, dryly humorous Lindblom was starting out as a ski guide, they were also the bassist and drummer in a band called the National Borderliners, whose brand of rock’n’roll didn’t quite have the longevity of their friendship.
The pair returned here every season, and in 2012 their fairy godfather arrived in the form of Clas Darvik, a Gothenburg-based property mogul, who was visiting Riksgränsen for the first time. Darvik was staying at Meteorologen, a smarter offshoot of the Riksgränsen hotel, which Strömsten had managed since its opening in 2006. Darvik’s heli-ski guide, naturally, was Lindblom, who was now spending the rest of his time taking wealthy clients on trips to the Himalayas or the Caucasus.
Ironically, it was a down day, a day when it was snowing too heavily for the helicopters to go up, that caused Darvik to take a wander to the edge of town, where he spotted the crumbling wall of the old roundhouse on an appealing plot. He invited Strömsten and Lindblom to dinner that night and told them he wanted to build them a heli-ski lodge. They both laughed.
For the next three years Darvik assembled investors and the necessary permits. In 2015 he wrote to the pair, telling them it was a go and giving them a blank slate to design the building and the activities, which will soon include hiking, biking, fishing and hunting trips out of the ski season.
‘We knew it would mean changing our lives,’ Lindblom tells me. ‘But we both agreed, if we were going to do it, we’d have to go all out. We didn’t go to a marketing agency and ask what people wanted. We built our dream lodge, the place we’d want to stay.’ Hence Niehku is very much made to Strömsten and Lindblom’s taste – unfussy, egalitarian, with food, wine and music as good as the skiing. On the cosy mezzanine floor, a bookshelf is stacked with punk anthologies and books on Bob Dylan and Neil Young. There is a Fender guitar mounted on the wall and a framed ski pass dated May 20, 2012, the day Clas Darvik couldn’t go up in the helicopter. When lank-haired ski-bums wander in for a gawp at the new place in town, they’re greeted as warmly as the guests, one of whom has his own private jet waiting at Kiruna airport.
Strömsten and Lindblom hired Swedish architects Krook & Tjäder to make sure that Niehku’s design echoed the oily industrialism of the old roundhouse. They turned the former engine pit into the wine cellar, which is visible through a Perspex floor in the dining room and reachable via an electronic trapdoor.
The interior design, by home-grown firm Stylt, is an exercise in masculine purity, from the blonde-wood sauna to the grey, timber-clad rooms featuring black-and-white photos of the building hanging over super-comfortable Hästens beds.
For dinner, there are six courses of what Strömsten calls skiers’ food, prepared by 29-year-old Meteorologen alumnus Ragnar Martinsson. Ingredients tend to be local: Narvik skrei fish or langoustine, Kebnekaise Arctic char, reindeer from the Sami shop near Kiruna. Strömsten dances around the tables with jokes and tales of irascible winemakers, sharing hosting duties with his wife Ulrika Karlsson, a sommelier and wine writer who runs her own successful restaurant on the island of Gotland.
But everything is geared towards the skiing, with the helicopters firing up at 9am. Each one is shared between two groups of four or five and gets its own maximally certified guide – many of whom, like Jörgen, have worked with Lindblom for years. Unlike the heavily regulated Alps, where heli-skiing is limited to a few runs from designated landing spots, here it’s a relative free-for-all, and I ride almost as much powder in a few days as I have in the rest of my life. ‘You can get longer runs in Alaska or Siberia,’ Lindblom says. ‘But for variety, and just the quality of the experience, there’s nothing quite like heli-skiing here. And you can’t get to Alaska from London in half a day.’
Just to check, I ask my fellow guests, who are mostly Swedish, male and working in property, finance and construction, what they think. These are guys whose dinner-time conversation involves tales of ski-touring across Svalbard and competing in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. And when it comes to Strömsten and Lindblom’s dream lodge, they are as childishly wowed as I am.
Getting here: Niehku Mountain Villa has doubles from about £220. niehku.com. SAS and Norwegian fly from London to Kiruna, from where Riksgränsen is an hour-and-a-half drive. flysas.com; norwegian.com.
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Swedish Lapland | The ultimate guide
