Bohuslän climbing: a trip report.

Bohuslän landscape

(All photos clickable for bigger versions) Trip reports are a bit old school, the type of thing people used to do back in newsgroups days. But lots of people have heard of Bohuslän in Sweden, whilst fewer non-Swedish climbers have actually had a chance to visit, so I thought that a trip report might be of interest to some.

First, thanks to Tomás for agreeing to come on the trip with me, and for roping in his friends Mishi and Martin to share the driving and climbing with. Tomás was the fella who agreed to go head-torch climbing with me on a dark, cold, damp November night in Stockholm last year, so he was just the guy for a mission like this one. It was a top weekend, I got to visit an area I’ve long wanted to go to, and the guys got a crash course in trad climbing. I wasn’t particularly ambitious in the climbs I did, but it was ferociously hot all weekend making all climbing a rather sweaty affair. Additionally, for Tomás, Mishi and Martin this was their first time trad climbing so obviously they wanted to focus more on placing and removing the gear than on cranking hard. Nevertheless we did some 5+ routes which I guess would be British HVS, and for a climber of moderate talent such as myself, no pushover.

Swedish climbers; almost certainly cooler than you are.

Firstly, where to stay: we camped at Klättertorpet (website in Swedish and doesn’t have any English on it so you’ll have to trust me). We were there on a long weekend around two public holidays so it was very busy - just loads and loads of climbers. You can camp or stay in a rather endearing bunkhouse.

A climbers' bunkhouse, obviously.

The facilities are basic - compost loos and just cold running water, but its a nice area an only 50 kr a night per person. The Swedish climbers were all absurdly athletic looking and decked out in fancy gear, making me feel like a typical tatty, fat Brit in comparison. Try not to let that psyche you out.

Möhättan

On the first morning we went to Möhättan for a route called Flaket, which I presume means “flake”. This is odd as its a 50 mtr high corner. Anyway it gets lots of stars and is an easy classic. The crag is a bit different from most of the Bohulän crags that are vertical lumps of granite bursting from the ground. Möhättan is a series of slabs up a hillside, looking like a miniature version of many mountains in the Narvik region.

Mishi's first trad lead - doing an excellent job on Flaken.

The route is very obvious from the road (being a 50 mtr corner and all), but finding the base of it was a bit of a nightmarish bushwack with us either ending up too high or two low to traverse to the base. Once found, the climb itself is very nice - a bit reminiscent of the crux corner pitch of Vestpillaren on Lofoten - just a slightly easier angle. We had a 70 mtr single rope and got down in a short and long ab. With 55 or 60 mtr doubles you’d be back down in one. We then did one more “sports route” on a lower tier - I say “sports route” as it had one bolt in 20 mtrs of climbing.

This is not a sports route...

At 5+ it is straightforward enough slab climbing to lead you quickly and easily into pant filling terrain, where sliding 15 mtrs down a granite slab makes you consider the wisdom of climbing shirtless and in shorts.

The big wall at Välseröd

We then went across the valley to Välseröd, one of the classic crags of the region. The heat was sapping our drive but Tomás and I did the excellent easy classic Jungfrun, that starts with an easy but quickly exposed up to a pinnacle belay and then super classic hand crack to the top of the cliff. A sort of Swedish version of Valkyrie at the Roaches, although easier and I’ve never got sunburn at the Roaches.

Looking down the hand crack of Jungfrun.

The routes on the big wall at Välseröd look very impressive - a guy was shunting one when we there and looked quite lonely in the middle of the 50 mtr sheet of rock. The crag classic Villskudd (6-) looks very nice. It has been called the best route of its grade in Sweden, but the heat and top ropers scared me away from trying - for Finns though I would note that it doesn’t look any better, and indeed perhaps not as good as the big Olhava routes of the same grade. I think its easy to forget just what an amazing crag Olhava is.

Naked German. They are just at their happiest that way.

In the evening we went for a wash and swim in a lake before back to the campsite for a BBQ. The swimming as well as being refreshing was a good chance to check for ticks - one of the few unpleasant “objective dangers” of Bohuslän climbing!

Brappersberget, where one is easily reminded that one is mortal.

On the second day, we went first to Brappersberget, a monolith of rock behind Lyse Church. The mainface is tipped back so interesting slab climbing is the theme of the cliff and it seems that you can climb the slab almost anywhere at about 5+ if brave enough, but most of the recorded climbs all follow natural cracklines. I led Big Ben, 5, and St Pauls, 5+, only Big Ben gets a star but actually I think St Pauls was more enjoyable - longer and with more varied climbing. Tomás led Kyrkråttan, which is a fantastic easier climb at 3+. Its worth noting that Brappersberget is open and close to the sea. On a breezy day it was much more pleasant climbing there than on the stiflingly hot more sheltered crags. Presumably the opposite is true in colder conditions.

Tomás leading Kyrkråttan

The last Bohuslän crag visited was Fedjan. I wasn’t particularly impressed with this crag - definitely not one worth travelling for. It looks like it spends much of the year wet. I led a route called Bideford Dolphin. The guide gives it a star and says well protected, but compared to unstarred routes elsewhere its not brilliant and neither is the gear. I was OK with a double set of cams as all the gear is shallow greasy breaks, so quantity rather than quality is the order of the day.

Me onsighting a granite 6a+ at Ågelsjön, something I rarely manage on Finnish granite.

It’s a pretty big drive over from Stockholm where Tomás lives and I had flown to, so both on the way over and way back we stopped at a crag called Ågelsjön, near Norrköping where we met and dropped off Mishi and Martin. This is a lovely spot by a lake, I didn’t have time to really explore the different areas but did some nice, if a bit polished shorter sports and trad routes on the little wall not far from the car park.

I’ll definitely head back to Bohuslän sometime, probably in the autumn when the conditions (cooler) suit me better, and would give me a fighting chance on some of the classic mid-grade routes at the “big” crags of Häller and Hallinden. The area gets called “world class” by some - I guess it is in the same way that you can argue “Gritstone” is; none of the crags in their own right might reach that status, but put such a huge selection of routes and cliffs in a relatively small area and you can’t really go wrong. It is also interesting to note just how many crags there are as you drive around that appear so far to have been completely ignored by climbers. Hence, there are many thousands of new routes still out there waiting to be done.

Urban climbing: Stockholm

Just in case you ever wondered, yes it is possible to go climbing in Stockholm, in November, in the dark. The crag, Münchenbryggeriet, might never make it on to the list world must-visit climbing destinations, being in a car park and all, but the streetlights help light it up and the view is pretty cool once you get passed the whole “I’m in car park” thing. It is also just five minutes stroll from the metro stop and what I’m reliably informed is the second best pub in Sweden. Thanks to Tomas at Scandinavian Hiking, and Tomas’ mate Brian for allowing themselves to get involved in such a ridiculous idea and making a visiting climbing-blogger very happy. Cheers fellas.

I think we climbed Borgila, 5c, and Viking, 5c, although I'm not completely certain. They felt pretty easy at that grade, let alone the 6a they both get on this website, considering it was dark, cold, slightly damp and starting to rain!

A crag in a car park

A great view across autumnal Stockholm

Alternative silly ways to spend your time in Stockholm: drinking vodka mixers out of large ice cubes inside an artfully decorated industrial freezer. I'd find someone else to pay for that one though.

Absolutely over priced, but - hey - it comes in a big ice cube.

Sweden: social democracy's triumph?

The Swedish general election a couple of weeks back gained some international attention in particular for the success of the Sweden Democrats - Sweden's populist, anti-immigrant right wing party - that got into the parliament, the Riksdag for the first time. But perhaps just as interesting is the failure of the Social Democrats to get back into power, leaving Fredrik Reinfelt of the Moderate party (what a great name BTW! Perhaps it sounds less funny in Swedish...) and his centre-right alliance in power.

Open Democracy has a very interesting interview with Swedish political scientist Professor Lars Tragardth where he talks about the implications of the elections. His argument is kind of that despite the failure of the Social Democrats as a party the election shows the success of social democracy as an ideology. Reinfelt's party might be considered a conservative party, but really they have accepted the social democratic bargain between state protection of the individual and free markets, whilst the Sweden Democrats are in their own way also a social democratic party who are just grappling more openly with the question of who is 'in' the society to which you apply the democracy. Just note, the sound quality is really crappy - to the extent that it only came out of one headphone when I downloaded the MP3 file and listened on my iPod. But bear with it as the discussion is worth it.

All at sea - blogging from the Baltic

Viking Line ferries have wireless internet - hurrah! Hence blogging from the middle of the Baltic is now technically possible. I left Helsinki amongst some pretty dramatic summer thunder storms.

Out at sea it is calmer and the sunset was rather pretty. Tomorrow, Sweden and then the rest of of Europe.


The ferries between Sweden and Finland are always slightly bizarre experiences - I don't think that they show either country in the best of lights, but perhaps it is all the more truthful for that reason. I quite enjoy it as a once-a-year type of experience - but I think my idea of hell might be being condemned to being in a Baltic ferry disco listening to cover versions of Abba song for the rest of eternity.

I've seen the signs...

Signs should take you by the hand and guide you to where you want to go

This weeks Slate Culture Gabfest has a really interesting discussion on signage. No really. At least I hope it’s not only me who finds signage interesting. Julia Turner, one of the discussants, notes that her series on signs for Slate was spurred by a colleague who had phoned her whilst visiting London to say that he had just seen a road sign in front of a closed road saying why the road was closed, when it would be re-opened and what alternative route to take until it is. This was obviously something he had never seen before in the US and hence worthy of phoning a friend to report it although is pretty un-noteworthy in the UK.

I’ve been comparing Finnish and British roads signs for some time and deciding that British signs are actually much easier to navigate by. Finnish road signs seem to presume large amounts of local knowledge which rather negates their purpose. I had thought that this just handicapped non-Finns such as myself but now having discussed it with Finnish friends who have moved to Helsinki from else where in the country, it is reassuring to hear they had just as much trouble navigating by Helsinki’s ring road signs as I did to begin with. More interesting is how Helsinki isn’t sign posted until you are virtually there if coming from the north: so if you are leaving Oulu you better know the road number or the towns along the way, as the nation’s capital won’t get a sign until 500-odd kms later as you get to Lahti, the last town of any size before Helsinki. In the UK you get signs to London at great distances away. It’s the same problem leaving Helsinki as nothing further than Tampere or Lahti seems to get a look in on the signs, except interestingly, St Petersburg if you are going east (on a road sign not far from my house that I find absurdly romantic). Finland is a rather “insiders” country in many ways – probably the result of its enforced geopolitical isolation though the Cold War – and many things it is just presumed Finns will know. Road signs reflect this.

The comparison with Sweden is interesting. Pull out of the ferry terminal in central Stockholm and you immediately see signs for Haparanda (over a thousand kilometres away, on the border with Finland) and for Malmö in the far SW corner of the country – and that’s as good as saying: “the bridge to Denmark, Europe and the rest of the world”.

Sweden - pretty pics and odd impressions

Last year I wondered whether unfashionable people were banned from Stockholm, but having now travelled up Sweden I think it is actually overweight people who are not allowed, at least in the trendy downtown parts. The difference up country is noticable - so that is my first 'things I've never thought about Sweden' - 1) there are quite a few tubby folk around. We've mainly been staying on camp sites, so my sample could be skewed towards Swedes who camp, but I can't think of any particular reason why campers might be more likely to be overweight than the average member of society. Swedes give such a good impression internationally of being healthy, fit and out-doorsy, but I swear there are more tubsters here than in Finland although it is not as bad as the UK, let alone the US.

And then my second 'things I've never thought about Sweden' - 2) Swedish cafés are really crappy. I have moaned about Finnish roadside food in the past, but at least there is always a decent selection of big, sweet buns, donuts and cakes along with hot, rough and ready coffee. Here all the coffee seems to be in thermos flasks so is not really hot and the cakes and buns a bit sad looking. This isn't true of all the cafés we've been in to, but as we're on holiday we have been in quite a few and the average of the sample is definitely below that of Finnish cafés, be they humble petrol station ones or something posher. So score one for the Finns!

Gone fishing...

In the wilds of northern Scandinavia. With wireless. Figures.

Normal - intermittent - service will resume once I have returned to the the (limited) civilisation of Helsinki.

The Somalis of Leicester

(Photo: "Leicester - It'll be good when it's finished" by Andrew M Butler on Flickr)

This weeks Radio 4 Choice is about Leicester - which will be within a few years Britain's first 'plural city' where no ethnicity forms a majority. This does not actually mean that any one current ethnic minority will form a new majority, whites will still be the largest group in Leicester, but they will no longer be more than half of the city's population.

Leicester is quite interesting demographically because its big immigrant inflow, unlike say the northern mill towns, was only 30 years ago and was East African Indians who have tended to be very business-minded. But what I found more interesting was the interviews with more recently arrived Somali families - most of whom moved from Holland because they wanted to be in more a multicultural society than the Netherlands. Their experiences in the UK seem mixed, but what the programme noted was that those that came were all pro-education (with one kid who arrived in the UK at 13 only knowing what English he had heard in music, who then 3 years later got 21 GCSEs! For non-UK readers, that is more than double the number of subjects that a bright kid would normally do at school).

I've been interested in the phenomenon of Somali movement within Europe for the last three years, when I first started hearing anecdotal evidence of it. But now I'm in no doubt - there is an outflow of aspirational young single Somalis and Somali families from Holland and Scandinavia to the UK. I've now heard this from the UK-end and from an odd variety of sources who have noticed in Scandinavia that "their Somalis" are leaving. The UK welfare state isn't as comprehensive as for example in Finland or Sweden, so clearly the old racist line of "they've come here to get a free house" isn't true. Clearly a growing Somali population in the UK has some social policy implications - although as it seems that most Somalis go to the UK to start a business or get higher education, these probably aren't major challenges. It would seem to have much bigger implications for the countries where the Somalis are leaving. If the best and brightest of one of your immigrant communities ups sticks and moves to another country, the community that remains is likely to present a higher proportion of social policy issues. This is exactly what a Danish Imam told me was clearly happening in his city, increasing racial tensions. Another very serious question is whether it suggests that there is a systemic failure in the integration policies of social democracies such as Finland or the Netherlands.

I had a funny conversation with a professional Finnish-Somali guy recently, in that both of us had become interested in the politics of Minnesota for exactly the same reason. Minneapolis seems to have become the promised land for the Somali diaspora - where the community has thrived through its entrepreneurship (and supportive policies from the state) and become integrated into the city's political life in the traditional way new immigrant populations in the United States always have. Now they are important within the Democratic Party, and as a result some of the Minnesota's congressmen and its senator have become leading figures in the international efforts to find peace in the Horn of Africa. The US model of integration (which seems to be to a great extent leave people to their own devices) has successes where the European social democracies do not.

Live foreign minister gossip!

The interesting men of Nordic Foreign Policy (snapped on my phone)

I'm listening to Carl Bildt of Sweden (left) and Alexander Stubb (right) of Finland give a talk on the future of European security. It's fun as they are both bright fellas with outspoken views. Stubb just said the new European Security Strategy is almost certainly going to be "wishy washy crap" - and that's a direct quote! - if some serious political will isn't put into it.

I like ("just call me") Alex - I might not agree with him on everything, but the man has style. Finnish foreign policy are still waters, and whilst those still waters do without doubt run deep, they are very still. Stubb arriving on the scene wasn't a brick being thrown into those still waters, it was a hand grenade.

Stockholm

I'm in Stockholm. The photo above I took last summer whilst waiting for the ferry back to Finland but is the only relevant one I could get to. This time I flew and the weather isn't quite so good but it's still pretty nice, I went for a stroll from hotel this evening in the sunshine. Stockholm is great, it just reeks of civility and Swedish good order. But it also almost painfully cool. Everyone seems to be cool. I don't know where the uncool people are: perhaps they are made to live outside the city limits or something. Or maybe being uncool is illegal anywhere in Sweden? I don't put any effort into being uncool, there is no honour in geekdom. But then again I don't put as much effort into being cool as I used to. I should, for example, have brought my white Converse trainers that I like to think just hint subtly at Parisian hip-hop, but instead went for comfort and have North Face approach shoes, which dangerously suggest midwestern tourist. Hopefully I won't get arrested for this fashion faux-pas, although I seem to be developing a traditional Finnish inferiority complex to the Swedes and will worry that the cool kids are looking down on my shoes.

Tomorrow will be spent discussing the collapse of internal/external dichotomy in security theory. I trust this will be more fun than it sounds.