I relatively often read Scandinavian crime and thriller novels. Recently, I have bought a book with the title “Sarek” at an airport. I have read it the last two evenings and finished it this morning. It need to write about it to leave the intense reading experience behind me. On the one hand side, it is a classical page turner. Some readers may enjoy it just for the reason of steadily rising suspense.

On the other side, both the setting and the plot elevate this book about the already high level of Scandinavian thrillers: The action takes place in a Swedish national park, the Sarek. So, it is a book that naturally addresses a special group of readers: Hikers and backpackers, who seek challenges in real wilderness. And exactly regarding this point its title touched and revived an uncomfortable personal experience which I went through many years ago.

I liked to have holidays in the mountains in my youth – up to the point when I passed the age of thirty. After that professional duties and IT governed my life. However, around the age of 21, I looked out for challenging hiking tours, despite I knew very well that I had too little experience for some of them. But as a young man, you just grow with the challenges. This is something which probably many young male persons think, totally overrating their real abilities. So, I went to the Sarek National Park – with the ambitious plan to cross it. With a girl friend at the age of 18. The Sarek gave us back to civilization, but it left me deeply impressed – and some decimeters smaller in my psychology and self-estimation.

In the Sarek, for the first time in my life, I had to overcome a situation which was really life threatening. I had read ahead of the tour, which my girl friend and me had planned, that “the Sarek can be heaven with good weather, but that it can rather abruptly turn into hell with bad weather”. I quickly had to learn the truth of this warning on our way upwards from the delta of the river Rapa (Rapaätno) to the center of Sarek (which we never reached).

In the beginning, we had two or three relaxed and fantastic sunny days in late August from Gällivare to Atske. First with bus, then rowing over an extended lake for some hours and afterward moving up and down through an extremely impressive landscape which automatically made me think of an almost mystic Tolkien world. A night under a clear starry night was a bonus. After camping at Atske, we eventually passed the Rapa delta (an experience in itself – ask my girlfriend of those days) to move upwards along the river bank – along something which remembered vaguely of a kind of narrow path. A couple camping at Atske had recommended this way in into Sarek. But those guys had been there in good weather.

In our case it started to rain. And the rain became heavy and permanent as we got higher and higher. Folks who have been there, probably can imagine how fast the water level of the river and its many side streams rose and how cold and foggy it can get in Sarek at the end of August. After passing two days in heavy rain in a tent on a small hill, with water rising everywhere around us, we decided to move further upwards. Passing through many varying layers of water and rather dense fog, we eventually reached a kind of high plateau. We soon understood that it had become a kind of swamp with partially moor-like parts during the previous three rainy days. We had to carefully move between firm points of grass through the totally sampy area. And then it happened: I stepped onto a point which was not firm at all and went down to my breast into muddy moor soil, sinking slowly. My friend had to cut a small birch tree to get me out. I would never have gotten out by myself. I had never experienced the suck of the moor soil before. And to try to take my backpack to the front and place myself on it to prolong the remaining time span never came to my stupid mind …

After this shock moment, we decided not to proceed – which may have been a much wiser decision than we in our frustration thought at that time. It stopped raining for growing intervals on our way back, but going back to the Kungsledden included walking rather often in water more than 1 meter deep – for two days. Eventually, the weather changed to the better – outside and in the south of Sarek. Later we learned that the rain had continued in the central and northern parts. Anyway, we were taken out of the Rapa delta by a Sami fisherman with boat. He had seen us by chance. He just shook his head when he smelled the smoke in our cloths which we had dried above open fire the night before. Our adventure in northern Sweden took a good turn, however: Later on, we had 10 fantastic days along the Kungsledden southward.

So, personally, I have left Sarek with an open bill. At least in my way of thinking at that time. Now 47 years later the bill is still open and it is going to remain open – for good. So much about the Sarek. Why have I written about it? I wanted to present my own experience with this northern national park not only to explain my interest in it, but also to prepare the reader in a soft way for what awaits him or her in the novel of Kvensler.

So, back to the book. I saw its title and just had to look into it. I got it in Norwegian, but it certainly is or will be translated to English and German (see below). I looked at the “etterord” (afterword) of the author first. I freely cite and translate a few sentences:

“In general I dissuade from going to Sarek in case you are not very experienced with [high] mountains. … What do you get back for all your required investment in time and money? Well, your privilege is to shit 3 times a day behind a rock. If this sounds like one of the best worlds to you then Sarek is the right destination for you (as a bonus you can take it for granted that you would have to do it in drizzle rain and around the freezing point in temperature some times). If not: Go rather to Abisko or Jotunheimen in Norway …”.

I had been 3 weeks in Jotunheimen ahead of our tour to Sarek 47 years ago. As my wife is Norwegian, I have much later returned to the beautiful Norwegian national park to walk the famous Besseggen tour once again. I agree wholeheartedly with Kvensler after my personal experience described above. Jotunheimen has so much to give you – for significantly less effort than the Sarek. Of course, I had to buy and read the book.

I liked it from the very beginning. It brought back so many memories from holidays in mountains and in tents (in the Alps, Jotunheimen, the Pyrenees, Greek mountains on the Peloponnese, Korsika, US National Parks). Good and bad feelings. The smell of moistly tents and down sleeping bags, and hours in bivvy sacks flat on the ground in heavy thunderstorms. The feeling of luck and total exhaustion or sometimes fear. The psychology of semi-climbing at some very exposed corners of mountains with insufficient equipment and training.

You will find all of this in the book. Just read it – even if you have never been a mountain or wilderness hiker. It is realistic in very many details – although the author, of course, also maximizes the multiple crises which follow one another. But the sequence of events is not at all implausible.

Aside of describing survival under the conditions of a lonesome and hostile wilderness, the book has to offer so much more. It analyzes psychological group dynamics under stress – in parts exerted by an egoistic dominant male. It is also a probe and view into a family with a psychopath as the dominant father – something I actually was also very familiar with in my childhood. And it provides a look into the abyss of jealousy. Some may also like the change of perspective onto the chain of events and the “who’s done what”. All in all, the book of Ulv Kvensler is an extraordinary thriller.

I hope, I have made you a bit curious. In your interest as a potential thriller reader. You may miss some fantastic hours of intense reading if you never buy the book. Kvensler is a gifted author who will certainly climb up in the ranking of Swedish thriller writers in the future.

P.S.: The book was first published in 2022. It got translated to Norwegian in 2023 for the Bonnier publishing company. A quick check at Amazon revealed that the book was published in 2024 in Germany under the title: “Der Ausflug – Nur einer kehrt zurück”.