Lapporten
Interesting facts
- The record highline, walked in July 2021, measured 2,130 metres; fifteen slackliners attempted it over three days, and four crossed without a fall.
- The two sides of the gate are unequal: Nissuntjårro rises to about 1,738 metres, Tjuonatjåkka to about 1,554 metres.
- The Sami name of Tjuonatjåkka, Čuonjáčohkka, shares the "goose" root with the valley Čuonjávággi and its lake.
- The valley runs northwest to southeast, and the lake in its floor drains to Torneträsk through the stream Miellejohka.
- Neighbouring Abisko National Park was created in 1909, the same year Sweden passed its first nature conservation laws.
- Lapporten lies roughly 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, in Sweden's northernmost and largest municipality, Kiruna.
- The 440-kilometre Kungsleden hiking trail begins at Abisko, a short distance from the gate.
Why it is worth it
Two mountains with smooth, steep flanks, and between them a perfectly rounded hollow: seen from the shore of Lake Torneträsk, Lapporten looks like a giant gateway cut into the skyline of the Swedish mountains. It is a U-shaped valley in the Abisko area of Swedish Lapland, and its silhouette is among the most frequently painted and photographed mountain views in Sweden.
The name means "the Lapland Gate" in Swedish. In Northern Sami the valley is Čuonjávággi, "Goose Valley", and the small lake that lies in its floor, at about 950 metres above sea level, is Čuonjájávri, "Goose Lake"; its waters drain northwest towards Torneträsk. The gate is framed by the mountains Nissuntjårro on the southwest side and Tjuonatjåkka on the northeast, both rising to well over 1,500 metres. The symmetry that makes the view so striking is the work of glacial ice, which flowed through the valley during the ice ages and ground its floor and walls into the classic trough profile of a glaciated valley.
Lapporten lies just outside the boundary of Abisko National Park, within the Nissuntjårro Natura 2000 area, in the far north of Sweden, well above the Arctic Circle. The ground through the pass is easy to walk, though there is no marked trail. The valley has also drawn feats of a different kind: four German slackliners once set a highline record here by crossing the roughly 2.1 km gap between the two summits on a line more than 500 metres above the ground. The gate is visible from a wide area around Torneträsk, including from Björkliden on the lake's southern shore.
Getting there
Lapporten lies about 11 km southeast of Abisko, in Kiruna Municipality. Abisko has two stations on the railway between Kiruna and Narvik, Abisko Östra and Abisko Turiststation, served by trains from Stockholm, and is reached by road along the E10. The town of Kiruna is about 70 km away. The nearest Swedish airport is Kiruna (KRN), about 75 km away; Bardufoss (BDU) in Norway is about 90 km away across the border.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Lapporten or Tjuonavagge is a U-shaped valley located just outside Abisko National Park in Lapland in northern Sweden, one of the most familiar natural sights of the mountains there. The valley is bounded to the southwest by the mountain Nissuntjårro and in the northeast by Tjuonatjåkka. In the middle of the valley lies Lake Čuonjájávri, 950 metres above sea level. The terrain is easy to walk, but has no marked trail. Lapporten is in the Nissuntjårro Natura 2000 site. A world record in highline was set by 4 Germans crossing the 2.1-kilometre (1.3 mi) distance between the mountains on a slackline more than 500 metres (1,600 ft) above ground.
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