The Narvik Stockholm night train, officially known as Nattåg 94, connects the Swedish capital with Narvik in Norway, covering more than 1,500 kilometers each way
From my bunk, I watched my wife ease herself from her bed onto the cabin floor before spinning on the spot to face the toilet door. The track lights of somewhere in the Midlands filtered and crept around the edge of the blind, providing enough illumination for her to find the handle and enter.
Unbeknownst to either of us, in stacking our bags inside the cubicle, we’d primed the above-toilet shower to soak my wife and our possessions with an unwanted blast of water the moment she squeezed in.
My half-waking dreams were cut short by her waterlogged wails as the reality of the Caledonian Sleeper quickly put to bed my night train delusions.
I recall this experience not to say the Sleeper, which connects London with the great cities and Highlands of Scotland, is a bad service. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a greater joy than looking out the window after a night’s kip on the northbound route to see snowcapped mountains and glistening lochs. Not just that, but it compares very favourably cost-wise to a flight and hotel, while being much less environmentally damaging.
But it is to say that returning to my pillow damp, in a bed far too close to a standard issue National Rail toilet (which the private cabins really don’t need) isn’t the classy, James Bond adjacent experience I’d been expecting. Nor was lifting the blind to a crowd of commuters on a Euston platform at 6am, staring back at my pyjamaed self.
READ MORE: Iconic Caledonian Sleeper hints at potential new stops after starting Birmingham service
So, two years on, it was with a similar sense of trepidation that my wife and I clambered aboard the SJ night train at Stockholm Central Station to take on one of Europe’s longest train journeys.
The Narvik Stockholm night train, officially known as Nattåg 94, connects the Swedish capital with Narvik in Norway, covering more than 1,500 kilometers each way. Departing from Stockholm Central Station in the evening, it takes about 18 hours to complete the trip.
Rather than tacking up the west along the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, the train shoots straight up from Stockholm, trundling through some of Sweden’s 28 million hectares of forests, as well as flatlands and swamps.
The final stop on the line may be familiar to war history buffs. During WW2, the British Navy entered the Norwegian fjords through the ice-free, Gulf Stream-warmed port of Narvik in pursuit of Nazi ships. They launched a dramatic and comprehensive assault that would be Hitler’s first major strategic defeat of the war.
The reason the Allied and Axis powers threw resources at this far-flung patch of Lapland is iron ore. The northernmost Swedish city of Kiruna is home to the world’s largest underground iron ore mine, which now delivers 90% of all of Europe’s supply. Securing the ore and the trainline that has been delivering it to Narvik since 1902 was crucial for powering both sides’ war machines.
In March, 124 years after the route first opened, I hopped aboard the sleeper to Kiruna – two hours shy of the final stop, but well into the Arctic Circle.
It was, in a word, fantastic.
Upon entering my second-class private cabin, I was worried it’d be a little cramped for my wife and me. However, unlike the Caledonian Sleeper, which has two unmovable beds, the SJ’s three bunks can be flipped back into the wall. When you’re not kipping, the middle can be folded away, making way for a hidden backrest below and turning the bottom bunk into a comfy sofa.
My wife and I lounged in this set-up for the majority of our trip, reading our books and watching the Swedish countryside trundle on by, including the amusingly named town Bastuträsk (sauna swamp).
I would not be as bold as to argue that the Swedish landscape is as beautiful as the Highlands. Its lakes may be bigger and its mountains significantly higher, but there are few places as moving as Rannoch Moor or as stunning as the peak of Mam Ratagan Pass.
But equally, Sweden is no slouch in the beauty stakes, and it’s surprisingly varied. In riding up two-thirds of the country, you’ll see glistening blue lakes turn to great frozen expanses; the four mighty, free-flowing national rivers Torne, Kalix, Pite, and Vindel; more ancient forest than almost anywhere else in Europe; and finally the Kölen mountain range.
The train is certainly not new, but it has a solid, vintage feel that contrasts with some of the slightly flimsy modern trains I’ve ridden on. There was something unusually soothing about the reassuring clunk of the door and the Scandi-design approved clothes hooks. The addition of a Bakelite radio alarm clock above each bed was the cherry on the 70s cake.
Unlike in the Sleeper, where we’d stacked our bags in the bathroom due to a lack of cabin space, two storage racks just below the ceiling kept the gangway clear and the room spacious-feeling.
A similar design divergence came with the toilet. The Caledonian Sleeper’s en-suite option sounds luxurious, but in reality, it’s an unwanted, even unpleasant feature. The shower room doubles as a lavatory, with a heavy, workmanlike lid covering the toilet and serving as a place to perch beneath the stream. There was something a little alarming about sleeping so close to a mechanical, seemingly suction-powered WC, and claggy about steam and shower drizzle drifting into the bedroom.
On the SJ, the idea of an ensuite is abandoned. Instead, the cabins have a mechanical shower keycard, which can be used to open the shower at the end carriage. They have a changing area, a stack of thick, fresh towels, impressive water pressure, and even a hairdryer.
After a surprisingly good night’s sleep and a spruce up in the best on-the-move bathroom I’ve ever experienced, I was feeling fresh and ready to check out the buffet car.
The carriage is divided into four seating areas around solid tables, with windows along the length of the carriage. This, and the ‘påtår’ bottomless tea or coffee system in play, meant there was little else to do but sit back, relax and watch the Arctic slip by.
Book it
The starting price of the SJ night train from Stockholm to Kiruna is 1,125 SEK (£90) for a couchette and 1,695 SEK (£136) for a 2nd class sleep carriage.
Book at www.sj.se/en