This section is dedicated to take away all your "I wish someone had told me that before I went!" experiences. This way, you can spend less time settling in, and more time making new friends in your chosen hostel. We share our insider knowledge of tips, tricks and important things to look out for in Fiskelevägen.
Fiskelevägen is a locality in the town of Skärsjön, located within the Skinnskatteberg municipality of Västmanland county, central Sweden. In this location, budget-minded nature-lovers will find a very unique type of hostel. Here you can experience the kind of hostel that caters to your inner yearning to be one with nature. In the middle of Bergsladen Forest, you will be living in huts, bathing in Skärsjön Lake, and cooking over an open fire using wood you chopped.
To reach Fiskelevägen, tourists can fly into the international Stockholm Arlanda Airport. From Stockholm, you can either take a train directly to Skinnskatteberg or combine a train ride to Köping with a bus ride to Skinnskatteberg. From there, you can hop onto bus #56 and exit at the Skärsjön stop. Alternately, a taxi can deliver you via highway road #233 straight to Fiskelevägen.
Once you have arrived, find your hostel and settle into your hostel hut. You can expect two wooden beds, sheepskin rugs, a fireplace, and some candles, wood, and matches. It is a step up from camping in a tent while still allowing you to live a natural lifestyle with no electricity or running water. Your shower and restroom facilities are all found in nature; the lake serves as your bath while there are dry toilets in the woods. Kitchen facilities are in the open air as well, as you get wood to chop and use for cooking your own meals over an open fire.
While you can opt to bicycle, jog or walk around the circa four-mile (six-kilometer) circumference of the lake, row a boat, , go fishing or swimming in the lake, pick blue-berries, or enjoy the floating sauna, you can also join one or more of the many excursions offered. If you love animals, go on the moose and beaver safaris. During winter, you can go on a snowshoe hike, ski tour or Icelandic horse riding expedition. During the summer, you can try a hiking or horseback riding tour. There is also a family expedition available. During these adventures, a guide takes a group through the spruce forest as he teaches how to locate as well as purify water in nature, make a fire (even during snowy, freezing winters), as well as what to eat from the forest. The group cooks over a fire, shares a picnic by the lake, enjoys a swim or the sauna at sunset, and retires to the huts come bedtime. Fiskelevägen is the place of not only the most primitive but also the most serene hostel stay in all of Sweden.
Written by local enthusiast for Fiskelevägen hostels
Jakob Lombardi