Qualla: Skellefte River

Skellefte River: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lars Falkdalen Lindahl, CC BY-SA 3.0. Fifteen times between the mountains and the sea, the Skellefte River is stopped, spun through a turbine, and released. It begins as meltwater at Ikesjaure, high in Arjeplog Municipality within a few kilometres of the Norwegian border, and it ends 410 kilometres later in the Gulf of Bothnia. In between, it collects the drainage of 11,731 square kilometres, moves an average of 157 cubic metres of water every second, and hands roughly a gigawatt of capacity to the Swedish grid. This is not a wild river. It is a working one, and what it works for explains a good deal about northern Sweden.

Read more: Skellefte River on Qualla

Image: Lars Falkdalen Lindahl | CC BY-SA 3.0

Skellefte River: Where the Water Collects

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Skogsfrun, CC BY-SA 4.0. The upper river is less a channel than a chain of enormous lakes. Hornavan comes first among them, and it is a strange body of water: 221 metres deep, the deepest lake in Sweden, yet its surface sits 425 metres above sea level, so even the floor of it is still 204 metres up in th...

Read more: Skellefte River on Qualla

Image: Skogsfrun | CC BY-SA 4.0

Skellefte River: A Gigawatt of Falling Water

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yaroslav Blanter, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first power station on the river, Finnfors, went up in 1906. Fourteen more followed — Rebnis, Sädva, Bergnäs, Slagnäs, Bastusel, Grytfors, Gallejaur, Vargfors, Rengård, Båtfors, Granfors, Krångfors, Selsfors, Kvistforsen — until the Skellefte produced about 4,241 gigawatt-hou...

Read more: Skellefte River on Qualla

Image: Yaroslav Blanter | CC BY-SA 3.0

Skellefte River: Skelepht, 1327

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elgaard, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name is older than almost anything written about the region. It appears as Skelepht in a document from 1327 and as Skellitta on the Carta marina, the great sixteenth-century chart of the north. What it means, nobody knows; the best guess is that it came from Sami, like most o...

Read more: Skellefte River on Qualla

Image: Elgaard | CC BY-SA 3.0

Skellefte River: Metal Country

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elgaard, CC BY-SA 3.0. Water was never the only thing this valley produced. The bedrock south and west of the river holds one of Europe's richest sulphide ore belts, and Boliden AB has worked it for a century — around 1,200 employees, the largest private employer in Skellefteå, digging copper ore laced...

Read more: Skellefte River on Qualla

Image: Elgaard | CC BY-SA 3.0