Qualla: Storuman (lake)

Storuman (lake): Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smiley.toerist, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ask how wide Lake Storuman is and the only honest reply is another question: which end? At its northwestern extremity the lake is a slot barely five hundred metres across, winding thirty kilometres between mountainsides that rise five hundred metres straight out of the water — a fjord in everything but salt. Follow it southeast and the walls step back, the shores flatten, pale sandy headlands push out into open water, and the same lake spreads six kilometres wide. Two entirely different bodies of water share one name, one outflow, and one river running through them both.

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Image: Smiley.toerist | CC BY-SA 3.0

Storuman (lake): The Slot

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MikaelLindmark, CC BY-SA 3.0. The northwestern arm is the half that looks carved rather than filled. Ice worked this trench down through the fells and left it deep out of all proportion to its width: the bed drops as much as 112 metres in places where the surface is only five hundred metres across, which mean...

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Image: MikaelLindmark | CC BY-SA 3.0

Storuman (lake): The Basin

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MikaelLindmark, CC BY-SA 3.0. Southeast, the geology relaxes. The lake broadens to six kilometres and the shorelines run almost unbroken, backed by low, level ground rather than cliff. Sand replaces stone. Headlands built of it reach out into the water in long shallow spits, the sort of shoreline that reads a...

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Image: MikaelLindmark | CC BY-SA 3.0

Storuman (lake): One Hundred and Forty-Eight Metres

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MikaelLindmark, CC BY-SA 3.0. The deepest sounding in Lake Storuman is 148 metres. Since the surface sits 351 metres above sea level, the lake floor lies a little over 200 metres up — a hole punched most of the way down through the highland it occupies. That number is newer than it looks. Older reference work...

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Image: MikaelLindmark | CC BY-SA 3.0

Storuman (lake): Water on a Leash

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Szilas, Public domain. The Ume River flows through Storuman, and the Ume River is one of the workhorses of Swedish electricity. The lake serves the power stations downstream as a reservoir, its level rising and falling by as much as seven metres as demand and season require. Seven metres is not a subtl...

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Image: Szilas | Public domain

Storuman (lake): Luspen

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MikaelLindmark, CC BY-SA 3.0. The settlement at the outlet has a Southern Sámi name, Luspie, and a Swedish one that came later. Swedish settlers reached the spot around 1741, and for a long time nothing much happened: by 1912 the community called Luspen amounted to roughly forty people spread across eight far...

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Image: MikaelLindmark | CC BY-SA 3.0