Imagine paddling through a Swedish wilderness where the river itself was once a timber highway — and now you're helping return it to wildness. That's exactly what awaited James Shooter, a visual storyteller with Rewilding Europe, when he joined the inaugural rewilding week along the Hjuksån River near Umeå this June. After traveling 500 kilometers north from Stockholm aboard a sleeper train, he found himself standing shoulder-to-shoulder with eleven strangers, learning to inflate packrafts in a forest clearing while the river sparkled invitingly in the morning sun.
The trip was the brainchild of Daniel Allen-Hörnfeldt of Rewilding Sweden and Marcus Eldh of Wild Sweden, who designed an itinerary that blends adventure with action. Over several days, participants packrafted through widening waterways fringed with yellow marsh marigold and star-shaped bog bean flowers, spotting beaver lodges, goldeneye ducklings, and greenshanks overhead. They hiked through forests of silver birch and Scots pine, camped beneath open skies, and cooked meals over open fires. But the real work lay ahead.
The Hjuksån River tells a story common across northern Sweden. During the twentieth century, many rivers were straightened and deepened, their boulders removed, to speed the transport of felled timber from inland forests to coastal sawmills. Today, roads and railways have replaced rivers as timber routes — and that shift has created a remarkable opportunity. While Sweden's forests cover around 70 percent of its land area, roughly 84 percent are managed for commercial timber production, leaving vast landscapes that appear wild at first glance but have been heavily shaped by human hands.
It was among these seemingly wild but deeply worked rivers that Shooter and his fellow travelers found purpose. By the end of the trip, they'd spent time restoring a stretch of the Hjuksån itself, contributing to the broader effort to return Europe's waterways to functioning ecosystems.
The trip proved that rewilding can be both accessible and transformative — not just for the land, but for the people who visit it. As the group drifted downstream, conversations flowed as easily as the current, bonds forming between strangers united by a shared sense of purpose. "It's quiet. It's peaceful," Shooter noted of waterborne travel. "And it allows you to experience a landscape in a completely different way."
For those seeking adventure that leaves more than footprints, this corner of Sweden's Nordic Taiga offers something rare: a holiday that genuinely gives back to the wild.