The rain had been lashing down for days. Emma Holm pulled the hood tighter around her face and kept moving through the Swedish mountain world, alone, soaked, and with hundreds of kilometers still to go before Treriksröset. Of her fifty-eight days on Gröna bandet, she had worn rain gear for maybe fifty. She had gone days without seeing another person (the last one had been a fisherman), and this wasn't the kind of solitude she was used to. The comfortable aloneness she usually enjoyed on popular trails, where you could stop and exchange a few words with passersby. This was something else. This was real loneliness, and it was heavy.
Still, she kept going.
Emma was twenty-six and studying to become a psychologist at Umeå University. She had grown up in the countryside outside Örebro, where she and her sisters spent their childhood outdoors: grilling sausages, swimming in lakes, skiing across the fields. Camping on summer holidays was nothing unusual. But mountain hiking? That wasn't even on her radar until she was nineteen. The first time she heard about Gröna bandet was during a hike on Kungsleden in 2021, and her reaction was immediate: it sounded insane. She didn't just doubt she could do it; she didn't even want to.
But something shifted. Kungsleden had given her twenty-two days of pure joy, without a single mental setback. The following year she did an even longer hike in Europe. Step by step, she pushed her limits. And then, around Easter just a few months before summer break, the decision almost made itself. She had applied for summer jobs at mountain stations but hadn't heard back. She didn't want to work away her summer freedom. The idea that once seemed unthinkable suddenly became the only reasonable option. "I've got nothing else to do these months anyway. I'm going for it."
The finances were solved through discipline during the rest of the year. Emma shopped second hand, meal-prepped for the entire week, didn't drink, didn't party, borrowed course literature from the library. Savings from before she started university covered the rest. "I'm renting myself out to myself," as she put it; her savings went toward funding her freedom.
The preparations were both physical and mental. She trained with a backpack heavier than the one she would carry; if her pack was going to weigh ten kilos, she varied between twelve and sixteen in training. She knew the body would adapt out in the field, and compensated by starting with shorter daily stages and scheduling one rest day per week, all the way through. Those rest days became her lifeline: time to recover physically, check in with home, even read books.
The biggest challenges turned out not to be physical: the loneliness, the endless rain, and the insects (horseflies that bit through thick clothing, mosquitoes that never let up). But Emma had made her decision. She had told people, posted updates on Instagram. "I had made up my mind. People could hold me to my word. I just wanted to keep going."
Four days from the finish, she fell ill with hantavirus and had to be rescued by helicopter. She spent time in a mountain cabin and in the hospital, and the recovery took a serious toll; she was so weak she got out of breath walking from the couch to the fridge. But in October, with the all-clear from her doctors, she returned and completed the final days. That was when the feeling finally arrived: not the emptiness she had feared, but pure joy.
"I know now that if I set my mind to something, I can see it through. That trust in myself; I might never have gained it otherwise."
Emma's advice to others is clear: build up experience gradually, plan shorter daily stages than you think you need, and live frugally during the year so you can live fully in the summer. But above all: don't wait. "You can't do things like this forever. Nature is changing, the climate is changing. Decide what you're going to do now, then solve the problems when you get there."
Next summer it will be an Australian Cattle Dog and a hundred peaks over 1,500 meters to climb. The steps will be shorter, but the direction is the same: outward, upward, onward.
Top tips from Emma
