It’s one of Europe’s most baffling transport riddles: how did two neighbouring countries manage to run train tracks directly to the border, but never to each other? For nearly four decades, travellers moving between Finland and Sweden had to rely on cars, buses, or a 1.2-mile walk to bridge the gap.
Happily, that missing link has just been fixed. A brand-new rail service launched on Monday between Tornio, a town in Finnish Lapland, and Haparanda in Sweden.
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So why the decades-long hold-up? It comes down to a nineteenth-century quirk. Finland’s railway gauge, aka the width between the rails, was set at 1,524mm back when the country was part of the Russian Empire. Like most of Europe, Sweden uses the narrower 1,435mm standard. Put simply, a Finnish train trying to cross onto Swedish tracks would just derail.
Finland is reportedly in the process of updating its gauge to match the rest of the continent in the longer term, but for now, the fix means passengers walk through the reopened Haparanda station building to switch from a Finnish VR train to a Swedish Norrtåg one. The transfer should only take a few minutes.
The new service takes around an hour and 40 minutes, running twice daily between Oulu and Haparanda, with tickets starting from as little as €5.40 (about £4.60). At the inaugural crossing on Monday, crowds gathered at Haparanda’s red-brick station waving Finnish and Swedish flags as the first train rolled in over the Torne river. Finland’s Transport Minister Lulu Ranne said, ‘It’s about security, it’s about the future, it’s about economy,’ adding that cooperation between the two countries is only growing.
Europe’s longest rail journey allows passengers to travel from the Arctic Circle to the Algarve
This one small stretch of track has just unlocked what’s being called the longest continuous train journey in Europe, a roughly 5,000km rail route stretching all the way from Kolari in Finnish Lapland down to the Algarve in Portugal. It also opens up a land-based alternative to the Helsinki-Stockholm ferry, allowing passengers to swap the usual 18-hour boat crossing for a just-over-24-hour train journey instead.
So, if you’ve ever wanted to say you took the scenic route from the Arctic Circle to the Algarve, this is now technically possible.
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