What is the oldest tree in Fulufjället?
The oldest tree at Fulufjället, and by one measure the oldest in the world, is Old Tjikko, a Norway spruce on the mountain plateau whose root system carbon-dates to about 9,550 years. The trunk standing over those roots is not that old: it is a few hundred years, and the Swedish national park authority says so plainly on its own page. The two facts fit together through cloning. A spruce stem in this climate lives around six centuries, dies, and the root system pushes up a replacement carrying the same genes. Samples taken at the site returned ages of 375, 5,660, 9,000 and 9,550 years, published by Umeå University in 2008. What has survived here since not long after the retreat of the ice is a continuous organism rather than a continuous tree, and the thing you photograph is the current edition of it. It is a small, wind-scoured spruce roughly five metres tall and it looks like nothing much. That is most of the point, and it is why nobody noticed it until researchers from Umeå went looking. It is also still losing arguments with the weather: a storm in February 2023 broke about a metre off its top, and that piece is now on show at the Naturum visitor centre at the foot of the trail.
Fulufjället National Park charges nothing and needs no booking, but Old Tjikko is not a roadside stop. No public transport reaches the trailhead. You drive to the Naturum Fulufjället visitor centre and the Njupeskär car park, then walk: the marked route onto the plateau runs roughly seven to nine kilometres round trip depending on where you start, climbing out of birch forest onto open fell. Allow half a day. Follow the orange markers and stay on the path. The mountain heath here takes decades to recover from footfall, which is part of why the tree stood unnoticed for so long. Snow lies on the route into early summer, so the practical season runs from midsummer into early autumn. Boots, wind and rain gear, and a look at the forecast before you set off: the plateau is exposed and there is nothing to shelter behind. Njupeskar, Sweden's highest waterfall at 93 metres, sits on the same trail network from the same car park, which is what most visitors come for and why the path exists at all. The visitor centre can tell you the current snow line before you commit to the climb.
One of Fulufjället's trees also appears in The Oldest Trees We Have Mapped, a themed collection spanning several cities.