Robertfors - Back and forth

By racing bike into the heart of diacritics

We start in Robertfors. Sounds like a place where you'd either start a Swedish thriller or inherit a rusty moped. But no, we hop on our racing bikes. Asphalt beneath the tires, forest to the left, lake to the right – and in front of us is the Swedish interior, where the vowels are slowly getting dots like smallpox: Södra Stortjäm, Bygdeträsk, Överklinten.

It starts off harmlessly, with a harmless Ö. Then come the Äs. In the end, everything is full of Üs, even though they don't exist in Swedish. But the feeling is there: civilization ends here. Perhaps there's only a reindeer with burnout waiting behind the next hill.

The road? Straight as an arrow. The wind? Against us, of course. Always. The people? Barely visible, but when they do, they're carrying a thermos and mildly resisting reality.

Somewhere between Bygdeträsk and Överklinten, it dawns on us: This is no longer just a tour; it's a diacritical pilgrimage. And our holiest destination? A place whose name sounds like an IKEA shelf after an electrocution.

Brakes squeal. The tour ends. My head is buzzing. And the vowels – they've all got points now.