The self-employed truck driver Niclas Nordström spent over 20 hours stuck in snow on Sweden’s E22 motorway, describing the experience as the worst weather he has faced in his 30-year career.
Having operated his own freight business since the 1990s, Nordström mistakenly expected that the blocked traffic would have been cleared when he took the E22 on Wednesday. He realized his error around 1:45 PM near Linderöd, joining nearly 1,000 other drivers in a standstill.
“I thought the police would have diverted traffic long before this point,” the 58-year-old explained. “In retrospect, I wish I had done some more critical thinking; if I had acted sooner, the long queues could have been avoided.”
The blizzard left up to 1,000 vehicles stranded between Hörby and Kristianstad, prompting the Armed Forces to intervene by assisting with evacuations and delivering food and water to those trapped.
Nordström’s truck is equipped with a day cab, lacking a bed, which forced him to sleep upright at the wheel, although he fared better than those in passenger vehicles. On his route to Lund in Skåne, he had no food or medicine and had to rely on kindness from others.
He connected with a Dutch couple who offered him food and coffee the next day after he expressed his hunger. Throughout the night, he monitored the Swedish Transport Administration’s website for updates on when the road would reopen. But the reopening time kept getting pushed back, first to 8 PM, then midnight, and later until 2 PM the next day.
Eventually, around 10 AM, with the assistance of a local farmer, Nordström found a three-meter-wide passage cleared through the snow. He and the Dutchman drove down the opposite lane, using their hazard lights, and managed to escape onto an accessible road.
As someone who primarily drives in the southern counties, Nordström stated he has never encountered such severe snow conditions before. “In my 30 years of driving, I have never faced anything like this. Such extreme weather hasn’t hit Skåne since 1979 when the area was completely covered in snow,” he remarked.
