Åmål will always be the town from a film title that foreign distributors found hard to print. Lukas Moodysson's 1998 drama about two teenage girls, released in English as Show Me Love, was called Fucking Åmål at home, and the town, which had a rough time of it at first, has since embraced its fame with a certain dry humor. The film is a fair picture of what it feels like to be young in a small place, which is not a bad reason to take a look at it.
Åmål is a lakeside town on the western shore of Vänern, the biggest lake in Sweden and in all of Western Europe, a vast, island-strewn sheet of fresh water that behaves like a sea. The town received its charter in 1643, and its small center of wooden houses, painted in ochre, red and cream, lines the harbor, with a long, low bridge and a promenade. The mood is quiet, with fishermen on the quay and sailboats moored.
Behind the town lies Dalsland, a region of forest, rock and thousands of small lakes. The Dalsland Canal, built in the 1860s to link the lakes with Vänern, is the main sight, with a remarkable aqueduct at Håverud, where the canal flows in a steel trough over a waterfall while a road and railway cross beside it. For riders, the roads through Dalsland are gentle and winding, with pine forest, red wooden farmhouses and flashes of water, and traffic is light. The surface is smooth, speeds are strictly controlled, and cameras are common, so keep an eye on the signs.
Åmål has fuel, supermarkets and several restaurants, and it is the main service town for the area. Säffle, across the water, is another fuel stop. The best months are June to August, with long evenings, and the light at midsummer lingers past ten. September brings quiet roads and the first color. Winter closes the season. In the forest stretches, elk are a real danger, particularly at dawn and dusk, and a collision with one can be fatal, so slow down at the first sign of warning triangles.