Chewbacca, seeing me quiver, offers up some love: “Gear looks great,” he says, still firing off 10 frames per second. “This rock is bomber, and that RP is good!”
Not consoled and with no pride left to salvage, I beg Jonas to lower me his static line, which I latch onto and hand-over-hand to the recovery ledge. There, I spend 10 minutes hyperventilating. I have an aftertaste of Sweden’s national food, humble pie, in my mouth. Over the next week, Rob and I will stuff ourselves silly on this savory dish.

After a good sleep, Rob and I awake ready to “redeem” ourselves at Häller, a beautiful swath of granite 300 feet high and a quarter-mile long. Jonas pulls the Falcon up to a farmhouse; we step out, drop a couple Kroner ($2 donation to the landowner) in a coffee can, and come face to face with a monster: Prince, a husky draft horse who thinks he’s a lap dog. He follows us, doing his best to nuzzle into our crag packs. The highlight of the day comes when Prince successfully takes some fruit from Rob’s pants.

Jonas chooses Offline (7+, or 5.11d) as our “warm-up.” The slightly overhanging, 5-inch-to-1-foot crack is chalkless. And when Rob, 45 feet up, does a double fist stack/kick-through/inverted sit-up to a layback move — 10 feet above a tipped-out No. 4 Camalot — I know I’m in trouble. Significantly harder than any 5.12a offwidth either of us has seen, Offline cedes only to a one-hang effort.

At least on Tor Line (7, or 5.11a), Jonas warns us it’s “a bit of a sandbag.” Freed in 1979 by Jan Liliemark, Tor line follows a spectacular finger crack to a 10-foot roof, with perfect, hanging hand jams to a thin-hands pull over the lip. The climbing finishes with 40 feet of slammer hands and cups. It would be 5.12 in Yosemite. I blow the onsight, but Rob quickly sends, and I follow it free once I find a key foot above the lip.

Later, we watch two locals work their project. The 100-foot line on the cliff’s left side begins with a steep, bouldery section to a decent-looking handrail, allowing a traverse into a micro-thin crack system. Overhanging the entire way, the climb has little visible protection. Only psychos would conceive of leading such an unruly beast: enter the Norwegians Rein Leidal and Øystein M.K. Johnsen.
Because we can’t pronounce their names, we call them Rain Man and Einstein. Einstein’s 40-foot falls repeatedly break the small wires at the project’s crux; below these, only a green Alien stands between him and a 60-foot grounder. I ask  if he’s considered plugging more gear higher — the crack looks to take pro. “I do not understand . . .” he answers with total conviction. “A 10-meter fall is no different than a three-meter fall — both are quite safe!” My theory is that years of winter darkness have taken their toll on poor Einstein.