It is around 460 km (290 mi) long, and flows in a south-eastern direction from its source, the lake Överuman by the Norwegian border within the Scandinavian mountain range.

The river passes through Vindelfjällen Nature Reserve and Lake Storuman and drains into the Gulf of Bothnia on Sweden's east coast at the small town of Holmsund, and adjacent to the city of Umeå.

[4] Along with hunting, fishing has been an important activity for the inhabitants of the Ume river valley since pre-historic times.

[5] During the early 1700s, local people began to build salmon traps in the river rapids, but spring floods were a danger to the fishing huts and boats.

In the main channel of the Ume River before the hydropower era, salmon could migrate up to Fällforsen, a little over a mile upstream of the town of Vännäs.

With it, the salmon can still make it to spawning grounds, mainly in the upper Vindel River, where nearly half of all smolts that reach the Baltic Sea are born.

Development of the industry around Baggböle continued with the arrival of Scottish-Swedish brothers James and Robert Dickson in the 1830s, as a timber market emerged in Great Britain.

[11] The plant delivered electricity to Umeå for the first time on December 6, 1899, but problems arose due to its location along the river, where supercooling produces ice slush.

[11] In the 1950s, hydroelectricity development required building reservoirs and dams throughout Sweden, but concerns were being raised about the environmental impact of these power plants.