8 Sweden Small Towns With Unmatched Friendliness
Some of Sweden's most distinctive castles, churches, and festivals sit in its smaller towns rather than its capital. The eight below offer a clearer window into the country's medieval and Viking history than Stockholm does, with active community life built around long-running annual festivals, well-preserved historic centers, and surrounding nature. In Kalmar, visitors can tour the Renaissance-era castle that once anchored the Kalmar Union. In Trosa, hikers can climb to an Iron Age fort site and join in springtime bonfire festivals. Sigtuna alone holds more rune stones than any other municipality in the country.
Kalmar
Kalmar sits on the southeastern coast facing the island of Öland and has a long, well-documented history. The site has been settled since the Stone Age, and a town first formed there in the 11th century. Kalmar's most consequential moment came in 1397, when the Kalmar Union was signed there, joining Denmark, Norway, and Sweden into a single personal union under one monarch. The union held together until Sweden withdrew in 1523 under Gustav Vasa.
Today the centerpiece is Kalmar Castle, originally a 12th-century defensive tower upgraded into a Renaissance palace by Gustav Vasa and his sons in the 16th century. The castle is one of the best-preserved Renaissance castles in northern Europe and remains the city's main historical attraction. The compact island district of Kvarnholmen, just east of the castle, holds the Baroque Kalmar Cathedral (designed by Nicodemus Tessin the Elder, completed 1703) and most of the city's old town. The coastal Kalmarsundsleden trail runs along the shore for those wanting a quieter walk. Each July, Kalmarsundsbadet beach hosts an annual Sand Sculpture Festival, drawing local and international sand sculptors.
Gränna
Gränna was founded in 1652 by Count Per Brahe the Younger on the shore of Lake Vättern, Sweden's second-largest lake. It is best known as the birthplace of polkagris, the red-and-white-striped peppermint stick candy invented in the town in 1859 by Amalia Eriksson, a young widow who became one of Sweden's first female business owners. Several bakeries in town still hand-make polkagris using traditional methods. Gränna is also a working pear-and-cherry-orchard town, and Brahehus, the ruined 17th-century palace built by Per Brahe, sits on a ridge above town with views over the lake.
The Vättern shoreline is the main draw, with a lakeside promenade for easy walking and the Grännaberget area for steeper hikes with overlooks across the lake. Ferries from Gränna's harbor run to Visingsö, the long island in the middle of Vättern that served as a 12th- and 13th-century royal seat. The town hosts an annual bluegrass festival in early August, drawing American and European bluegrass musicians.
Sigtuna
Sigtuna is the oldest still-existing town in Sweden, founded around 980 by King Erik the Victorious as a royal trading center on the shore of Lake Mälaren. It briefly served as Sweden's first capital and was the site of the country's first mint under Erik's son Olof Skötkonung. The main street, Stora Gatan, follows the same route it did a thousand years ago, although the current street level sits about three meters above the original Viking-age surface. Sigtuna municipality contains 170 known rune stones, more than any other municipality in the world; about 20 of them can be read inside the town itself, and the Sigtuna Museum provides a route map for finding them on foot.
St. Mary's Church (Mariakyrkan), built in the mid-13th century as a Dominican convent church, is the oldest building in continuous use in Sigtuna and one of the finest examples of brick Gothic architecture in Sweden. The medieval ruins of St. Olaf's, St. Lawrence's, and St. Peter's churches sit nearby. Skokloster Castle, a 17th-century Baroque palace on Lake Mälaren about 30 kilometers west of town, is a separate worthwhile day trip and offers tours in English. Sigtuna's Christmas market runs from late November through December 21st each year.
Jukkasjärvi
Jukkasjärvi is a small village in Norrbotten County, about 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle and 17 kilometers east of Kiruna. The name comes from the Northern Sami Čohkkirasjávri, meaning "meeting place by the water," referring to the village's location on the wide, slow-flowing Torne River. The village's modern fame comes from the Icehotel, the world's first hotel built entirely from snow and ice, which opened in 1989 and is rebuilt every December using ice harvested from the Torne. A permanent ice exhibition, Icehotel 365, runs year-round.
The wooden Jukkasjärvi Church, originally built in 1607-1608 and substantially expanded in 1726, is the oldest building in the village and the only surviving example of a block-pillar church in Sweden, a construction style in which the walls are made of horizontal logs braced inside vertical pillars. The interior holds a vivid altarpiece by sculptor Bror Hjorth depicting the meeting of Sami and Christian traditions, and an organ made from reindeer horn and birch wood. Nutti Sami Siida, a Sami open-air museum on the edge of the village, offers reindeer encounters, traditional Sami food, and craftwork. The Jukkasjärvi Christmas market is held each December.
Trosa
Trosa is a small coastal town on the Baltic about 70 kilometers south of Stockholm. It received its town charter in the 14th century and grew as a regional trading port in the 15th. Russian raids during the Great Northern War (1700-1721) burned much of the town in 1719. Reconstruction was rapid, and several wooden buildings from the rebuilt period survive, including the red-painted Abladsstugan fisherman's cottage along the harbor.
The harbor itself ends at a small landmark known as Världens Ände, "World's End," at the very tip of the channel. Skolberget, the small hill in the middle of town, offers an easy climb with views over the rooftops; the slightly longer walk along the coastal path leads to Jättarsberget, the site of an Iron Age hillfort. Trosa's community calendar runs year-round and includes the KonstTriangeln art exhibition, the Walpurgis Night bonfires on April 30, and the Trosametet open fishing competition each May.
Falkenberg
Falkenberg sits on the Ätran River where it meets the Kattegat strait on Sweden's west coast. The town's name combines the Old Swedish words for falcon and mountain, a reference to falconry, which was a popular noble pastime in the medieval Halland region. The historic 18th-century stone arch bridge Tullbron, completed in 1761, still carries pedestrians across the Ätran in the town center.
The coast around Falkenberg holds about eight miles of sandy beach, with additional bays and rocky inlets between them. Inland, residents head to lakes like Ljungsjön for swimming and lakeside cookouts. The Åkulla Bokskogar nature reserve, on the border between Falkenberg and Varberg, holds about twenty lakes inside an old-growth beech forest, with marked hiking and biking trails throughout. Falkenberg's classical music calendar is anchored by the Tommie Haglund Festival each spring, named for the Swedish composer who is one of the town's better-known cultural figures.
Ystad
Ystad is a small port town on the southern coast of Skåne, founded as a town in the 13th century. It received international name recognition through the Kurt Wallander novels of Henning Mankell, in which Wallander investigates crimes set largely in and around the town. Both the original Swedish-language films and the BBC's English-language Wallander adaptation have shot extensively in Ystad, and Cineteket, the museum at Ystad Studios, offers tours of sets and props from the productions.
The town's medieval core is unusually well preserved by southern Swedish standards. Greyfriars Abbey (Gråbrödraklostret), a Franciscan monastery founded in 1267, is one of the best-preserved medieval monastery complexes in Scandinavia and now houses the Ystad city museum. The Sankta Maria Church, also begun in the 13th century, still uses a centuries-old tradition in which a watchman blows a horn from the church tower every fifteen minutes through the night to signal that all is well. The Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival, held in late July or early August, is one of the longest-running jazz festivals in the country.
Visby
Visby is on Gotland, Sweden's largest island in the Baltic Sea, and is one of the best-preserved medieval cities in northern Europe. It was the dominant Hanseatic trading hub on the Baltic during the 13th and 14th centuries; in 1361, King Valdemar IV of Denmark conquered the city after the Battle of Visby, fought outside the city walls and remembered for the mass graves of defending Gotlanders later excavated by archaeologists. Visby's complete medieval ringmuren ("ring wall"), built between roughly 1200 and the late 1200s, still encloses the old town and includes 27 surviving towers. The walled town and its 200-plus medieval buildings have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995.
St. Mary's Cathedral (Sankta Maria domkyrka), consecrated in 1225 by German merchants and later expanded, is the only one of Visby's many medieval churches still in active use; the dramatic ruins of St. Karin's, St. Nicolaus's, and Helge Ands stand within a few blocks of it. The Gotland Museum on Strandgatan holds one of the largest Viking-age silver hoards ever found in northern Europe, the Spillings Hoard, recovered from a Gotland farmstead in 1999. Each year in early August, the entire island stages Medeltidsveckan (Medieval Week), with jousts, period costume, market stalls, and a public reenactment of the 1361 Battle of Visby.
Where Sweden's History Still Lives
Each of these towns has held onto its history in a way the larger cities have not. The Kalmar Union, the Hanseatic League, the rise of the first Swedish state at Sigtuna, the Sami presence in the far north, and the medieval church-building boom that produced the country's oldest stone churches are all still legible on the ground in these eight places. They are also still active communities, with annual festivals and small-town life that make a long weekend in any one of them rewarding well beyond a quick drop-in.
