The most beautiful cities in Sweden

Sweden is a country of rare beauty, even amid its starkest northern landscapes. Its cities and towns testify to 1000 years of urban life, but there are precious places offering glimpses into even older traditions of human settlement.

History

It’s surprising that Swedish history doesn’t attract more interest. The Swedish people and their nation have had an influence on Europe far beyond their numbers. At several points in European history, Sweden has played a decisive or critical role in the fate of its neighbours and wider European affairs. Swedish traders developed extensive links through the Baltic Sea and eastern Europe in the early medieval period and during the 17th century the country was a great power. Centuries of foreign involvements and efforts to create a lasting empire failed, but left their marks throughout the Baltic.

Neolithic remains have been found on the Arctic Circle from about the time when the last Ice Age cover receded. But the most dazzling prehistoric finds are about 10,000 petroglyphs (hällristningar) depicting warriors, weapons, ships, wheels, animals, and farming. Most are in the southern half of Sweden but those in the north are dated very early, usually deal with hunting and are up to 9,000 years old. The most impressive of these is at Nämforsen in Ångermanland.

Typically, large Bronze Age sites are (or were) close to estuaries and rivers and today are picked out by red paint. Some of these grouped images have been interpreted as cult fertility ceremonies and are seen as assertions of power. The Bronze Age ships in particular already show features of Scandinavian shipping from the early Iron Age. Extensive world-heritage sites dated from 2,000BCE to 300BCE are found around Tanum in Bohuslän and a museum is at Vitlycke. Other large sites are near Norrköping and Västervik.

Centuries of mystery

Sweden’s early past is misty and tantalising. The country today is often divided into three divisions – Svealand (the central region around Stockholm and Uppsala), Götaland (the 10 southern provinces, including Öland and Gotland) and Norrland (the northern, sparsely populated areas). These go back to very early times.

The origins and independence of Svealand and Götaland remains one of the controversies of Scandinavian history. The two are widely regarded as the Viking Age homes of separate peoples, the Svear (probably the Suiones of Tacitus’ late 1st century AD work Germania and the Suehans of the 6th century work Getica by Jordanes) and the Götar (probably the Goutai mentioned by Ptolemy in the 2nd century and Geats mentioned in early Anglo-Saxon sources, including the epic poem Beowulf). Any connection between the Götar and the Goths has also been fiercely debated, a question complicated by the presence of the large Baltic island Gotland.

The Sámi people today occupying the Arctic north, not a Germanic people, are probably the group referred to as the Fenni by Tacitus, as the Phinnoi by Ptolemy, and mentioned by Procopius about 550. Ottar, a far northern trader, mentions the Finnas in a report he gave to the Wessex court of Alfred the Great about 890. The Sámi occupied more of Norrland than the areas they are associated with today.

A marketplace existed on the Mälaren island of Helgö in the 3rd century and a Buddha figure dated to the 6th century has been excavated there. A larger market called Birka was in place on the island of Björkö near Stockholm in the mid-8th century, showing that some central authority was in place. St Ansgar, known as “the apostle of the north”, first visited Birka in 829 and again after 850, during which times different kings were in charge. Archaeology shows goods arrived from the Continent and western parts of Asia.

The Viking Age, from the late 8th century to the mid-11th century, was a period when power remained relatively local but some regional kings were able to extend their personal influence. Power at sea and extending up rivers could be a unifying force at a time when thick forests made overland travel slow.

There are few true chronicles. Literary sources from throughout Scandinavia are of uncertain reliability and contain legendary elements but occasional sources and reports written by churchmen and Islamic visitors give us clear snapshots. Royal names from sources such as the Icelandic Ynglinga Saga and the works of the Dane Saxo were considered by a 16th century archbishop seriously enough to be included in a Swedish king-list and kings of later centuries used numbering based on these to mark their reigns and bolster their moral authority.

References on runestones also give us other clues, including the facts that people from Sweden travelled over the Baltic and into areas that are now Russian. These and early Russian chronicles have been used by historians to make the argument that Norsemen played a key role in founding the first Russian state. All that can be proven is that powerful figures in the Russian lands had Norse names. Up to 1000 years later, Swedish kings were still looking east.

Otherwise, our only Iron Age remains are the burial sites such as mounds and standing stones in various layouts including ship shapes. At Badelunda near Västerås, an extensive site of these is taken as evidence of power.

Provinces (landskap) were traditional regions that grew out of even smaller units during the Viking Age and semi-historical early medieval period. Early references show that petty kings controlled many of these, but gradually the influential Svear kings of Uppland, with a power base near Uppsala, extended their control. Permanent, effective power over Götaland could be put as late as the 12th century. About this time comes the earliest reference to the Eriksgata, a processional route travelled by Swedish kings from Uppland into Östergötland, around Vättern and into Västergötland to be acclaimed by the local populations.

The first kings who were certainly more than regional were Erik Segersæll (“the Victorious”) and his son Olof Skötkonung (whose nickname shows he levied taxes). Olof succeeded about 1000, his coins survive, and he is believed to have been the first Christian king of Sweden.

The church breaks through

The progress of the Christian church in the Swedish lands was gradual. Norse gods were worshipped by priests and their cults dominated placenames throughout Scandinavia. The missionary St Ansgar established a congregation at his first visit and later returned as archbishop of Bremen, finding some support for the new faith. But in the 11th century a pagan cult centre was in place north of Uppsala, now known as Gamla Uppsala, where centuries of burial mounds, three large mounds and an assembly site were established.

A diocese was set up at Sigtuna, where there was a stone church in the mid-11th century. A royal estate was nearby. Runestones, archaeology and ruins of medieval Sigtuna’s churches remain today in support of its claim to be Sweden’s oldest town.

The national patron saint St Erik was a mid-12th century king who spread the laws of the Uppland region and championed the new faith before being beheaded by a coalition of rebellious nobles and Danish soldiers in 1160. Not much is known for certain about his life, but he became revered as a Christian champion. The pope set up Sweden’s first permanent bishopric at Gamla Uppsala in 1164, which moved to the present Uppsala the following century.

Once established, the church spread widely. Uppsala, Strängnäs, Västerås, Skara, Linköping, Växjö and Åbo (Turku in Finland) were the medieval dioceses. From its earliest days the Swedish church was supported by tithes levied on all forms of property. Formal state support through taxes continued until recent decades.

Finland (known also as Österland) was Swedish territory from the mid-13th century (formally from 1323) until 1809, when it was ceded to Russia as a grand duchy, however historical sources claim Swedish domination was clear from the mid-12th century.

In the career of Birger jarl, a member of the Bjälbo dynasty also called the Folkungs, we can recognise the outlines of a national policy. Birger sought to consolidate and extend his rule, probably founding Stockholm, eventually subjugating aristocratic opponents, making national laws, marriage and church alliances and trade agreements with Lübeck. An earl from 1248, he also used the title of duke and arranged for his son to be elected king.

Trade in the region, which had been widespread in the Viking Age, came to be dominated by the Hanseatic League. Like several other Baltic ports, the fortified Gotland town Visby joined the league in 1280. Law, however, remained local. Provincial law codes (landskapslagar) survive in extensive texts, but the king Magnus Eriksson did not publish the first Swedish national law code until 1350.

A Swedish saint in Rome

By the early 14th century, about 400,000 people probably lived in Sweden. Birgitta, from a powerful Uppland family, was then a member of the royal court, educating and a tutor of Sweden's young queen. Pilgrimage was part of her existence. But her influence widened after a series of revelations and prophecies. In mid-life widowhood, she took holy orders and eventually made a pilgrimage to Rome, where she sought papal blessing for a joint order of nuns and monks. This was granted near the end of her life, which came after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. She is now counted as one of six European patron saints.

It still proved hard for the Swedish crown to maintain sway over its territories. In a shocking battle outside Visby in 1361, forces under the Danish king Valdemar Atterdag defeated a collection of local defenders from various backgrounds, killing almost 2,000 in the slaughter.

The 1397 Union of Kalmar, engineered by the Danish queen Margrethe I for her young nephew Erik of Pomerania, established Danish domination in Scandinavia. Denmark was separated from Skåne only by the Öresund, a narrow strait 4km wide between Danish Helsingør and (now Swedish) Helsingborg and controlled the provinces to the east, sometimes exercising a measure of control over Öland and Gotland from the Viking Age to the end of the 14th century.

Denmark entered an almost 130-year period in which it had the upper hand over Sweden. The
Nobleman Sten Sture defeated Danish forces at Brunkeberg outside Stockholm in 1471 and weakened the Danish grip. But after a massacre of Swedish nobles at Stockholm in 1520 resistance hardened and the Dalarna nobleman Gustav Eriksson Vasa entered the fray as the champion of Swedish independence. Forced to escape the Danes in the snow in 1521, he established a tradition of the annual Nordic ski race, the Vasaloppet.

Gustav marshalled forces and defeated Denmark, making Sweden independent. He was crowned in 1523, introduced the Reformation and established firm control of the Swedish church while seizing much of its revenues in a strategy similar to Henry VIII in England. Sweden now had a national church that kept parish birth registers by law from 1688. The Swedish crown had to acknowledge a system of social estates represented at national assemblies, but managed to recall many granted noble lands in 1680, consolidating its power.

The Vasa dynasty lasted into the 17th century, gradually strengthening the country through castle building. The Swedish king Sigismund Vasa was also king of Poland late in the 16th century.

A great power

In the 17th century and early in the 18th, Sweden was extensively involved in continental Europe and the Baltic, fighting a series of wars that included a spectacular intervention under Gustav II Adolf to lead the Protestant side in the Thirty Years War from 1628. Sweden became a leading power in Europe, largely built on its capability in cavalry warfare and extensive use of mercenaries and its Baltic fleet. The country still had a relatively small population of less than one and a half million. A west-facing, fortified port was established at Gothenburg. Swedish historians recall the years 1611-1721 as Stormaktstiden (“the great power period”) as the country extended its territory into a northern empire.

Gustav Adolf, a remarkable commander, was killed at Lützen in Germany in 1632 but Swedish-led troops persisted against the Holy Roman empire in a brutal conflict until 1648, when the Treaty of Westphalia was signed. Sweden was granted parts of German-speaking territories including Bremen and Verden (held until 1719), Wismar (until 1803) and Stralsund and parts of western Pomerania (until 1815). This gave it dominance of the eastern Baltic region and made it a threat to Denmark and Dutch trade. The Swedish chancellor Axel Oxenstierna steered Sweden during the minority of Gustav Adolf’s daughter Christina, who on taking full royal power adopted an independent outlook, refused to marry and converted to Catholicism, abdicating in 1654 and moving to Rome.

Administrative regions (län, sometimes called counties in English) are different from landskap, even though their names are often similar. There are 24 landskap, a traditional concept usually associated with cultural identity and dialects. Län – there are now 21, including Stockholm – were divided in 1634 and today run community services, including regional transport authorities.

Denmark (which ruled Norway) and Sweden fought on both land and sea in 1643-45, 1657-58, 1658-60 and 1675-79. In 1658 the southern provinces Skåne, Halland, Bohuslän and Blekinge, the Trøndelag region around Trondheim and the island of Bornholm passed from Denmark to Sweden under the Treaty of Roskilde. Bornholm and the Trøndelag were returned in 1660. Christina’s cousin Karl X Gustav re-established and fortified Kalmar and its port to secure the frontier against Denmark. Under his successor Karl XI Karlskrona was founded as the new fleet base on former Danish territory.

From 1700 to 1721 Sweden fought in the so-called Great Northern War, taking on and for a period having the better of a coalition of Denmark, Russia and Saxony. But the Swedish warrior king Karl XII, who had grand ambitions for a Baltic and eastern empire, overplayed his hand and lost a critical battle to the tsar Peter the Great at Poltava in Ukraine in 1709, finding himself in temporary Ottoman Turkish exile.

In December 1718 Karl besieged the Fredriksten fortress at Halden on the Norwegian frontier and was shot dead. His body was carried home by his dejected troops through the snow. Stormaktstiden was over. Modern researchers calculate that about 600,000 Swedish men were conscripted over this period and about half a million of these died on active service, or about one in three adult Swedish males.

Modern Sweden

When the Enlightenment arrived in Sweden, it produced an outstanding identity in Carl von Linné. This naturalist, based in Uppsala but working extensively in Norrland and on Öland and Gotland, developed the system of scientific names for species, becoming a leading figure in botany, biology and medicine. He studied under Olof Celsius the elder and used the Latin name Carolus Linnaeus in writing extensively on the sciences. A relative of Celsius, Anders Celsius, developed the centigrade scale now named for him.

French influence on Sweden became extensive, introducing French manners and many French words to a language that had long been under German influence. The Enlightenment king Gustav III, a patron the arts, reasserted the model of absolute monarchy but was assassinated in 1792 as the French Revolution proceeded.

After opposition to Napoleon and wars with Russia, Finland was lost to Sweden and a coup in 1809 brought the elderly and childless Karl XIII to the throne. An elected crown prince died and the former French marshal Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was drafted into the position of heir and regent. Bernadotte formally came to the throne as Karl XIV Johan in 1818 and his family occupies the throne today. From then Sweden adopted a policy of non-alignment that lasted until its admission to NATO in 2024.

The 19th century Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite and other patents, is best known for bequeathing his fortune for the establishment of the Nobel Prizes.

Social democracy became a political force between World War I and World War II amid worker unrest. During World War II Sweden maintained its neutrality in a controversial period. It agreed to allow transport of German troops on its railways during the invasion of the Soviet Union and German-owned mines produced iron ore for the war effort. But it also gave sanctuary to Jewish, Norwegian and Danish exiles and helped train liberation troops in an environment where larger powers had the capacity to threaten its government and had taken control of Norway and Denmark. The businessman and diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, operating mostly in Hungary, developed a network that rescued uncountable thousands of Jews.

The third way

After the war Swedish social democracy set out on a “third way”, embracing liberal trade policy, an extensive social welfare net and high taxation. Swedish wealth grew as the Nordic nations adopted independent social formulas in an effort to boost national wellbeing. A prime minister’s son, the diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, became the second secretary-general of the United Nations in 1953.

The dominance of social democrat governments continued until the mid-1970s. But prime minister Olof Palme’s assassination on a Stockholm street in 1986 came as a shock to the nation. The political balance seemed less certain and coalition governments were common. Sweden joined the EU in 1995, without entering European monetary union.

Multiculturalism resulted from an immigrant surge largely driven by refugees. Rinkeby, a multicultural suburb of Stockholm, became a byword for the trend in which social policy demanded tolerance and adherence to compassionate political asylum. Social tensions developed in this atmosphere and remain a challenge for Swedish governments.

Since the Reformation, Svenska kyrkan has been Lutheran and today can be identified with "high church" features in its theology and worship. Women were ordained from the 1960s. Svenska kyrkan was a state church until 2000 and until the mid-1990s all Swedes had become members automatically at birth. Today Svenska kyrkan has more than five million members but only about 2% attend regularly. In a 2019 survey, 68% of Swedes polled say they continued to pay church support through their taxes.