My Top Tips & Recommendations for Two Weeks in Sweden
Everywhere I stayed, ate, swam, explored and fell in love with
This was my third summer road trip through Sweden’s countryside (you can read about my previous travels in Skäne and Västra Götaland here, here and here). Ever since that last trip in 2022, I’d been itching to return, and had always wanted to experience Sweden’s Midsommar festivities. When a pitch I sent to a magazine suggesting a Midsommar story was commissioned, I suggested to my boyfriend that we tie in work and leisure and turn the trip into an eleven-day summer holiday. We’d start in Stockholm, saving the city itself for a future trip and spending a couple of nights on the archipelago, before driving up north to Dalarna where I’d immerse myself in the Midsommar celebrations for my article. We were flying home from Gothenburg, but decided to take our time driving south-west, stopping at our beloved floating cabin for two nights, followed by a final night in a small hotel I’d had on my radar for a while. Closer to our travels, I received a commission for another Sweden-based story from another magazine, alongside three mini shoots for clothing and beauty brands. One day, I’m sure I’ll take a trip that is 100% a holiday, but for now, these fusions of fitting work into my travels seems to be working and not leaving me feeling too stressed — this latest journey through Sweden actually felt like the perfect balance.
This is going to be quite a long newsletter, packed full of my tips and recommendations for the areas of Sweden I visited on this most recent trip. It might cut off on your email, and is best viewed on a browser or via the app. I’ve included a few tips before the paywall, but there is much, much more for my paid subscribers. Thank you to those of you who are already paid subs, who help me to dedicate time to spend writing these newsletters.
Note: as I was writing and shooting for two publications, I was hosted by Visit Dalarna during my five days staying there.
Sweden is a wild swimmer’s paradise
If you love swimming in lakes or the sea, there really isn’t anywhere better than Sweden in my opinion. Thanks to the Allemansrätten (Right of Public Access), there are no silly rules forbidding swimming like there are in the UK. Rather, it is actively encouraged; it was a joy to see people leaping into lakes or floating in the sea everytime we were beside water, day or night. We were driving back to our hotel one night around 11pm and I saw a lone man swimming beneath the sunset at a remote lake, little kids were hurling themselves into freezing cold water in the archipelago, and I spotted a gaggle of older women striding out into a lake during a downpour one morning. Swimming seems like a way of life here.
When I say wild swimming is encouraged, I’m referring to the infrastructure that surrounds most dedicated swimming spots. Follow the little blue and white signs for where to swim and you’ll usually discover long pontoons, ladders down into the water, further floating structures to swim out to, changing rooms and toilets, diving boards and even saunas. You can while away many hours beside the water, dipping in and out while firing up the sauna.
In my experience, the Baltic Sea on the east coast by Stockholm is much colder than sea on the west coast. My first swim off Stockholm’s archipelago took my breathe away, and although I’m used to cold water, I could only enjoy a short swim. I was there mid-June, so expect it warms up a little over the summer months. In contrast, I bathed in the sea on the west coast many times during my last trip in 2022 and once on this holiday. The sea there is much warmer, but as a result you need to watch out for jellyfish. Back in 2022, my boyfriend kept an eye on me when I was in the water and alerted me when there was one close. On this trip, in the particular bay where I was attempting to swim, there were simply too many jellyfish and I had to get out. Lakes are a really pleasant temperature — the smaller the lake, the warmer the water will be (Lake Siljan, where we spent five days, was icy but wonderful).
Two days on Stockholm’s archipelago is not enough
I could easily spend a couple of weeks exploring Stockholm’s archipelago. We only had one full day there (arriving mid-afternoon on a Monday and leaving the Wednesday morning) and I was sad to leave, wishing we’d planned at least a couple more days there. When we took the ferry to another island one day, I was completely blown away by the beauty of the small, tree-covered islands. I’d love to return and rent a cottage right on the water, perhaps with its own small boat for exploring more of what the archipelago has to offer.
We based ourselves in the small town of Boda on the island of Värmdӧn and took the ferry to Svartsӧ on the Tuesday. Boda was really beautiful, but as we were there for such a short time, we would’ve preferred to have been somewhere with a bar, restaurant or shop. Spending the day on Svartsӧ was the perfect compromise, as we ate lunch in a really lovely restaurant (Bistro Sågen) and managed to stock up on a couple of non-alcoholic beers at the impressive general store on the island.
As I mentioned, the sea was really cold in the archipelago in June, but I found a couple of lakes where I enjoyed really memorable long swims (the larger lake on Svartsӧ and a really scenic lake which looked like it was in a quarry just a 15 minute stroll from where we were staying).
One thing I really loved about staying in Boda was wandering around on my own in the evenings, admiring all the red and yellow summer houses during golden hour. There were a lot of deer here — we spotted them grazing right outside our windows and would stumble upon small herds of them while walking around.
Don’t forget to flag down the ferries!
One thing to note about exploring the archipelago — make sure you know how to signal to the ferries that you would like to be picked up! We were waiting for the second-to-last ferry of the day from Svartsӧ and didn’t realise we needed to signal until a local helped us. There’s a white, round foldable sign (called a semaphore) on the jetty — you need to move this to a vertical position to let the next ferry know to stop.
I would happily live in Dalarna
After the archipelago, we headed north to Dalarna, where I completely fell in love. For most of our time there, we stayed in Tällberg, located on top of a hill overlooking Lake Siljan (the seventh largest lake in Sweden — which was absolutely vast). This was the perfect place to celebrate Midsommar (I’ll go into that in more detail below), but I imagine I’d love this town all summer long. It’s a really beautiful place, surrounded by forest where elk and reindeer roam (sadly, I saw neither as they hide during daylight and it was pretty much daylight between 2am and 11pm each day) and I adored its vantage point perched on a hill overlooking vistas of the lake. One day we wandered down to the shore of the lake through the woods, to where there is a campsite and a place to swim. The water was very shallow here, which meant I could swim across to a nearby island. It wasn’t just Tällberg though, everywhere we visited in Dalarna was magical. I also adored the tiny town of Dala-Floda, which seemed to be a thriving creative hub. The majority of houses throughout this region are the picturesque red wooden a-frames that you probably associate with Sweden (although I also loved the brown wooden cabins, as seen in the photo below). That distinctive red is named falu-red, and is derived from a mineral produced by the local copper mine in Falun. We’ve been talking about painting the cabin we want to build in our garden that exact shade, to bring a little bit of Dalarna home with us.
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