--- title: "Top 10 Things To Do in Sweden (City Guides) | Wimup" description: "Browse Wimup's Top 10 guides across Sweden, mapped and ranked. Where to go from Skåne to Lapland, when to travel, how to get around, and what to eat." url: https://wimup.com/country/sweden type: Country guide updated: 2026-11-01 publisher: Wimup (https://wimup.com) --- # Top 10s across Sweden **A country 1,600 kilometres long** with two thirds of its people in the southern third, a coastline broken into tens of thousands of islands, and a legal right to walk across almost all of it. Sweden is **expensive to eat in and remarkably cheap to be outdoors in**. ## Quick answer Start in **Stockholm** for three or four nights, then pick which Sweden you want. West: **Gothenburg** is three hours away by train, with the archipelago and the shellfish. South: **Malmö** and the Skåne coast, with Copenhagen half an hour over the bridge. North: the night train to **Abisko** and **Kiruna** for the fells, the midnight sun in summer and the aurora from autumn. **June to August** is the long-daylight window. **February and March** are the reliable months for snow and northern lights. ## Quick facts - **Best months:** Jun–Aug · Feb–Mar - **Ideal length:** 8–12 days - **Budget per day:** $130–200 - **Language:** Swedish, with English almost everywhere - **Getting around:** SJ trains & city travelcards - **5** City guides - **10,605,529** People - **2** Video guides - **21** Counties Sweden splits into three trips that share a rail network. The south is the populated half: Stockholm on its fourteen islands, Gothenburg on the west coast two and a half hours away by train, Malmö and the bridge to Copenhagen below it, and the Baltic islands of Gotland and Öland offshore. The middle carries the lake country, the Dalarna villages and the forests that supply the timber industry. The north is Norrland, which is more than half the land area and holds a fraction of the population: Lapland, the Kungsleden trail, the reindeer-herding Sámi communities and the light that does not set in June. Trains run the length of it, and the night train to Abisko is the one most travellers build a week around. ## 5 Sweden city guides 1. [Gothenburg](https://wimup.com/city/gothenburg.md): Sweden · 10 picks 2. [Stockholm](https://wimup.com/city/stockholm.md): Sweden · 10 picks 3. [Kiruna](https://wimup.com/city/kiruna.md): Sweden · 10 picks 4. [Visby](https://wimup.com/city/visby.md): Sweden · 10 picks 5. [Kalmar](https://wimup.com/city/kalmar.md): Sweden · 10 picks ## Know before you go - **Population:** 10,605,529 - **Area:** 407,270 km² - **Density:** 26 / km² - **Capital:** Stockholm - **Major cities:** Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Uppsala, Linköping - **Tourism board:** Official site - **Currency:** Swedish krona (SEK) Sweden is not in the euro and is close to cashless. Cards and phones work everywhere, buses and market stalls included, and many places take nothing else. A fortnight needs no notes. - **Language:** Swedish English is spoken almost universally and taught from early school, so signage, menus and staff will meet you in it. Sámi, Meänkieli and Finnish are recognised minority languages in the north. - **Calling code:** +46 - **Power:** 230V · Type C/F - **Emergency:** 112 One free number for police, ambulance and fire, from any phone, with English-speaking operators. 1177 is the separate line for non-urgent medical advice. - **Visa:** Schengen · 90/180 Sweden is in the Schengen area, so most Western passports get 90 days in any 180 without a visa. The EU's ETIAS authorisation has slipped more than once, so check the official page before you book. - **Getting around:** SJ trains One rail network runs the length of the country, from the Öresund crossing to the night train to Abisko. City transport is regional, each system on its own app. In the north, a flight can save a day. - **Tipping:** Not expected Service is included and rounding up is the whole convention. Card terminals sometimes offer a tip line, and leaving it blank is normal. - **Alcohol:** Systembolaget Anything above 3.5 percent is sold only in the state monopoly's shops, which keep short hours and close on Sundays. Supermarkets carry weaker beer; licensed bars and restaurants are unaffected. - **Right of access:** Allemansrätten The right of public access lets you walk, cycle, swim, forage and camp a night on most land, private property included, if you keep clear of homes and crops and leave nothing behind. ## When to visit - **Jan** (good) - **Feb** (best) - **Mar** (best) - **Apr** - **May** (good) - **Jun** (best) - **Jul** (peak) - **Aug** (best) - **Sep** (good) - **Oct** - **Nov** - **Dec** (good) ## Fun fact Allemansrätten, the right of public access, lets anyone walk, cycle, swim and camp for a night on almost any land in Sweden, including private property, as long as they avoid gardens and crops and leave no trace. It is written into the constitution. ## Stereotypes, sorted out - **Myth:** It is dark and freezing all year **Reality:** Latitude cuts both ways. Stockholm in late June gets light that barely leaves, and above the Arctic Circle the sun does not set at all for weeks. The Baltic is warm enough to swim in by August. - **Myth:** Swedes are cold and unfriendly **Reality:** Reserved is not the same as unfriendly. Nobody will make small talk with you in a queue, and the same person will give you twenty minutes of directions the moment you ask. Warmth here is offered, not broadcast. - **Myth:** It is all IKEA, ABBA and meatballs **Reality:** Those are the exports. Underneath them sits a Sámi reindeer-herding culture in the north, a Baltic island with a walled medieval town, a west coast built on shellfish, and one of the densest music-production scenes in Europe. - **Myth:** Everything is unaffordably expensive **Reality:** Restaurants and alcohol are. Almost nothing outdoors is. Trails, wild camping, swimming and the archipelago cost nothing beyond getting there, and the weekday lunch deal is the cheapest hot meal on any menu. - **Myth:** Stockholm is Sweden **Reality:** The Stockholm region holds roughly a fifth of the population and none of the fells. Gothenburg has its own accent and its own opinion of the capital, Skåne sounds closer to Danish, and Norrland is more than half the land area. - Take your shoes off indoors. It is not optional in a Swedish home, and nobody will tell you twice. - Take a queue ticket. Pharmacies, bakeries, government offices and Systembolaget all run on numbers, and standing in line without one gets you nowhere. - Do not tip out of habit. Service is included, rounding up is the whole gesture, and a percentage reads as foreign. - Split the bill. Paying for the table is not a kindness here, and every card terminal is set up to divide. - Silence is comfortable. A long pause in a conversation is not awkward and does not need filling. - Use allemansrätten properly: one night in a spot, well away from houses, nothing left behind. The right survives because people keep to it. - Say hej. It covers hello from a shop counter to a stranger on a trail, and hej hej covers goodbye. ## Famous Swedish faces - **ABBA**: The Stockholm quartet that won Eurovision in 1974 and never left the charts - **Ingmar Bergman**: Director of The Seventh Seal and Persona, and the reason Fårö is on film maps - **Greta Garbo**: Hollywood's most famous recluse, and the face of the silent-to-sound transition - **Astrid Lindgren**: Created Pippi Longstocking and Emil, and shaped how Sweden thinks about childhood - **Alfred Nobel**: Invented dynamite and left his fortune to the prizes that carry his name - **Zlatan Ibrahimović**: Sweden's all-time leading goalscorer, and its loudest export - **Björn Borg**: Won Wimbledon five years running, then walked away at 26 - **Ingvar Kamprad**: Founded IKEA at 17, naming it after himself, his farm and his village - **Avicii**: Tim Bergling, the producer who took Swedish house onto global radio - **Max Martin**: The Stockholm producer behind three decades of American pop number ones - **Robyn**: Left the majors and released Body Talk on her own label - **Swedish House Mafia**: The trio that made Stockholm a capital of dance music - **Zara Larsson**: Pop export who started by winning Talang at ten - **First Aid Kit**: The Söderberg sisters, who took Swedish folk-country international - **José González**: Gothenburg songwriter whose fingerpicked covers travelled further than the originals - **Jussi Björling**: The tenor every other Swedish voice is still measured against - **Ingrid Bergman**: Casablanca and Notorious, and three Academy Awards - **Max von Sydow**: Played chess with Death for Bergman, then worked for sixty years everywhere else - **Alicia Vikander**: Won the Academy Award for supporting actress for The Danish Girl - **Stellan Skarsgård**: Four decades of work, from Breaking the Waves to Dune - **Noomi Rapace**: The original Lisbeth Salander - **Lasse Hallström**: Directed My Life as a Dog, and most of ABBA's music videos before it - **Ingemar Stenmark**: Won 86 Alpine World Cup races, still the men's record - **Annika Sörenstam**: Ten major titles, and the first woman to play a PGA Tour event since 1945 - **Armand Duplantis**: The pole vaulter who keeps raising his own world record for Sweden - **Charlotte Kalla**: Cross-country skier with Olympic gold across three Games - **Peter Forsberg**: Won the 1994 Olympic final with a shootout goal that ended up on a stamp - **Henrik Lundqvist**: Vezina-winning goaltender, and Sweden's face in the NHL for a decade - **Carl Linnaeus**: The Uppsala botanist who gave every living thing a two-word name - **Anders Celsius**: The Uppsala astronomer behind the temperature scale - **Svante Arrhenius**: Nobel chemist, and the first to calculate how carbon dioxide warms the planet - **Selma Lagerlöf**: First woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature - **August Strindberg**: Playwright, novelist and painter, and where modern Swedish prose starts - **Stieg Larsson**: Wrote the Millennium trilogy, published after his death - **Henning Mankell**: Created Wallander, and put Ystad on the map for a generation of readers - **Tomas Tranströmer**: Nobel laureate poet, and a working psychologist for most of his life - **Carl Larsson**: His watercolours of a Dalarna house exported the Swedish interior - **Anders Zorn**: Portrait painter from Mora who worked for three American presidents - **Hilma af Klint**: Painted abstract canvases years before Kandinsky, then asked that they wait - **Daniel Ek**: Co-founded Spotify in Stockholm and rebuilt how music gets paid for - **Markus Persson**: Wrote Minecraft alone before selling it to Microsoft - **Erling Persson**: Opened the shop in Västerås that became H&M - **Dag Hammarskjöld**: Second Secretary-General of the United Nations - **Raoul Wallenberg**: Issued protective passports in wartime Budapest and saved thousands - **Olof Palme**: Prime minister, assassinated on a Stockholm street in 1986 - **Greta Thunberg**: Started a school strike outside the Riksdag that spread worldwide ## Must-try Swedish food - **Köttbullar**: Small pork and beef meatballs with cream sauce, lingonberries and pressed cucumber. - **Pyttipanna**: Diced potato, onion and leftover meat fried hard, topped with a fried egg and beetroot. - **Janssons frestelse**: Potato, onion and sprats baked in cream, and a fixture of every Christmas table. - **Raggmunk**: Potato pancakes fried crisp, served with fried pork and lingonberries. - **Ärtsoppa**: Yellow pea soup with pork, eaten on Thursdays, with pancakes after. - **Kalops**: Slow beef stew with allspice and bay, and pickled beetroot on the side. - **Falukorv**: A thick mild sausage, sliced and fried or baked whole with cheese and mustard. - **Kroppkakor**: Potato dumplings stuffed with pork and onion, from Öland and Småland. - **Gravad lax**: Salmon cured with salt, sugar and dill, sliced thin and served with mustard sauce. - **Inlagd sill**: Pickled herring in a dozen dressings, always with new potatoes and dill. - **Toast Skagen**: Prawns in dill mayonnaise piled on fried bread, with roe on top. - **Löjrom**: Vendace roe from the Kalix coast, served with sour cream and finely chopped red onion. - **Kräftor**: Crayfish boiled in dill, eaten outdoors in August with paper hats and drinking songs. - **Surströmming**: Fermented Baltic herring, opened outdoors and eaten in flatbread. A tradition, not a dare. - **Räksmörgås**: An open prawn sandwich built high enough to need a knife and fork. - **Renskav**: Shaved reindeer fried with mushrooms and cream, over mash and lingonberries. - **Suovas**: Cold-smoked reindeer from Sámi kitchens, sliced into a flatbread wrap. - **Palt**: Dense potato dumplings from Norrbotten, boiled with cured pork inside. - **Hjortron**: Cloudberries picked from the northern bogs, warmed over ice cream or soft cheese. - **Kanelbulle**: The cinnamon bun: cardamom in the dough, pearl sugar on top. Fika's default order. - **Kardemummabulle**: The cardamom sibling, and the one Swedes order when nobody is watching. - **Kladdkaka**: A chocolate cake taken out of the oven early on purpose, still sticky in the middle. - **Chokladboll**: No-bake oat and cocoa balls rolled in coconut or pearl sugar. - **Prinsesstårta**: Sponge, jam and cream under a dome of pale green marzipan. - **Semla**: Cardamom bun filled with almond paste and whipped cream, eaten in the weeks before Lent. - **Lussekatt**: Saffron buns curled into an S, baked for Lucia in December. - **Pepparkakor**: Thin ginger snaps, snapped in the palm for luck at Christmas. - **Tunnbrödsrulle**: Flatbread rolled around mash, sausage, prawn salad and crisp fried onion. - **Korv med bröd**: The grilled sausage in bread that every kiosk and ferry terminal sells. - **Kebabpizza**: Sweden's own invention: pizza under kebab meat and a garlic sauce. - **Glögg**: Mulled wine with almonds and raisins in the bottom of the cup, from Advent onward. - **Julmust**: A dark malt soft drink that outsells cola in Sweden every December. - **Snaps**: Spiced aquavit taken in small glasses, and never without a song first. - **Punsch**: A sweet arrack liqueur, traditionally drunk warm alongside Thursday's pea soup. - **Kaffe**: Sweden drinks more coffee per head than almost anywhere, and fika is the reason. ## By theme - [Hiking & trekking](https://wimup.com/hiking.md) - [Island escapes](https://wimup.com/islands.md) - [Northern lights](https://wimup.com/northern-lights.md) - [Old towns](https://wimup.com/old-towns.md) - [Cherry blossom in Europe](https://wimup.com/cherry-blossom-europe.md) - [Family holidays](https://wimup.com/family-travel.md) ## Films - [Stockholm Travel Guide](https://wimup.com/watch/stockholm.md), 24:57 - [Kiruna Travel Guide](https://wimup.com/watch/kiruna.md), 12:45 ## FAQs ### How many days do you need in Sweden? Eight to twelve days covers a first trip. Give Stockholm three or four nights, add Gothenburg or the Skåne coast by train, and keep three days spare if you are going north, because Lapland is a night away and rewards more than a look. ### When is the best time to visit Sweden? Two answers, and they are opposite seasons. June to August for the long light, the archipelago and the swimming, with July the busiest month by some distance. February and March for reliable snow, the ski season and the best odds on the northern lights. ### Is Sweden expensive? Eating and drinking out are the expensive parts, and alcohol especially so. Being outdoors costs close to nothing: allemansrätten covers wild camping, the trails are public, and the weekday lunch deal is the cheapest hot meal in the country. ### Can you see the northern lights in Sweden? In the north, yes. Abisko has the reputation because a gap in the mountains leaves it unusually dry and clear. The season runs from roughly September to March, it needs a dark clear night, and no operator can promise one. Stockholm sits too far south to plan a trip around. ### Do you need cash in Sweden? Rarely. Cards and phone payments are taken almost everywhere, including buses and market stalls, and a growing number of places accept nothing else. Bring a card with a PIN and leave the notes at home. ## Related countries - [Italy](https://wimup.com/country/italy.md) - [France](https://wimup.com/country/france.md) - [All of Europe](https://wimup.com/europe) Part of [Europe](https://wimup.com/europe.md) ## Sources - [Tourism board](https://visitsweden.com/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Visa](https://www.migrationsverket.se/en/you-want-to-apply/visiting-sweden.html?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Alcohol](https://www.systembolaget.se/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Right of access](https://www.naturvardsverket.se/en/topics/the-right-of-public-access/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - Rankings are Wimup editorial picks. Prices, durations and budgets are editorial estimates, not live quotes; check the official site before you go.