Stockholm on the water. Lapland under the lights.
Which archipelago boat actually stops at an island, what a Gamla Stan walk costs before the crowds land, and whether Kiruna pays off in aurora.
Gamla StanWalks through the old town
Swedish LaplandNights under the aurora
Four days out: three around Stockholm, one above the Arctic Circle.
What each one costs, how long it runs, and what you actually get for the money.
01The first afternoon outStockholm: City Archipelago Sightseeing Cruise with GuideThree hours through the inner islands with a guide on deck. The boat almost everyone ends up on, and it earns it.
02The grey-day answerStockholm: Skansen Open-Air Museum Admission TicketFarmsteads, churches and Nordic animals moved onto one Djurgården hill. Sweden invented the open-air museum here.
03The morning walkWalking Tour of Stockholm Old TownGamla Stan on foot before the cruise groups land: narrow lanes, the palace, and the square where the town began.
04The afternoon up northKiruna: Guided Afternoon Drive Your Own Dog Sled TourYour own team of huskies on a frozen lake outside Kiruna, with the light already going pink by three.
Sweden changes completely between Malmö and the Torne valley.
A capital built across fourteen islands, an archipelago of thirty thousand more, a west-coast port that eats better than it admits, a bridge town looking at Denmark, and the Viking country an hour up the road. Pick the base and the day out picks itself.
The archipelago boats and the Torne river ice never run in the same month.
From June the archipelago boats run daily, the light holds past ten at night and nobody sleeps much. From November the water starts to freeze, the boats thin out, and everything worth doing moves north to the snow. Pick the half of the year you want before you pick the tour.
Stockholm’s thirty thousand islands start ten minutes from the quay.
Everything in this city faces water and the best days out are all on it. Three kinds of boat day, what each costs to board, and how far out it takes you.
Gamla Stan is eight blocks, and everyone walks it at the same hour.
Everything in Stockholm →
The old town is ochre and rust-red houses packed onto an island, and the cruise groups reach it mid-morning. Go before them or go after six, and give the ghost walk an evening of its own.
The old town before the crowds
Painted facades, the narrowest lane in the city and the square where the 1520 bloodbath happened. Guided walks run all day; the early ones are the quiet ones.
Skansen, the Vasa and the Nobel rooms
Sweden built the first open-air museum here, then raised a 1628 warship out of the harbour to fill another one. Both sit on Djurgården, ten minutes apart.
Fika, which is not just coffee
Coffee and something baked, sitting down, twice a day, and taken seriously enough to have its own verb. The walks build a morning around the bakeries that still do it properly.
Where a first trip to Sweden almost always starts.
Every tour in Sweden →These take more bookings than anything else in the country. What each one is, and what it costs to join.
1
Stockholm: City Archipelago Sightseeing Cruise with Guide
Cruise Stockholm’s island-filled archipelago on a classic ship with live commentary, onboard café, indoor seating, and flexible 1.5 to 3-hour routes.
From · $41
Read our review →2
Stockholm: Skansen Open-Air Museum Admission Ticket
from $27
3
Stockholm: Archipelago Boat Tour
from $39
4
Stockholm: Highlights Boat Tour
from $39
5
Stockholm: Ghost Walk and Historical Tour
from $31
6
Walking Tour of Stockholm Old Town
from $24
7
The Original Stockholm Ghost Walk and Historical Tour – Gamla Stan
from $38
8
Stockholm Archipelago Cruise with Guide
from $47
Kiruna sits 145 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle.
Everything up here runs on cold: aurora chases that wait out the cloud, dog teams on frozen lakes, snowmobiles over the Torne valley and a hotel rebuilt from river ice every December. The flight from Stockholm takes ninety minutes. The night train takes seventeen hours.
Sweden is expensive, but not evenly.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs a head. The cheap end is wider than the country’s reputation suggests.
Self-guided walks, museum entry, the hop-on boat, and most of what a Stockholm morning looks like.
Guided old-town walks, archipelago cruises, kayak days and the food halls.
What the north sells: aurora chases, dog teams, snowmobiles, and the private boats down south.
- 1Kiruna Northern Lights Tour with Photographerfrom $223
- 2The Ultimate Aurora Photo Adventurefrom $183
- 3Kiruna: Northern Lights Tour with Photosfrom $187
An archipelago, a field of runestones, and a hotel that melts.
Boat trips and museums exist everywhere. An archipelago of thirty thousand islands, a countryside carved with runestones, and a hotel that melts every spring do not.
The Stockholm archipelago
The city gives out to rock and pine twenty minutes after the boat leaves the quay, and keeps going for eighty kilometres. Somewhere past halfway the trees give up and the outer skerries are bare granite with a lighthouse on them. Scheduled boats run daily through the summer and thin to almost nothing once the ice comes.
- 1Stockholm: City Archipelago Sightseeing Cruise with Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 10,798 reviews
- 2Stockholm: Archipelago Boat Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 3,110 reviews
- 3Stockholm Archipelago Cruise with Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 1,125 reviews
Uppland’s runestones
Sweden holds more runestones than the rest of the world put together, and most still stand where they were raised, in fields and churchyards an hour north of Stockholm. The text runs as a snake around the edge of the slab, and where the pigment has been restored it reads red from the roadside. They are memorials, and a striking number of them are for men who died abroad.
- 1Stockholm: The Viking Museum Exhibition and Viking Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 667 reviews
- 2Entrance ticket to The Viking Museum★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 301 reviews
- 3Viking History, Runes & Countryside 9h Tour to Sigtuna & Uppsala★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 283 reviews
The Icehotel at Jukkasjärvi
Ice is cut from the Torne river in spring, stored through the summer and built back into a hotel each December: rooms, a chapel, and a bar where the glasses are ice too. By April the whole thing has melted back into the river it came from. Tours run out of Kiruna, twenty minutes down the road.
- 1Guided Tour to Icehotel and Jukkasjärvi★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 28 reviews
- 2Kiruna: Tour of Icehotel and Jukkasjärvi★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 20 reviews
- 3From Abisko: Explore the Icehotel★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 16 reviews
Four Swedish days that only exist for part of the year.
Most of Sweden can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on ice, daylight and boat timetables, and none of them care when your flight lands.
- 01Guided Tour to Icehotel and JukkasjärviThe ice rooms are built in December and melt in April. Outside those months there is a warm hotel on the site and no ice to sleep in.
- 02Kiruna Northern Lights Tour with PhotographerThe aurora needs darkness, and from late May to late July there is none this far north. The season runs September to March.
- 03Stockholm: City Archipelago Sightseeing Cruise with GuideScheduled boats out to the islands run hard through the summer and shrink to a skeleton service once the ice forms. Winter is charter or nothing.
- 04Sit Down Husky Ride Dog Sled Tour in KirunaSleds need snow. Outside the snow months the same operators run wheeled carts instead, which is a different day out.
Fika is a fixed appointment, not a coffee break.
Twice a day everything stops for coffee and something baked, and it matters enough to have its own verb. The food walks build a morning around the bakeries and the market halls, and the herring is better than its reputation.
Start from a Swedish city, a coast, or the Arctic.
Sweden also sorts by water, snow, history and the table.
Stockholm, the islands, the Viking country, then the night train north.
AbiskoThe newest arrivals, Malmö to Abisko.
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