Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
notable among the flora here are cowslips, lady's-slipper orchids, wild cherry trees and, in
early summer, the unusual and intensely fragrant bear-garlic.
Stretching some 160km north from Gothenburg up to the Norwegian border, the
rough and windswept
Bohuslän coast
possesses a considerable
archipelago
of around
three thousand islands. Most of these are devoid of trees - any which existed were cut
down to make into boats and houses during the great fishing era of the eighteenth
century. This low coastal landscape is peppered with deeply indented bays and fjords,
interspersed with islands and peninsulas. To the north of the region, the waves have
weathered the pink and reddish granite, and the resulting large, smooth stone slabs
with their distinctive cracks are characteristic of the province. Inland from this stretch
of coast are steep hills and plateaus which are separated from one another by deep
valleys, the inland continuations of the fjords. Long, narrow lakes have developed here,
the Bullaren lakes being the largest.
One of the region's most splendid areas of virgin forest is
Tiveden National Park
,
around 50km northeast of Karlsborg and just to the northwest of
Lake Vättern
, one of
the two enormous lakes in this part of Sweden, the other being
Vänern
. Fishing being a
major sport in Sweden, Vänern and Vättern attract thousands each year who wish to
try their luck. Around 1300 tonnes of fish are taken from Vänern alone each year, with
commercial fisheries accounting for around eighty percent of the catch. The lake's
waters were once the most productive for salmon in Sweden, but the construction of
hydroelectric dams ruined the spawning grounds, and by the 1970s salmon was almost
extinct here. In an effort to complement natural reproduction, salmon and brown trout
have been raised in hatcheries and released into the lake with considerable success.
The south
The southernmost third of Sweden, the country's most highly populated and
industrialized region, is a mixture of highlands (in the north), forests, lakes and
cultivated plains. In southeastern Sweden, the forests of
Småland
have kept the
furnaces of the province's glass factories alight since the seventeenth century. In the
south, where the highlands give way to a gently undulating landscape, the combination
of pastures and fields of rape and poppy makes for some glorious summertime scenery
in
Skåne
. Though this province has a reputation for being monotonous and
agricultural (true of much of its southwest), it also boasts tracts of conifers, a
spectacular coastline and lush forests of beech, best seen in the first weeks of May. The
province also boasts dramatic natural rock formations at
Hovs Hallar
, a stunning
castellation of red-rock sea-stacks on the northern coast of the Bjäre peninsula.
To the east of Skåne, the
Stenshuvud National Park
has rocky coastal hills surrounded
by woods of hornbeam and alder and moorlands full of juniper. Animals untypical of
Sweden live here, such as tree frogs, sand lizards and dormice.
Öland and Gotland
Sweden's two largest islands,
Gotland
and
Öland
, lying in the Baltic Sea to the east of
the mainland, have excited botanists and geologists for centuries. When Carl von Linné
first arrived in Öland in the mid-eighteenth century, he noted that the terrain was “of
an entirely different countenance” from the rest of the country, and indeed the island's
limestone plateaus - known as
alvar
- are unique in Sweden. In southern Öland,
Stora
Alvaret
(Great Limestone Plain) is a thin-soiled heathland with vividly colourful flora
in spring and summer.
Gotland
is the more dramatic of the two great islands, thanks to its tall sea-stacks
(
raukar
), the remains of old coral reefs which loom like craggy ghosts along the
island's shoreline. Like Öland, Gotland sustains rich floral life, including at least
35 species of orchid.
