If you’re planning a Sweden Road Trip then firstly, we are very jealous and secondly, we wanted to share with you our own itinerary and favourite things that we did in hope that this will help to inspire you.
Sweden is the largest country in Scandinavia with twice the population of its neighbouring Scandinavian country, Norway. Known for its vast forests which cover more than half of the country and its thousands and thousands of beautiful lakes, along with fantastic cities such as Stockholm, Sweden is high on many people’s travel bucket lists.
We absolutely loved the time we spent travelling Sweden as part of our Scandinavian travels in our motorhome and we wanted to share with you our Sweden Road Trip.
Table of Contents
Sweden Van Life Quick Facts
Our Route – Moose Safari – Lake Vattern – Tyresta National Park – Gamla Uppsala – Skuleskogen National Park – Lapland Husky
Duration – Just over 2 weeks
Currency – Swedish Krona
Language – Swedish, but everybody speaks very good English!
Fuel / LPG Cost – Roughly an average of £2 a litre but it can vary in different areas and even on a day-to-day basis
Toll Roads – There are no toll roads, but you do have to pay to cross the Oresund Bridge and it’s very expensive!
Water / Electricity / Emptying – There are plenty of stops with free drinking water and facilities to empty your chemical toilet. We found all of ours on the Park4Night app.
Laundry – We did not find that there were many launderettes, so we did our washing at camp sites.
Supermarkets – We thought that Willy’s was the best supermarket in Sweden with a very wide range of products and also not too expensive. There are also Lidl’s all over Sweden. We did not use any other supermarkets than these 2 but some of the other supermarket brands you may see are ICA Kvantum, ICA Nära, ICA Supermarket, 7-Eleven, and Coop.
Sweden Road Trip Destinations
Moose Safari
If you are planning a trip to Sweden, then there is no doubt that you’ll be hoping to catch a glimpse of the wonderful wildlife that roams this country. Some of the most popular animals in Sweden are the Arctic Fox, Wolf, Lynx, Reindeer, Brown Bear and of course Moose / Elk.
To see Moose was top of our Sweden bucket list. They are perhaps the most famous animal of Sweden and are known as the kings of the forest. Unfortunately, it can be quite difficult to see them in the wild as they are quite timid animals that keep themselves to themselves. You can go hiking through forests to try and find them, or you could join a guided tour, but these are pretty expensive.
There are many moose safari places in Sweden where you have the very best chance of seeing Moose and these come at a much more reasonable price than the guided tours, however, most people will prefer to see them out in the wild in their natural habitat.
We would suggest doing your research before you attend a moose safari. Check out their website, read Google reviews, have a look at photos and make sure that they are taking good care of the moose.
Lake Vattern
Lake Vattern is the second largest lake in Sweden and the sixth largest lake in the whole of Europe. The lake is 135km long and 31km wide with an area of 1,900 km², so it is absolutely huge, and it’s easy to mistake it for the sea when you look out at how vast it is.
With crystal clear waters, Lake Vattern is great for swimming, if you’re brave enough to face the cold waters!
We visited the south of the lake and stayed at a motorhome aire by Jonkoping, and then travelled up to the idyllic town of Granna, home of the red and white candy canes.
Granna is a great town for motorhome travel, there are several different motorhome parks. We stayed at one right by the harbour which cost around £29 a night which is more than we usually like to spend but it did include free use of the washing machine and tumble dryer, and we were in need of doing some laundry.
Lake Vattern also has an island, Visingsö, which is 14km long and there are actually motorhome stops on the island which can be reached by ferry from Granna.
Tyresta National Park
Tyresta National Park is the largest area of ancient untouched forest in Southern Sweden. There are 55km of hiking trails within the national park so plenty of fantastic hikes to choose from. We hiked for 4 hours in the forest. We passed beautiful lakes and were surrounded by the tall spruce trees.
What we really love about Sweden is that getting out in nature is something that they really want you to do and welcome you to do. They provide plenty of picnic benches, fire pits, shelters for camping and even composting toilets in the middle of the forest!
Gamla Uppsala
Gamla Uppsala was an extremely important religious and historic village in Sweden. There are two sides to Uppsala, there is Gamla Uppsala which is the old town and then the more modern side of the university city of Uppsala.
Gamla Uppsala has one of Sweden’s most important burial sites. It contains mounds that date from the 6th to 12th centuries and legend has it that these mounds contained the remains of the Viking gods, Thor, Odin and Freyr. Since then, in more recent times, it is believed that they hold the remains of kings.
The mounds have been excavated and the artifacts can be seen in Gamla Uppsala museum which is just next to the burial mounds.
Skuleskogen National Park
Skuleskogen National Park is on Sweden’s High Coast bordering the Baltic Sea. Mountains, forest and the sea come together here to provide hiking trails with a bit of everything. The main attraction in Skuleskogen National Park is the Slåttdalsskreva crevice. This crevice was created 1200 million years ago and was formed by the sea. It is 200m long and 30m deep and splits the Slåttdalsberget mountain in two.
There is also a viewpoint at the top of the Slåttdalsberget mountain just to the left of the crevice which gives the most incredible views. The hike to Slåttdalsskreva crevice is quite difficult and includes scrambling over some rocks. The ground is very uneven with rocks and tree branches.
Again, the national park has cabins which you can stay for free along with fire pits and composting toilets. We stayed the night before in the visitor centre car park ready to hike the next day and we hiked for 5 hours in the National Park.
Lapland Husky
Lapland Husky is a small local business in the Harads area of Lapland Sweden, just below the arctic circle. Kim is the owner of the business, and he was a very friendly and knowledgeable man. There are several different things to do at Lapland Husky, based on the seasons. There are summer / autumn tours and then winter tours. The summer / autumn tours run from June – October and the winter tours run from December – April. We visited Sweden in September, so we did a summer / autumn tour.
The two tour options in Summer / Autumn are the Visit Husky Home tour and the Self-Drive Cart Tour. We chose the visit husky home tour and for the two of us to do this it cost £99. All tours are based at Kims home where in Harads where he has his husky kennels and all of his equipment. The first part of our tour involved meeting the husky’s including two 10-week-old puppies who were very cute and very playful.
Kim gave us lots of information about the husky’s, how he started out with his business and how he used to compete in dog sledding competitions. It was very interesting to learn more about how this works. Kim keeps around 20 – 30 husky’s that he uses for his tour business, and it was clear to see how much he cared and looked after them.
The second part of the tour was Kim showing us the equipment he uses for dog sledding and explaining this all to us, and also showing us some photos and videos of the dogs out sledding.
If you choose the self-drive cart tour you actually get to experience dog sledding with the huskies, but this is quite a bit more expensive.
In the winter you can do a husky sled ride, a husky self-drive tour and a self-drive husky day tour which lasts 7-8 hours!
We would recommend this to anybody who loves dogs and is interested in finding out more about dog sledding and experiencing it for themselves.
Had we have been in Sweden in the winter in the snow then we would definitely have loved to have had a go at dog sledding.
Is Sweden expensive?
Scandinavia is renowned for being one of the most expensive parts of the world. However, Sweden is not even ranked in the top 10 most expensive countries in the world. We didn’t find Sweden to be too expensive at all, in fact we found it was not too different from the cost of living in the UK.
Is Sweden safe?
Sweden is considered one of the safest countries in the whole world. We felt completely safe in every part of Sweden that we went to in our motorhome. The Swedish locals were very friendly.
Other great places to visit in Sweden
- Stockholm
- Gothenburg
- Kiruna
- Abisko National Park
Summary
We have listed the best places that we went to in Sweden but wherever you choose to go you will have the best time as Sweden is just the most amazing country. We really hope that this blog post has helped to inspire your own Sweden road trip.
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I love everything about travel, from seeing new places, learning about new cultures and trying new foods! I believe that travel is one of the best forms of education you can get, I have learnt so much about myself and about the world from travelling all over. Travel is something I feel so passionately about, and I love the fact that we are now lucky enough to have this opportunity to do what we love as much as we can, it’s a dream come true.
Before we started travelling, I worked in local government in administration. I had been in this job for several years and had reached a complete brick wall where I was so fed up, but didn’t know what else to do. The only thing I knew that I wanted to do was to travel, and had wanted to do that for many years.
There were hundreds and hundreds of places on my wishlist that I wanted to go to, and I knew that going on a weeks holiday maybe twice a year if we were lucky wasn’t going to cut it.
After being in lockdown due to the Covid pandemic, and working from home staring at the same 4 walls every day, 2021 seemed like the perfect time for us to take the risk to finally do what we had dreamed of for so long.
It was a hard decision to completely change our lives, but so far it has been the best decision we have ever made!
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