Touring Sweden: A Smörgåsbord of delights

This article was originally published in our Autumn 2022 issue. Click here to subscribe to our quarterly print magazine and be the first to read our June issue features.

Sweden’s music scene is busy and varied – the country is one of the five largest music exporters in the world. The capital city, Stockholm, is home to such revered institutions as the Royal Swedish Opera and the Drottningholm Palace Theatre, one of the few surviving Baroque theatres in Europe still operating its original stage machinery.

The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra features regularly in polls of the world’s best orchestras, while the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, with its home in the Stockholm Concert Hall, enjoys no less starry a reputation.

Sweden’s largest population centres are all in the south, making it easy to plan a tour itinerary that takes in several locations: Gothenburg and Malmö (Sweden’s second and third-largest cities) can be reached in under 90 minutes by plane from Stockholm (or under 4.5 hours by train), while Uppsala and Västerås (the fourth- and fifth-largest) are both less than 40 miles from the capital.

Sweden offers a wide range of venues to suit ensembles of many different sizes. Stockholm boasts the Berwald Hall, the performance space for the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the venue for Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Baltic Sea Festival. The Great Hall of Gothenburg’s Concert Hall is considered to have some of the best acoustics in the world, while Malmö and Västerås both have new concert halls. Uppsala is one of Sweden’s most musically vibrant cities, and its Konsert & Kongress contains four auditoriums with capacities ranging from 120 to 1140.

Churches are especially popular venues for live music in Sweden. The 18th-century wooden Seglora Church in Stockholm is an atmospheric setting for small-scale concerts, as is the Caroli Church in Malmö, while at the other end of the scale, Uppsala Cathedral (pictured below) is the largest church in Scandinavia.

Malmö’s Caroli Church is an ideal smaller-scale venue ©Adobe Stock

Although part of the EU, the currency in Sweden is the Swedish Krona. A cup of coffee costs around 25kr (£2), a light lunch around 75kr (£6), a three-course meal around 400-600kr (£32-48), and a glass of wine or 0.5l of beer around 75kr (£6). Even before the pandemic, cash was seldom used in Sweden; many places no longer accept it, making a debit or credit card essential. English is widely spoken and is taught in Swedish schools.

The climate in Sweden varies greatly according to location. From late spring to mid-autumn (roughly March to October) temperatures in Stockholm are comparable to London, though winters are significantly colder. In the north, temperatures reach double figures only in summer, and can be as low as -20ºC in winter.

The quickest rail route to Sweden is via Brussels and Hamburg, followed by the Hamburg-Stockholm sleeper train, or you can stop overnight in Hamburg and reach Stockholm the following day; alternatively, take a ferry to the Netherlands, then the train to Hamburg.

There are also plenty of flight options from the UK: the main international airport, Stockholm Arlanda, is served by British Airways, Eurowings, Norwegian, Ryanair, and Scandinavian Airlines; Ryanair also flies to Gothenburg (as does British Airways), Örebro, Stockholm Västerås (about 70 miles west of Stockholm), and Växjö.

British passport holders may travel to Schengen area countries (including Sweden) for up to 90 days in any 180-day period without needing a visa; it is vital to have your passport stamped on arrival and departure.

While it may be tempting, given the relative ease of travel both to and within Sweden, to forgo the services of a tour company, engaging an experienced operator brings with it not only peace of mind, but also local contacts and the possibility of performing in normally hard-to-access venues.