Student blogs

This summer is my first time enjoying vacation time in Sweden as I am usually not spending it here! I am Swedish myself and therefore usually go travelling abroad visiting friends and chasing the hot sun. For obvious reasons, travelling for me became cancelled this year. So I seized the opportunity to plan some fun things in Stockholm!

One of the things that everyone should try in Sweden is to go camping. Sweden has a law called “Allemansrätten” which directly is translated to “Freedom to roam”. In principle, it means that anyone has the right to travel in nature, temporarily stay there (e.g. camping) and pick berries, mushrooms and other certain plants. This exists in other nordic countries as well and in some parts of Europe but not to the same extent as Sweden.

Me and my friends went camping in June somewhere in the Stockholm Archipelago. We stayed on an island called Ingarö, the 16th largest island in Sweden.

We went to the furthest edge of the island and found a private beach where we set camp. It was close to Björnö nature reserve. We just took a bus from city center and we were on the beach within 1 hour. It was only us 5 there and no one else. During the day there would be people coming and swimming but by 18:00-19:00 we had the whole beach to ourselves!

We stayed for 2 nights! We had tents that we set up, brought lots of food that we barbecued, played instruments, explored around the island, went swimming and just enjoyed the silence and beauty of the Stockholm archipelago. We were incredibly lucky with the weather as well. Clear blue sky with 26 degrees!

Camping experience was fun to do as well. It is surely not the same thing as sleeping comfortably in your own bed but it is worth doing when you know where you wake up the next morning! I usually woke up earlier than the others. I would just go lie on the beach for a while to feel the warmth of the sun, go for a walk in the forest and then come back to make breakfast and wake up everybody.

The island that we went to is just one out of many that you can go to. It got recommended to me from a friend that we should go there and it was definitely a great one! Especially as there are not many beaches around in Sweden, this one made it even more special.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and that it gave you some sense of how beautiful and great it was there! It is difficult to always catch those.

Hopefully you have an interest in going camping yourself when you are in Sweden! // Tina 🙂