Where to stay in Vimmerby
Most visitors stay in the old centre, where hotels and guesthouses sit among the wooden houses within an easy walk of the church, the square, and the shops along the main streets. The centre suits travellers who want the historic core and the restaurants close to hand. It makes a calm base.
Near Astrid Lindgrens Värld on the edge of town, hotels, cabins, and a large campsite cater to families who come for the theme park and want to stay within a short walk or shuttle of the gates. The countryside around holds farm stays, cottages, and lakeside cabins for those travelling by car. Book early for summer.
Beds near the park fill months ahead in the high season, and the town stays busiest through the warm weeks.
Things to do in Vimmerby
Ranked by global recognition; descriptions from Wikidata (CC0).
Museums & Galleries
- Astrid Lindgrens Näs
- Museet Näktergalen — working life museum
Churches & Religious Sites
- Vimmerby kyrka Heritage-listed — Church of Sweden church building
Nature & Outdoors
- Gästgivarehagen — open-air museum and park
Parks & Gardens
- Astrid Lindgrens Värld — theme park
About Vimmerby
What is Vimmerby known for?
Astrid Lindgren made Vimmerby famous. The writer was born and raised in the town, and her childhood farm at Astrid Lindgrens Näs has become a place of pilgrimage for readers of Pippi Longstocking and her many other books. The theme park Astrid Lindgrens Värld brings her stories to life nearby and draws crowds of families each summer from across Sweden and beyond.
Vimmerby kyrka anchors the old centre. Small, historic, and green, the town wears its literary fame lightly.
What are the main landmarks in Vimmerby?
Astrid Lindgrens Näs, the writer's childhood home, is the town's main draw, its red farmhouse and garden kept much as she knew them. Vimmerby kyrka stands at the centre, a parish church whose roots reach back to the medieval town. The old streets charm too.
Low timber houses in faded reds and ochres line the lanes around the square, among the better-preserved small-town townscapes in this corner of Småland. The park lies close by.
What is the history of Vimmerby?
Vimmerby is an old market town. It won its town charter in the medieval period, one of the early boroughs of the Småland interior, and grew as a place of trade and crafts on the routes that crossed the wooded uplands between the coast and the inland farms. Vimmerby kyrka served the town and the surrounding parishes through these centuries, and fires, wars, and slow rebuilding shaped the wooden streets that survive in the old core.
For generations the town stayed small and provincial, a quiet market centre among forests and lakes. Astrid Lindgren was born here at the start of the twentieth century, and her books later carried the name of Vimmerby and its countryside to readers around the world, turning a modest Småland town into a literary landmark. Her childhood farm is preserved as a museum.
The theme park built in her honour has made the town a summer destination, while the old streets keep the calm of the provincial centre it long was.
Where is Vimmerby?
Vimmerby lies in the northern part of Kalmar County, set among the forests and lakes of the northern Småland uplands well inland from the Baltic coast. Wooded hills, farmland, and small waters spread around the town, and the Stångån river system drains the district toward the larger lakes to the north. The land is green and rolling.
Minor roads and a railway thread through the forest, linking the town to its scattered villages and to the larger centres of the region.
What is the climate of Vimmerby?
Vimmerby has a cool temperate climate with a clear inland edge to it. Winters are cold and often snowy, the forests and lakes lying well away from the moderating reach of the sea that softens the coast to the east. Summers are warm and green.
Long northern daylight draws the evenings out late into the night around midsummer, the season that fills the theme park and the campsites through the warmest and busiest weeks of the year. Rain and snow fall across the seasons.
How do you get to Vimmerby?
Vimmerby sits inland in northern Kalmar County, reached by the railway and by regional roads through the forests of northern Småland. Trains call at the town station. Drivers come on roads linking Vimmerby to Kalmar on the coast and to the larger inland centres.
The nearest large airports lie at a distance in the region's bigger cities, so most visitors arrive by car or rail, and the route in winds pleasantly through the wooded, lake-dotted country that surrounds the town.