Skåne County, Sweden — Towns & Travel Guide

Skåne is known as Sweden's bread basket. The county spreads its rich, flat farmland across the far south, with the cathedral city of Lund, the harbour of Helsingborg, and the long bridge over the Öresund that ties Malmö to Copenhagen and the Continent beyond. Sandy beaches line its coasts.

Castles dot the plain. People know it for food, gentle country, and a soft southern light.

Skåne lies at the southern tip of Sweden, a low and fertile county facing Denmark across the narrow Öresund and the open Baltic on its other shores. Most of the land is gentle farmland, the flattest and richest in the country, broken by beech woods, low ridges, and a string of sandy bays and rocky headlands along a coast that runs for hundreds of kilometres around the province. Two ridges cross it.

The Söderåsen and Linderödsåsen rise above the plain. These low wooded ridges break the open country and gather small rivers that run down to the sea on either coast, while the great horn of Kullaberg juts north into the Kattegat. The county sits closer to Copenhagen than to most of Sweden, and the long Öresund Bridge carries road and rail across the strait. Österlen rolls in the south-east.

Its orchards, fishing villages, and beaches draw summer crowds to the gentlest corner of the land.

Skåne carries a culture all its own in Sweden. The province was Danish for centuries, and that long history still colours its dialect, its food, and its red-roofed farm villages, setting it a little apart from the rest of the country. The Scanian speech is famously broad.

Old links to Denmark run deep. Food stands at the centre of life here, from the rich farm cooking and goose feasts of the autumn to the orchards and markets of the fertile plain. Lund holds one of the oldest universities in the north, and its student life, its cathedral, and its old academic traditions shape the cultural year.

The Malmö arts scene is lively and mixed. Castles, manor gardens, and Viking-age sites dot the country, while the bridge to Copenhagen keeps the province open to a wider European life than anywhere else in Sweden.

Skåne was long a Danish land. For centuries the province belonged to Denmark, and Lund grew into a great church and learning centre of the Danish realm before Sweden took the south. The crown changed in the seventeenth century.

After fierce wars Skåne passed to Sweden and was slowly drawn into the kingdom, though its towns, churches, and farms kept much of their older Danish character. Its modern county was drawn together in the late twentieth century. That long border story marks the land still.

Skåne has the mildest climate in Sweden. Winters are cool rather than harsh, with the surrounding sea and the far-southern position holding back the deep cold and heavy snow that grip the country much further north through the dark half of the year. Summers stay warm and long.

The fertile plain and the sandy coasts see bright, gentle weeks through high summer, drawing crowds to the beaches and the orchards across the warmest part of the year. Wind off the open straits is common all year.

Skåne is easy to reach. Trains and cars cross the Öresund Bridge from Copenhagen and its airport, the main gateway from abroad, while fast trains run down from Stockholm and Gothenburg to Malmö, Lund, and Helsingborg through the day. Ferries cross from Denmark to Helsingborg.

The province has its own airports too. Good roads thread the plain to the coastal towns and the Österlen villages in the east.