Where to stay in Östhammar
Most visitors stay in the old centre of Östhammar, where a hotel and small guesthouses sit within an easy walk of the harbour, the church, and the low timber streets along the bay. The centre suits those who want a bed close to the water and an easy reach of the boats and the shops. It makes a fine base.
Out along the shore and across the islands of the surrounding Roslagen coast, cottages, cabins, and campsites give a quieter setting for travellers arriving by car and wanting the sea and the skerries at the door. The coast shapes the choices around Östhammar. Self-catering cottages by the water draw families and sailors through the warm months, and the campsites near the bay fill across the short summer weeks.
Book ahead for summer. Beds are few in this small harbour town, and the coastal cottages go early in the high season to visitors who return each year for the boating and the quiet of the bay.
About Östhammar
What is Östhammar known for?
Östhammar is known as an old coastal town. The wooden streets gather around a sheltered inlet on the Baltic shore, a small harbour town with a long history of trade, fishing, and seafaring in the north-eastern corner of Uppsala County. The sea defines it.
Summer visitors come for the bay, the islands, and the low timber houses of the old centre, while the surrounding Roslagen coast draws sailors and walkers to its skerries and quiet shores.
What are the main landmarks in Östhammar?
Östhammars kyrka stands in the old centre, the town church serving the harbour community through the centuries. The coast holds older marks too. Börstils kyrka, the medieval parish church a little way along the shore, and Östhammars hus, the site of an old fortified manor near the bay, recall the deeper history of trade and defence on this stretch of the Roslagen coast, while the harbour and the low timber houses give the town its enduring face by the water.
What is the history of Östhammar?
Östhammar grew from the sea. The town traces its roots to a medieval harbour and trading place on this stretch of the Roslagen coast, granted town rights in the Middle Ages and long tied to the fishing, the shipping, and the iron trade that moved through the bay. The medieval church at Börstil served the early shore.
Defence mattered here too, and the old fortified site of Östhammars hus guarded the approaches by water. The town shifted with the changing coast. Land slowly rising from the sea moved the harbour and reshaped the bay over the centuries, yet Östhammar held on as the small trading and fishing centre of its district through the long northern years.
The timber streets endured. The church, the harbour, and the old houses still tie the modern town to its seafaring past on the quiet Baltic shore of the north-eastern county.
Where is Östhammar?
Östhammar lies in the north-eastern part of Uppsala County, set on a sheltered bay of the Baltic coast in eastern Sweden. The town sits among the low shores and scattered islands of Roslagen, a country of forest, water, and skerries where the land meets the sea in a maze of bays and inlets. The ground is low and wooded.
Pine forest and farmland spread inland from the coast, and minor roads thread out to the villages and the shore, linking the harbour town to the wider district of the north-eastern county.
What is the climate of Östhammar?
Östhammar has a cool temperate climate tempered by the sea. Winters are cold and often snowy, the sheltered bays freezing along the shore in the hardest spells while the open Baltic softens the worst of the chill that settles over this part of the eastern Swedish coast. Summers are mild and bright.
Long northern daylight stretches the evenings late around midsummer, the season that fills the coastal cottages and brings sailors out among the islands of the bay. Rain and snow fall across the seasons here.
How do you get to Östhammar?
Östhammar sits on the Baltic coast in the north-eastern part of Uppsala County, reached mostly by road. Regional roads link the town to Uppsala to the south-west and along the Roslagen coast, the routes that carry most of the traffic in. Buses serve the centre.
The nearest railway lines and the main airport lie at Uppsala and Stockholm, so most visitors arrive by car or bus, the drive in winding through the forest and the coastal country of the north-eastern county to reach the bay.