Where to Stay in Sundsvall, Västernorrland County

Sundsvall is the city of stone. After a great fire levelled the old wooden town, the centre was rebuilt in grand stone buildings, and this quarter, the Stenstaden, gives the city its lasting character. The setting is hilly and coastal.

Industry made the place. Pulp and paper mills, sawmills along the bay, and hydroelectric power drew on the surrounding rivers and forests, while the Mittuniversitetet campus and the wide bay between Norra berget and Södra berget round out the wider picture of the modern coastal city of Medelpad.

The Stenstaden defines the centre. This whole quarter of grand stone buildings rose after the fire of the late nineteenth century, and it remains the great sight of the city, gathered around the square and the broad esplanade. Gustav Adolfs kyrka rises in brick over the centre.

Norra berget and Södra berget frame the bay on either side, the northern height carrying an open-air museum kept by the Medelpads Fornminnesförening and the southern one a ski slope and tower with wide views, while the harbour, the Fotomuseet, the brick of Brokyrkan, and the campus of the Mittuniversitetet fill out the rest. Water and hills enclose it all.

Sundsvall was chartered in 1621. The town grew on the bay between two hills as a trading place on the Medelpad coast, shipping the goods of the surrounding forests and farms across the Baltic, though for its first centuries it stayed a modest wooden settlement that fire and war repeatedly threatened. Timber transformed the city.

In the nineteenth century the sawmills along the bay turned Sundsvall into one of the great centres of the Swedish wood trade, and money and people poured in as the mills cut and shipped the forests of the interior. Then came the fire. In 1888 a great blaze destroyed almost the whole wooden town, and the centre was rebuilt in grand stone, the Stenstaden that still gives the city its face, with Gustav Adolfs kyrka and the older parish of Granlo kyrka anchoring the worship of the spreading districts.

Through the twentieth century pulp, paper, and aluminium kept the economy turning, and Sundsvall grew into the seat of its county and the chief city of Medelpad, gaining the Mittuniversitetet campus that won full status in the new century.

Sundsvall lies in the south-eastern part of Västernorrland County, on the Baltic coast where a wide bay opens between two steep hills. The city centre fills the low ground at the head of the bay, with Norra berget rising to the north and Södra berget to the south, and the harbour and shoreline stretching east toward the open sea, while the Selångersån threads in from the inland valleys. The setting is hilly and coastal.

Roads and the main railway up the east coast run through the city, tying it to Härnösand in the north and to Hudiksvall and the south.

Sundsvall has a cold coastal climate. Winters are long and snowy, with hard frost over the bay and a dependable snow cover that feeds the ski slope on Södra berget through the dark months of the year. Summers are short and mild.

The long northern daylight brings bright, pleasant weeks when the hills and the shore draw walkers and bathers, and the bay catches whatever warmth the season gives. The Baltic moderates the cold a little against the deeper chill of the interior.

Trains run up the east coast to the city. Sundsvall sits on the main rail line of the Norrland coast, with services and buses linking it to Stockholm in the south and to Härnösand and the north, while the station lies close to the stone centre. Sundsvall-Timrå Airport lies a short way north.

Drivers come on the E4 along the coast, and regional roads tie the city to the inland valleys and the neighbouring towns of Medelpad and Ångermanland.