Fjällbacka

Fjällbacka is first recorded in 1617 as Fieldbacke, a name that joins fjäll, a high, steep hill — Vetteberget — with backe, a slope. Over the following centuries the fishing station grew with each herring period, and herring salteries and train-oil boileries sprang up around it. The naturalist Pehr Kalm visited in 1742. By the 1840s Fjällbacka was described as one of the liveliest fishing villages in Bohuslän, and fortunes made from fishing and carrying fish built up a shipping trade in the second half of the 19th century: in the 1860s the village had about fifty skippers, some twenty medium-sized cargo ships, 165 pilots and seamen and more than 100 fishermen.

Oscar II visited in 1886, and the cleft through Vetteberget, until then known as Ramneklovan, was renamed Kungsklyftan, the King's Cleft, in his honour. On the evening of 12 May 1928 a fire destroyed 22 houses and left 78 people homeless before firefighters from Grebbestad, Strömstad and Uddevalla stopped it by blasting a firebreak with dynamite; afterwards a ring road, today's Föreningsgatan, was built round the hill so that fire engines could reach the village.

Fish canning continued into the 1960s, but the village had already become one of the oldest summer resorts on the west coast, and tourism has since become its main business.

Fjällbacka's fame now comes as much from the screen and the page as from the sea. Ingrid Bergman visited often and from 1958 spent many summers on Dannholmen, an island in the outer archipelago; after her death in 1982 her ashes were scattered in the sea around it, and the square was renamed Ingrid Bergmans torg, with a statue in her honour. The crime writer Camilla Läckberg grew up here and sets her best-selling novels in the village; several have been adapted for television, including the 2025 Netflix series The Glass Dome.

The village has a longer screen history too. The television series Ett köpmanshus i skärgården was filmed here in the early 1970s, and scenes of the film Ronia, the Robber's Daughter were shot in Kungsklyftan, which appears in the film as the Wolf's Gorge. On the island of Stensholmen, a First World War cemetery holds the grave of the German writer Gorch Fock.

Like other Bohuslän villages, Fjällbacka keeps a strong attachment to the sea: the Swedish Sea Rescue Society has a station here, and summer life is lived around the harbour, the boats and the rocks.

Fjällbacka had 859 inhabitants in 2010 and belongs to Tanum Municipality. The old village crouches below the hills facing the sea, while newer housing spreads over the fields inland and up on the hills.

Tourism is now the largest industry, together with plastics manufacturing — Tetra Pak has a plant here — and local crafts. Everyday shopping centres on the Coop store, which grew out of a local consumer co-operative founded in 1920; the former ICA shop closed in 2004 and its building was demolished in the autumn of 2023 to make room for housing.

The year is sharply divided. In summer the village, like the rest of the Bohuslän coast, fills with holidaymakers, sailors and summer residents, and the harbour is the centre of life. For the rest of the year Fjällbacka is a small, quiet community, with the archipelago empty and the light short in winter.

Fjällbacka put itself on the culinary map in the 1840s, when the sea captain and salting-house owner Gustav Andersson devised a new way of pickling sprats, sold as Fjellbacka-ansjovis. The recipe won prizes at exhibitions around the world between 1860 and 1880, and herring canning continued in the village into the 1960s, from 1922 at Dorthé's cannery and later also at Richter's factory under the Överste Sill brand.

Herring remains at the heart of Swedish tables: pickled, sweetened herring, inlagd sill, is a traditional starter, and at midsummer new potatoes are served with pickled herring, chives and sour cream. Shrimp and lobster are specialities of the Skagerrak coast, and in August crayfish boiled in salted water with dill are eaten at the kräftskiva, the crayfish party.

The surrounding coast is a shellfish centre in its own right. Neighbouring Grebbestad is the harbour where most of Sweden's Norway lobster, havskräfta, is landed, along with oysters, and seafood is the main draw at restaurants along this part of the coast.