Sundsvall

Sundsvall takes its name from an open pasture, a vall, south of the Selånger river that belonged to the village of Sund, and it was chartered as a town in 1621. Its first street plan probably dates from 1642. The wooden town burned and was rebuilt four times; the first time, in 1721, it was set on fire by the Russian army during the Russian Pillage of 1719–21.

In the 19th century the forests made Sundsvall rich. One historian dates the start of Swedish industrialism to 1849, when the Tunadal sawmill bought a steam-driven saw, and by the early 20th century the Sundsvall was an even greater centre of the Swedish forest industry than it is today. The wealth was unevenly shared: the Sundsvall strike of 1879 was the first large strike in Sweden, and social democrat and socialist sympathies remain stronger in the region than in Sweden as a whole.

On 25 June 1888, in strong wind and dry weather, probably from a spark from a steamship, fire destroyed the city centre — the largest fire in Swedish history, on the same day that Umeå burned. Unlike Umeå, Sundsvall rebuilt in stone, in lavish blocks of brick and stone that earned the centre the name Stenstaden, the stone city. Later came pulp and paper mills, aluminium production, banks, insurance and large public data centres, a bridge to Alnön in 1964 and a university campus.

Stenstaden is the city's pride: in 2017 the campaign group Architectural Uprising named Sundsvall the most beautiful city in Sweden. Since 2003, gentle-looking dragons, the city's unofficial symbol, have appeared on its streets, and the skvader — a hare with a wood grouse's wings and tail, put together by the taxidermist Rudolf Granberg in 1918 — is on permanent display at Norra Berget.

Music runs deep. The Nordic Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1990, plays mainly modern works; the city has a strong choir tradition, most notably the choirs founded by Kjell Lönnå; and the singers Helen Sjöholm and Anna Stadling and the folk-rock band Garmarna are among the musicians from Sundsvall. A heavy metal festival, Nordfest, is held every autumn, Musikschlaget is a song contest for groups of people with disabilities from around Sweden, and in 2026 the city hosted the final qualifying round of Melodifestivalen. The rock club Pipeline has supported local rock music since the early 1970s.

Writing has a place too: the authors Alfhild Agrell, Frida Stéenhoff and Lars Ahlin came from Sundsvall, and since 2012 the city has hosted the yearly Swedish Crime Fiction Festival. Sport centres on football at Idrottsparken, home of GIF Sundsvall, on ice hockey and bandy, and on the ski slopes and trails of the two city hills.

In 2023 about 71,000 people lived in the urban area of Sundsvall och Timrå — counted together with neighbouring Timrå from that year — and nearly 100,000 in the municipality, making it the 17th-largest city in Sweden. It is the largest city in the province of Medelpad and the only one there with historical city status; the seat of Västernorrland County is Härnösand.

The economy is still tied to the forests, with pulp and paper mills, sawmills and aluminium smelting. Services have grown beside them: banks, insurance companies, telecommunications administration and large public data-processing centres, including the national social insurance agency, and one of the two campuses of Mid Sweden University, which gained university status in 2005.

The urban region spreads along the coast, from Timrå in the north through the centre to Bredsand, Kvissleby and Essvik in the south, and east onto Alnön, where many residents work in Sundsvall. Life in the centre revolves around the pedestrian streets and bars of Stenstaden; summers are spent at the cottages on the islands and coast, and winters on the ski slopes of the city hills. Sundsvalls Tidning, published since 1841, is the city's newspaper.

Sundsvall eats in the Swedish way: everyday husmanskost — meatballs with brown cream sauce and lingonberry jam, pea soup, salmon and herring in many forms — and the weekday lunch special, dagens rätt, which some central restaurants serve as a buffet. Fika, coffee with a bun or pastry, fills the cafés of Stenstaden, and the city's more than 60 restaurants, bars and pubs cover most international cuisines.

Surströmming, Baltic herring fermented until it has a powerful smell, is by tradition eaten from the third Thursday of August into early September, often with tunnbröd, a soft or crisp flatbread whose use with the fish began on the High Coast north of the city; the High Coast custom is to make a sandwich, a surströmmingsklämma, between two pieces of buttered crisp tunnbröd. The world's first surströmming museum opened in 2005 at Skeppsmalen near Örnsköldsvik, at the northern end of the High Coast. Wine, strong beer and spirits are sold only through the state Systembolaget.