Ystad

Fishing families settled at the mouth of the Vassa river in the 11th century, when herring became the coast's main source of trade, and the name, first written Ystath in 1285, probably means the place where yews grow. The town is first mentioned in 1244, when King Eric visited it with his brother Abel. A Franciscan friary was founded in 1267, and in the 14th century Ystad joined the Hanseatic League, building the brick churches that still dominate the centre. The Reformation reached the town in 1532, when the friars were driven out and the friary became a hospital and poorhouse.

Under the Danish crown Ystad was a port for exporting oxen, confirmed by a charter of 1599, and in 1644 a Danish fleet was defeated in its harbour. In 1658 the Treaty of Roskilde made it Swedish, with about 1,600 inhabitants. Until the 19th century it was the leading port of Skåne, but when the main railway was built to Malmö instead, Ystad lost its importance — and, because it stopped growing, its old buildings were not torn down for new ones.

The railway arrived in 1866, and a garrison in the 1890s lifted the population above 10,000. The planting of Sandskogen to hold back drifting sand made the town a seaside resort around 1900. After the Second World War ferries began to sail to Bornholm and Poland. When the regiment closed, Ystad Studios opened on part of its grounds in 2004, and new ferry quays came into use in 2021.

Ystad is best known abroad as Wallander's town. Henning Mankell set much of his series of crime novels about the police inspector Kurt Wallander here, and the books were adapted into Swedish television and then into a British series with Kenneth Branagh, filmed in Ystad from 2008. Fans follow Wallander trails through the streets, and guided tours run in several languages. The town had a literary reputation earlier too: August Strindberg, in his novel Inferno, described it as an old haunt of pirates and smugglers where voyagers had left traces from all over the world.

The medieval core is part of the European Route of Brick Gothic, and the churches, the friary and old brick houses such as the Latin school, from the 16th century, give the centre its character. Biografteatern Scala is the oldest purpose-built cinema in Sweden, and the film studios have made Ystad a centre of Swedish film production. Music has its own fixtures: the Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival, directed by the pianist Jan Lundgren, and a tattoo held every other year.

Handball is the town's sport, with two big clubs, and Ystads IF plays in the top men's league. The local newspaper, Ystads Allehanda, has been published since 1873, and the volunteer fire brigade still draws attention when it turns out in its antique vehicles.

Ystad had about 18,000 inhabitants in 2010 and is the seat of Ystad Municipality. The population grew slowly: about 1,600 in 1658, 5,000 by 1850, and above 10,000 only after the railway and the garrison arrived in the 1890s.

The port is the economic heart of the town. It is one of the largest in Sweden by passenger and freight volume, with ferries to Bornholm, to Świnoujście, forming part of the E65 road route south from Malmö, and to Sassnitz in Germany. Tourism, trade, handicraft and public services provide most other jobs, and many residents commute to Malmö and Lund on the local trains, which run west to Malmö and east along the coast to Simrishamn.

Life is that of a small coastal market town. The old centre is the shopping street and the meeting place, the beaches fill in summer, and the surrounding farmland of rapeseed and grain is never far away. Ystad is also a local administrative centre, and its newspaper covers the neighbouring municipalities from Skurup to Simrishamn.

Ystad eats from the farmland and the sea around it. Skåne's own dishes include äggakaka, an egg pancake fried in butter and turned once, served with fried smoked pork belly and lingonberries, once a dish for farmworkers to take into the fields; and spettekaka, a large, dry cake made by rolling a batter of eggs, potato starch flour and sugar onto a turning spit over a fire, then cut with a fine saw and often eaten with coffee, ice cream or port. Skånsk spettkaka has protected status under EU law.

The town was built on herring, and fish is still part of eating here: a small smokehouse beyond the marina sells smoked fish dishes and fish and chips to take away. In the old town, Möllers Bryggeri brews its own beer and serves food in a courtyard and a hall of copper vessels, and the restaurants around Stortorget, including Japanese, Chinese and Thai kitchens, set out tables on summer evenings.