Northern Sweden & the High Coast

The land here is still emerging from the sea. When the ice sheet melted about 10,000 years ago, the crust, freed of its weight, began to rise, and on the High Coast it has risen by nearly 300 metres since then, the highest known postglacial rise; the old shoreline on Skuleberget, about 285 metres above the present sea, is the highest in the world. Stone Age hunters followed the coast as it moved, leaving rock paintings and hunting pits.

Hälsingland and Medelpad were farming and trading provinces in the Viking Age and were Christianised in the Middle Ages, and Gävle received its town charter in the 15th century. Jämtland had a different history: it was long tied to Norway, kept its own assembly on Frösön, where the Frösö runestone records the island's conversion, and passed to Sweden only in 1645.

In the 19th century the forests became the region's fortune. Steam sawmills lined the Bothnian coast around Sundsvall, one of Europe's great timber-exporting districts, and the wealth built grand merchant houses before a fire destroyed the city centre in 1888; it was rebuilt in stone. Sawmill strikes in 1879 were an early landmark in the Swedish labour movement. Hälsingland's farmers, rich from flax and timber, built and decorated the great farmhouses now listed by UNESCO. In the 20th century pulp and paper mills, hydroelectric dams on the rivers and engineering in Örnsköldsvik sustained the economy.

Southern Norrland shares the reserved, understated manners that other Swedes associate with the north, along with a deep attachment to the forest, the river and the summer cottage. Hälsingland is known for its fiddle music and the folk painters who decorated its farmhouses; the Hälsingehambo, a folk dance competition, is held each summer. Jämtland has a strong provincial identity — the tongue-in-cheek "Republic of Jamtland" holds a summer festival in Östersund — and a lake monster, the Storsjöodjuret, said to live in Storsjön.

Southern Sami communities herd reindeer in the mountains of western Jämtland, and their language and crafts are part of the region's culture. The coast has a fishing and boat-building tradition, and islands such as Ulvön keep old fishing chapels.

Ice hockey is an obsession: Örnsköldsvik's MoDo produced several NHL stars, and Brynäs of Gävle and Östersund's teams draw loyal crowds. Gävle's straw Christmas goat, raised each year since 1966, has become famous for the number of times it has been set on fire, and its survival through December is followed nationally.

The three counties hold about 670,000 people. Gävle and Sundsvall each have about 100,000 in their municipalities, Östersund about 65,000 and Örnsköldsvik about 55,000; Hudiksvall, Söderhamn, Härnösand and Kramfors are smaller, and inland Jämtland is thinly settled.

Forestry, pulp and paper still dominate, with large mills on the coast, and steel is made at Sandviken near Gävle. Örnsköldsvik builds military vehicles, Sundsvall has services, data centres and a university campus, and Östersund has become known for winter sports research. Åre's tourism economy runs year-round, and hydroelectric power from the northern rivers and new wind farms supply much of southern Sweden's electricity.

Days are shaped by the seasons: dark winters of skiing, ice-fishing and hockey, light summers spent at the lake or on the coast. Depopulation of inland villages and the pull of the coastal cities, along with debates over wind power, wolves and forestry, are the main local issues.

The High Coast is the home of surströmming, Baltic herring fermented in tins until they bulge, opened outdoors from late August and eaten with thin flatbread (tunnbröd), potatoes, onion and sour cream; Ulvön is closely associated with it. The Bothnian coast also gives smoked whitefish and Baltic herring.

Inland, Jämtland is known for its mountain cheeses, with goat's cheese from the old summer farms, for game — elk, reindeer and grouse — and for Arctic char from its lakes. Hälsingland has its own ostkaka, a baked curd cake of milk curdled with rennet, and a tradition of flatbreads baked on the farms.

Gävle gave its name to the coffee brand Gevalia, founded there in the 19th century, and forest berries — cloudberries on the northern bogs, lingonberries and bilberries everywhere — go into jams and desserts across the region.

The High Coast runs north of Härnösand past the High Coast Bridge to Örnsköldsvik. Skuleberget can be climbed for views and has a cave near its top, Skuleskogen National Park has the narrow Slåttdalsskrevan gorge, and ferries reach the islands of Ulvön and Trysunda with their fishing villages. The Naturum visitor centre explains the land uplift.

South of the coast, Sundsvall's stone city centre can be seen from the Norra Stadsberget hill, and Hälsingland's decorated farmhouses — among them Gästgivars at Vallsta, Kristofers at Stene and Erik-Anders at Asta — lie inland from Hudiksvall and Bollnäs. Gävle has its old wooden quarter of Gamla Gefle, the railway museum and the Christmas goat in the main square, with the Furuvik zoo and amusement park on the coast nearby.

In Jämtland, Östersund has the Jamtli open-air museum and the island of Frösön, with its runestone and views across Storsjön to the mountains. Åre offers skiing on Åreskutan, lift-served mountain biking and walking in summer, and the broad Tännforsen waterfall to the west, while the mountain trails around Storulvån and Sylarna lead towards the Norwegian border.