Escorted Tours to Sweden and Swedish Lapland
Sweden rewards travellers who are happy to cover some ground. Stockholm sits across fourteen islands, with the old town, Gamla Stan, on one of them and the salvaged warship Vasa on another. Uppsala, an hour north, has the tallest cathedral in the Nordic countries and the garden where Carl Linnaeus worked out how to name the natural world.
Airedale travels here for the contrast between those cities and the far north, where the country empties out into forest, lake and bog, and the light in June barely bothers to go out. Our itinerary combines flights with a long, unhurried rail journey.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Sweden Tours
North of the Arctic Circle, around Gällivare, the sun does not set at all for roughly six weeks from early June, so on a clear night you will see it. Luleå sits just south of the line, so there the sun dips briefly but never gets properly dark. Cloud can spoil the view on any given night — nobody can guarantee weather. Ask us which dates fall within the brightest period.
The tour is eight days and prices start at £2,520. That covers return flights from London Heathrow, the internal flight from Stockholm to Luleå, transfers at destination, hotel accommodation with breakfast — three nights in Stockholm and one in Uppsala among them — a dinner in a local restaurant, and the Inlandsbanan rail journey from Gällivare to Östersund. Full details of meals and excursions are on the tour page.
Yes, the single supplement on this tour is £400. Solo travellers are common on our escorted holidays and the group format suits them well — you have company at meals and on excursions without having to organise anything. If you would rather share, or want to know how many single rooms are held on a particular departure, ask us and we will check.
Stockholm, Uppsala and the far north
Our Sweden tour spends three nights in Stockholm, which is about right. The Vasa Museum alone takes a morning: the ship sank in the harbour on her maiden voyage in 1628, sat in the mud for 333 years and came up largely intact. Gamla Stan is walkable, cobbled and hilly in places, with the Royal Palace and the Nobel Prize Museum a few minutes apart.
Uppsala, where we stay a night, is a university city with a Gothic brick cathedral, the Gustavianum anatomical theatre and the Linnaean Garden laid out to his own plan. From there the tour flies north to Luleå, near the Gulf of Bothnia, where Gammelstad church town — more than four hundred red cottages once used by parishioners who lived too far away to travel home after Sunday service — is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Inlandsbanan scenic railway
The Inland Line was built to open up the interior of Sweden and finished in 1937. It runs for well over a thousand kilometres through country the main coastal railway ignores: pine and birch forest, peat bog, reindeer grazing, small timber halts with a station house and not much else.
The tour includes the section from Gällivare, above the Arctic Circle, down to Östersund on Lake Storsjön. This is not a fast train and is not trying to be. Services stop where there is something worth stopping for — the Arctic Circle marker, a coffee break, sometimes a pause when an elk is spotted on the line. Seats are comfortable, the windows are large, and the day passes in conversation and looking out.
