Fairytale Forests

This summer we did a roadtrip towards central Sweden! We went from a moose safari, to a fish smokery, through a troll forest, and ended up in small stuga (small Swedish house) surrounded by swamps!

Starting with the moose safari, which was awesome, to get so close to such huge creatures is really impressive.

they are huge!

I have to admit that afterwards we went to the restaurant to eat… moose-hotdogs….

aaand after our moose adventures, we drove further north to a lovely little fish smokery deep in the forests near a lake. It was as magical as it sounds!

Ofcourse we ate a lot of smoked fish there!

even for breakfast!

The smokery was run by a big family, and it was a fantastic place. It’s called Tiraholm and I deeeefinitely recommend staying there if you plan to drive around Sweden!

After our smokery experience, we headed further north, to Tiveden. There we stay for a couple of nights in an old abandoned religious settlement, turned into a hostel area :D Tiiiiny houses, in the middle of the forest!

One evening, huge thunderstorms passed over this little forest village, you can imagine how cosy it was to be inside with the rain pouring down…

HUGE thunderstorms!
The Valkyrie…

But, most of the time the weather was amazing, and we hiked for hours each day in the beautiful forests of Tiveden!

The really look like troll forest with their huge, moss overgrown boulders. Some boulders are so big that they can be seen from outside of the forest. They’re called “the troll church”, and, to make the story even more fascinating, in history it is said that there were pagan rituals held on top of these boulders, including blood sacrifices. Yes.

On top of the Troll Church where sacrifices took place
it’s really beautiful how these boulders shaped the landscape

But this area also had huge lakes, covered in waterlilies, to make things even more like a fairytale:

There was an abundance of bugs and insects! I loved the big anthills everywhere, and the beetles!

Staying in Tiveden was magical, definitely worth a trip! There are many different hiking trails, and the area is full of folklore. Really loved it there!

But we left the fairytale forests to make one more stop on our roadtrip, the swamps of Store Mosse! There we stayed in a little stuga in the middle of the forests and lakes.

our little stuga!
with our own little fireplace

That area is also amazing, there are long hiking trails along the big swamps of Store Mosse, with unique wildlife and plants.

here I was spotting carnivorous plants alongside the walking trail :D
sunbathing!

In the evenings, we baked pancakes in our stuga and did some watercoloring.

On our way back to Malmo we passed an old Swedish church. They have a very distinctive style!

And we brought some ‘trollcoffee” back with us from Tiveden as well :D

Central Sweden (in between the two big lakes) is absolutely beautiful! Awe inspiring landscapes and forest. It’s just a couple of hours drive from Malmo, so definitely an area we will visit again!