Quick Details
This tour goes to the famous Åland Islands from Stockholm. You get to explore the islands and their history with a knowledgeable guide.
Your guide picks you up at your hotel for a one-hour car ride north from Stockholm to Kapellskär, where the cruise ship awaits and the real fun begins. You embark on a cruise trip (two hours each way) to Åland, viewing the beautiful archipelago and the Baltic Sea.
Åland Islands is a special place belonging to Finland but where almost everyone speaks Swedish. It is a place where a lot of Swedes go for a holiday or a day trip, which you get to do on this tour. On Åland, you enjoy a five-hour transported tour with a guide exploring the isles’ history from before the Vikings arrived until today.
Weather-appropriate clothing and good walking shores are recommended.
First we arrive by cruise ship to Mariehamn on the main Åland isle, where we have a short city walk and maybe something to eat. Then we head out to the Ålandic countryside to one of the many big, old, magnificent churches the isle holds, all of them surrounded by Viking grave fields.
Apart from a big Viking gravefield in Godby holding among the biggest mounds in Åland, we visit the medieval castle Kastelholm. Kastelhom was once a Swedish medieval castle where the former king Erik XIV was imprisoned with his family in 1560s. It is now a well-preserved ruin. Åland was owned by Sweden from medieval times until 1809, when it transferred over to Russia and then Finland.
We then visit a Viking village in Saltvik, check out a mighty Viking hill fort (Borgboda) close by and walk by the house ruins and fort ruins of Bomarsund. Bomarsund was once the most southern of the Russian navy bases, around which the town grew. Three churchyards on Prästön (isle of the Priests) still hold tombstones from the inhabitants here. The navy base and its town got destroyed by the English navy in the 1800s, and its foundations are well marked out.
The Åland Islands have an ancient human history. A stone-age settlement with tools have been found among its highest points, and this was a major trading center in the Vendel and Viking eras. We explore its rich history with you and show you the major sites with a knowledgeable guide.