Skåne Region
Skåne, Sweden's southernmost region, combines beaches, forests, fishing villages and cities like Malmö and Helsingborg with a rich Danish-Swedish history and a celebrated food culture.
Visiting Skåne
Skåne offers creative, unusual and authentic experiences within easy reach of one another. There are wide plains, rolling rapeseed fields and a 400-kilometre coastline stretching in three directions. There are long, inviting sandy beaches as well as deep forests with steep, rocky cliffs in the north-west. The countryside and the charming fishing villages lie close to the cities: cosmopolitan Malmö in the south-west, Helsingborg in the north-west and Kristianstad in the north-east. The island of Ven is known as the pearl in the middle of the Öresund and is an ideal place for cycling. Skåne is neither one thing nor the other. Skåne has a little bit of everything. Skåne is the best of both worlds.
The History of Skåne
Skåne was once part of Denmark and still retains many aspects of Danish culture to this day. The landscape is marked by ruins and graves from the Bronze Age, when society in the region consisted of various tribes. Later, Skåne was home to the Vikings, great warriors who explored the lands of the Atlantic Ocean, conquered much of France and traded as far as the Byzantine Empire. For 500 years, Skåne was at the centre of the struggle between Sweden and Denmark for control of the southern part of present-day Sweden.
Although Sweden gained control of Skåne in 1658, this did not end the hostilities between the two countries. Later that same year Sweden attacked Denmark again. In the Treaty of Copenhagen, which ended this war in 1660, Denmark regained the island of Bornholm, which had been awarded to Sweden in the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, while Skåne remained Swedish.
Skåne was placed under the control of a governor-general in Malmö, and the process of fully integrating the new territory into the Kingdom of Sweden began. As part of this process, Lund University was founded in 1666. Lund remains one of Sweden’s most prestigious universities. In 1676 Sweden was again at war with Denmark. The fighting devastated Skåne, which was temporarily returned to Denmark. The Treaty of Lund in 1679 meant that Skåne once again belonged to Sweden.
On 9 May 1719, Skåne was finally fully integrated into Sweden and divided into two counties, Malmöhus and Kristianstad. In the 1860s the population of the two counties passed half a million, and by around 1970 it had reached the one-million mark. Only in 1997 were Malmöhus and Kristianstad merged into a single county. The year 2000 marked a turning point in the region’s history, when the Öresund Bridge opened, linking Malmö with Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. After centuries of war, the two peoples were finally united.
Skåne’s Famous Cuisine
Throughout Sweden, Skåne is best known for its culinary arts. Malmö offers a wide choice of restaurants and Helsingborg is widely regarded as Sweden’s culinary capital, while the Österlen area also has a lot to offer. The combination of Skåne’s nutrient-rich Baltic boulder clay, the long hours of daylight and the mild climate means good-quality grain, good-quality flour and good-quality bread. The region is known for its stone-oven bread, which is baked throughout the area. Rye bread is used to make Skåne’s traditional apple cake. Other well-known cakes include dansbana, a delicious pastry with raisins, uppråka, baked with potato and wheat flour, and spettkaka, a dry dessert.
While driving through the Skåne countryside, you are likely to come across bright yellow fields of rapeseed, also known as canola. Rapeseed oil is a widely used ingredient in recipes. Other crops include apples, pears, Skåne asparagus and potatoes, all of which are frequently used in restaurants. However, a lot of meat is eaten in Skåne as well. And of course there is also food from the sea. Fish has always been a very popular meal in Skåne, not least herring. Those who lived on the coast could eat fresh fish. Those who lived further inland had to find a way to treat the fish so that it was still edible after transport. And so the fish was smoked, pickled in vinegar or simply salted. Smoked herring and pickled herring remain Skåne’s most popular dishes. Other classic Skåne fish dishes are Baltic salmon and eel.