Insight Guides: Scandinavia

How To Use This E-Book

Getting around the e-book

This Insight Guide e-book is designed to give you inspiration for your visit to Scandinavia, as well as comprehensive planning advice to make sure you have the best travel experience. The guide begins with our selection of Top Attractions, as well as our Editors Choice categories of activies and experiences. Detailed features on history, people and culture paint a vivid portrait of contemporary life in Scandinavia. The extensive Places chapters give a complete guide to all the sights and areas worth visiting. The Travel Tips provide full information on getting around, hotels, activities from to culture to shopping to sport, plus a wealth of practical information to help you plan your trip.

In the Table of Contents and throughout this e-book you will see hyperlinked references. Just tap a hyperlink once to skip to the section you would like to read. Practical information and listings are also hyperlinked, so as long as you have an external connection to the internet, you can tap a link to go directly to the website for more information.

Maps

All key attractions and sights in Scandinavia are numbered and cross-referenced to high-quality maps. Wherever you see the reference [map] just tap this to go straight to the related map. You can also double-tap any map for a zoom view.

Images

Youll find hundreds of beautiful high-resolution images that capture the essence of Scandinavia. Simply double-tap on an image to see it full-screen.

About Insight Guides

Insight Guides have more than 40 years experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce 400 full-colour titles, in both print and digital form, covering more than 200 destinations across the globe, in a variety of formats to meet your different needs.

Insight Guides are written by local authors who use their on-the-ground experience to provide the very latest information; their local expertise is evident in the extensive historical and cultural background features. All the reviews in Insight Guides are independent; we strive to maintain an impartial view. Our reviews are carefully selected to guide to you the best places to stay and eat, so you can be confident that when we say a restaurant or hotel is special, we really mean it.

Like all Insight Guides , this e-book contains hundreds of beautiful photographs to inspire and inform your travel. We commission most of our own photography, and we strive to capture the essence of a destination using original images that you wont find anywhere else.

2012 Apa Publications (UK) Ltd

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Introduction: Northerly Neighbours

At the top of the map, but no longer aloof, the Scandinavian countries are Europes best-kept secret

To fly over Scandinavia is to discover a vast, sparsely inhabited, natural landscape of sparkling fjords and rocky mountains, glassy lakes and rushing rivers, dense forests and frozen tundra, extending from temperate Denmark far north to the land of the Sami and including Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland are among Europes most ancient civilisations. Early Norse traders ventured deep into Asia, leaving graphic runic graffiti in their wake, and later, the infamous Vikings pillaged round the coasts of Ireland, Britain and France, establishing a network of Norse kingdoms. They were followed by kings, queens and tsars who schemed and battled. Borders shifted, unions came and went, and by the start of the 20th century four distinct nations emerged, growing into todays modern, highly individualistic countries.

The Nordic reputation for cool reserve has had its day, and visitors receive a warm welcome. But cool design remains: everything from bottle openers to new buildings has the stamp of chic Scandinavian understatement. Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki are vibrant capitals with some of the most inspirational museums and art collections in Europe, and Turku was deservedly chosen as a European Capital of Culture in 2011.

An inherent love of nature is deeply rooted within the national psyches. At the slightest excuse Scandinavians will take to the outdoors, on bicycles along Denmarks winding lanes, skiing on floodlit trails around Oslo, escaping to red-painted waterside cottages in Sweden, or plunging from sauna to ice pool in Finland. Arrive in any of the Scandinavian countries in Midsummer and youll find the locals dan-cing and feasting around maypoles and bonfires.

Transport and communications are excellent: roads join southerly Denmark with the North Cape, railways penetrate Lapland, ferries ply the fjords and link remote islands, and planes cut journey times. Far from being an isolated northern region, Scandinavia is just a short step from its European neighbours.

Scandinavias Top 10 Attractions

Whether you want to see the Northern Lights, take a Finnish sauna, go island-hopping off the coast of Denmark, explore Norways fjords or see brown bears in Sweden, well point you in the right direction