Beaches in Sweden

A coastline that changes character three times. The east faces the Baltic in a scatter of archipelagos — rock rather than sand, thousands of islands, with the Stockholm archipelago alone holding some thirty thousand of them and a network of commuter boats that treats them as suburbs. The south around Skåne has the sand, the shallow warm shelves and the beach culture, with long dune strands at Skanör and Ystad facing water that reaches the low twenties in a good August. The west coast facing Denmark is granite skerry, colder and more exposed, and its cold water is why the oysters and langoustines there are what they are. Gotland, the largest Baltic island, sits out in the middle with sea stacks along its northern shore and a medieval walled town at Visby. Everywhere the water is cold, the season is short and taken seriously, and the right of public access — allemansrätten — makes the shore walkable and campable almost everywhere, subject to distance from dwellings. Practically: the season runs late June to mid-August and the country largely stops for the first weeks of July, midsummer is the fixed point of the year, and the archipelagos are reached by ferry rather than by road. Winter bathing from a sauna is an established practice rather than a dare.