Of the four large island groups sitting offshore eastern Sweden, the autonomous Aland islands could be considered the cinderella one with less travel and sight seeing kudos. Further south in the Baltic, we visited Gotland in 2021 enjoying the islands’ deep heritage represented by the well preserved Medieval walled Hanseatic city of Visby, a landscape dotted by defunct windmills, thatched huts, forlorn looking maypoles, viking ship burials and a flat, almost Mediterranean landscape of scrubby trees. Gotland is also geologically distinct from the rest of Sweden; the coastline is marked by dramatic Rauks - marooned rugged sea stacks which were the remanent cores of 400 million year old coral reefs. It was interesting to see these striking features that resemble natural turrets, feature on the new Swedish 200 krona bank note. In April, we were massively
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