To travel around Sweden could be easy and fast or slow and painful. Mostly it’s not the destination that decide what it will become. Its more if you travel south – north or east – west that decides time and effort. The golden rule according to me is that its smooth and easy to travel south – north and a hell more complicated if you tries to go east-west. The main reason is that al mayor road and rails goes from the south to Stockholm to the North. With little consideration for people who have any other plans.
But how can you travel around Sweden and not get crazy. The solution is as many times, do like the locals. Check out was cheapest and make a time calculation if it’s worth the price.
Take the bus around Sweden
Buses is in general a cheap and trust worthy option to get around Sweden. In general you can speak about three different types of buses.
You have the local one that usually cost you around 3€ and are valid for one hour. Some cities like Malmö will never cost you more then two tickets a day. In some other city you will find discounted tickets for 24, 48 and 72 hours. I think both solutions are great for tourists.
But maybe you want to go to a smaller city or just get out of the busy city. In that case you can take the regional buses. They are usually going from around the train station in the middle of the city. You can usually trust their timetable and come to any municipality you want. Just be aware that the smaller city the less frequency.
The third and last sort of bus is the long distance buses. This are driven by private companies between the bigger cities and makes some stops on their way. Most of the companies have a dynamic price. So a ticket could be cheap or expensive. It al depends on when you travel and how far in advance you bought the tickets. My main resistance against them is that they are time consuming.
Train can take you around Sweden
Just as with the buses you can take local, regional and long distance trains. The comfort is increasing the further you journey will be.
The local trains have no service and are maybe not so comfortable. A typical ride on this is are on the other hand maybe an half hour or so. So there is not really need for more service the a toilet. Both this and the regional trains have fixed prices giving you the possibility to get a little wild and make day tours without checking the price to much. How ever the regional trains are a little more comfortable and you can use then for rides up to about three hours. A typical route would be Malmö – Gothenburg where they also compete with the long distance trains.
The long distance trains are maybe the most comfortable way to get around Sweden. They as the long distance buses have a dynamic price picture making it hard to say what a fair price should be. The two main companies are SJ and Snälltåget. SJ have the fastest trains but the time difference is in general not a big divider. Snälltåget on the other hand have a little slower trains but also a little cheaper one. So here we are again. How much is an hour worth for you? Both train companies have a restaurant/bistro and free wifi onboard. When I decide what I. should go for I usually take the Snälltåget if I travel in Coach. But from time to time SJ do have some good deals on their First class. Then its a no brainer and I preorder the meal to my seat.
The trains are much quicker to take you around Sweden then the buses are. So they are good options.
Flying around Sweden
But of course the quickest way to travel domestic is to fly. Specially if you will go north of Stockholm. To many municipalities in the north flying is the only realistic option (or maybe a night train in some cases).
There is three domestic airlines that compete on the most interesting routes while other routes in the north is supported by the state so they will continue. Flying is independent what if we like it or not, an important part of the infrastructure in the north.
The smallest national airline is BRA. They are an almost totally domestic airline with an few exception as Helsinki, Oslo and Aarhus. They fly with a little smaller planes then the other two, making iot possible for them to fly to smaller airports. Something that could be interesting if you want to see something a little different. If you are a member with FinnAir Plus you can use and earn points with BRA
The second smallest airport is Norwegian. It started as a Norwegian low cost airlines willing to battle the SAS then high prices. But with less service on all airlines the price difference are long gone. They are competing on the most profitable routes and are no worse or better then SAS in Coach. What does tear them apart is than Norwegian is not a member of any alliance. They have now under 2023 said that they will merge their bonus program with the hotel change Strawberry. But what it will give is an open question.
The largest airline to. take you around Sweden is the old national carrier SAS. This is. also the only airline who have more then one class on board (economy and economy extra) on domestic flights. They have also the most extensive number of destinations national and international. SAS are founding member of Star Alliance giving you a lot of possibilities to connect to other airlines and destinations. However SAS is usually the most expensive one, on the other hand they have more lounges and in my opinion a better service when the shit the fan.
Some final thoughts
As I have mentioned before Sweden starts to become a much cheaper country to visit. But traveling domestic is many times still expensive. So if you want to travel around Sweden you should plan and compare the prices. A good rule is to try to book your tickets around three month before if possible. On many routes you should compare the price between train and plain and use bus as the last resort.