Västergötland

Västergötland, literally translated as western Götaland, is one of Sweden's most populous provinces. Several different subdivisions have been used during the centuries, and the province has been conjoined with Bohuslän and Dalsland to form the enormous Western Götaland County, with municipal confederations overlapping provincial borders.

Cities

🌍 Alingsås
🌍 Borås — once the home of the Swedish textile industry, still a centre for fashion design
🌍 Gothenburg (Göteborg) — By far the largest city in Västergötland, and the second largest in all of Sweden
🌍 Lidköping
🌍 Mariestad
🌍 Skara — a millennial city, known for its cathedral, and the Skara Sommarland theme park.
🌍 Skövde — the small town that feels like a city is easy to get to from both Stockholm and Gothenburg.
🌍 Trollhättan
🌍 Vänersborg

Other destinations

🌍 Gothenburg archipelago
🌍 Hornborgasjön — a famous bird reserve at Falköping
🌍 Karlsborg — a small garrisson town with a large fortress. Swedens backup capital in the case of a foreign invasion.

Understand

Västergötland was the core territory of the Geats, götar, a tribe that has been associated with the Goths. Around AD 1000, they united with the Suiones, svear, to form Sweden. Älvsborg, at present-day Gothenburg, was Sweden's only western port until the 17th century. Västergötland was the centre of the Swedish textile industry, until de-industrialization in the mid-20th century.

The people of Västergötland are rumoured to be humorous and optimistic.

Get in

By plane

Both Landvetter Airport (GOT^IATA) serves Gothenburg, the largest city in the region. Airlines include SAS, FlyMe , Lufthansa , KLM and Ryanair . Two other airports in the region are Trollhättan Airport and Halmstad Airport, with flights from Stockholm only.

By train

Train go to Gothenburg, from Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Kalmar, Luleå and more cities.

Get around

Public transport in Västra Götaland is organized by Västtrafik .

See

Läckö Castle - A 13th-century castle situated by the Lake Vänern.
Lake Hornborga (Hornborgasjön) (Falköping). A must for any bird-lover in the area. Known as the lake where up to 12,000 cranes stop on their way back from warmer countries.
At various sites in Tanum you can visit famous Bronze Age rock carvings (Unesco World Heritage). The museum at Vitlycke has a reconstruction of a Bronze Age Farm.

Do

Liseberg. The biggest amusement park in all of Scandinavia - is in Gothenburg.
Anten - Gräfsnäs Vintage Railroad. A well preserved vintage railroad line running along the lake Anten not far from Alingsås. With a length of 12 km, it runs during the summer months.

Eat

Drink

Stay safe

Though not as cold as further north, western Sweden has the country's wettest and foggiest climate. Occasional flooding of river valleys during severe weather, and thunderstorms. See storms.

Go next

Frederikshavn in Denmark

gollark: `is` is weird object equality, it doesn't really count.

gollark: It has integers as a distinct thing from floats, and they're bigints.

gollark: Python has a bigint type for its integers.

gollark: Yes it does?

gollark: Oh, and bigints now.

This article is issued from Wikivoyage. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.