Ekerö Kommun

The main island Ekerön with the town Ekerö as the main town of the municipality is connected by bridges with the other two large islands Färingsö and Lovön. From Lovön, the group of islands is connected with another bridge to the small island Kärsön and from there with the mainland in the Stockholm district Bromma. The island Adelsö as the fourth of the large islands can be reached by a short free ferry connection from the island of Ekerön.

The terrain on the islands of the municipality of Ekerö is predominantly flat with slight hills where the rocky subsoil occasionally comes to light. One of the largest elevations is the gravel moraine Uppsalaåsen, which stretches along the eastern shore to the north of the elongated main island of Ekerön. The landscape on the large islands is determined by an alternation between small forest areas and agricultural land.

The closest you get to nature is in one of the eleven nature reserves spread across the islands in the Ekerö Kommun, each of which preserves the typical flora and fauna of the individual islands. By far the largest and most diverse nature reserve is the almost 3,000-hectare Lovö Naturreservat, which extends over the entire island of Lovön.

Historical sights in Ekerö Kommun

Ekerö Kommun is nicknamed Island of Cultures because the islands in the eastern Mälaren are filled with cultural monuments from all epochs of Swedish history. Apart from settlement sites and graves from the Stone and Bronze Ages, there are several medieval churches, old cultural landscapes and castles on the islands.

With the remains of the Viking Age settlement Birka and the ruins of the early medieval royal court Hovgården two of the places where the Svear founded the first unified empire on Swedish soil around 600 AD with the Sveariket (Kingdom of the Svear) are located on the islands.

Both sites are listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, as well as the second major cultural monument on the islands, the magnificent Drottningholm Palace. The 17th-century palace on the island of Lovön is often referred to as Versailles of the North and is considered the best preserved royal palace in Sweden.

The municipality of Ekerö in figures

With a total area of around 384 square kilometres, the municipality of Ekerö is one of the small municipalities in the province Stockholms Län, but with over 28,000 inhabitants it is relatively densely populated by Swedish standards, not least due to its proximity to the capital. Nevertheless, the population density on the islands with only 130 inhabitants per square kilometre is less than half of the average population density of the entire province.

With over 11,500 inhabitants, a large part of the population of the Mälar islands lives in the capital Ekerö. The next bigger localities are Stenhamra on the island Färingsö with more than 3,600 inhabitants as well as Parksidan located on the peninsula Gällstaö with almost 1,000 inhabitants.