Öland

• 1. Introduction

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  Öland sits in the Baltic Sea just off the coast of Småland, a narrow strip of land stretching 137 kilometres from north to south and only 16 kilometres at its widest point. It is the second-largest Swedish island, yet somehow also the smallest of Sweden's traditional provinces. That paradox hints at something stranger still: this modest island carries thousands of years of human history, a landscape shaped by forces dating back 540 million years, and a coat of arms that was accidentally assigned to the wrong province for decades. How does a place so small hold so much? That is what this documentary sets out to explore.

• 2. Roots in Deep Time

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  Archaeological evidence places the first settlers on Öland around 8000 BC, hunter-gatherers who arrived during the Paleolithic era. By 6000 BC, Stone Age communities had established themselves at Alby and other sites scattered across the island, crossing the ice bridge that once connected Öland to the mainland across the Kalmar Strait.

  The island's underground tells a parallel story. The bedrock beneath Öland is mainly Cambrian sandstone, alum chert, and Ordovician limestone dating from a range of roughly 540 to 450 million years ago. A trilobite species discovered there, Eccaparadoxides oelandicus, takes its name directly from the island.

  Burial grounds and stone ships from the Iron Age through the Viking Age remain visible today at Gettlinge, Hulterstad, and other sites along the island's perimeter ridge. Of the nineteen Iron Age ringforts identified on Öland, only one, Eketorp, has been fully excavated. That single dig yielded over 24,000 artifacts, suggesting what the other eighteen sites might still conceal.

• 3. Names Across Centuries

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  Around 900 AD, Wulfstan of Hedeby sailed past and recorded the island as "Eowland," the land of the Eowans, in a passage that placed it alongside Blekinge, Möre, and Gotland as territory belonging to the Sweons. His account survives as one of the earliest written references to the island, but not the earliest.

  The Anglo-Saxon poem Widsith mentions the Eowans even earlier than Wulfstan's journey. Scholars including Schütte and Kendrick identified what may be the oldest reference of all: the Roman historian Tacitus, writing in 98 AD, appears to have called the people of Öland the "Aviones." Tacitus placed them after the Langobardi in a list of northern tribes, and noted that they shared a common worship of Nerthus, the Earth Mother, who the tribes believed "was interested in men's affairs and walked among them."

  That description of a sacred grove on an island in the ocean, where a holy wagon covered by a drape awaited, has long attracted scholarly attention. Whether Tacitus had Öland specifically in mind remains an open question, but the passage keeps surfacing in discussions of the island's earliest identity.

• 4. Royal Ground

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  For much of Swedish history, Öland was not a place where ordinary people set the terms. The Swedish Crown designated the island a royal game park, with Ottenby and Halltorp chosen in the Middle Ages as royal game reserves. That status left a lasting imprint on the island's official identity.

  When Öland was granted provincial arms in 1560, the central image chosen was a deer, a direct reference to the island's role as a royal hunting ground. The arms are topped by a ducal crown. But the story of those arms took an unexpected turn: the coat granted to Öland had been mixed up with the coat granted to the Finnish island of Åland, and this error went unnoticed until the 20th century. By the time the mistake was corrected, Åland, which had become an autonomous Finnish province, had long used its mistakenly assigned arms. It kept them. Öland changed to the correct version.

  Borgholm Castle, built between 1669 and 1681 for Queen Hedvig Eleonora and designed by Nicodemus Tessin the Elder, stands near the Solliden Palace, still used today as the royal family's summer residence.

• 5. The Alvaret and Its Wonders

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  The Stora Alvaret, a vast limestone pavement in the south of the island, defines Öland's environmental character more than any other feature. It supports a range of rare and endangered species and has been entered as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The geological alvar landscape, old wooden windmills some dating to the 17th century, and prehistoric sites including Gettlinge and Eketorp all form part of that designation.

  The first known scientific study of the Stora Alvaret's biota took place in 1741, when Linnaeus visited the island. His findings placed Öland on the map for naturalists across Europe.

  The eastern coast of the island, encompassing grazed meadows, marshes, chalk cliffs, and sandbanks, has been designated a 30,000 hectare Important Bird Area by BirdLife International. Breeding white-tailed sea-eagles are among the species the designation is meant to protect. In 2011, the Gripen Gas company filed a request to drill for natural gas on the island; Bergsstaten, the government agency overseeing geological prospecting, approved it. Municipal and county authorities objected, pointing to the island's limestone bedrock and the risk that its many cracks could allow gas prospecting to contaminate the groundwater.

• 6. Writers and Harvest

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  The romantic poet Erik Johan Stagnelius was born in the Öland parish of Gärdslösa in 1793 and lived there until the age of 16. He wrote several poems about the island, and his presence in that parish helped establish Öland as a place that produced literary voices.

  The list of writers associated with the island since Stagnelius is long. Novelist Margit Friberg (1904-1997), poet Anna Rydstedt (1928-1994), novelist Birgitta Trotzig (1929-2011), poet Lennart Sjögren (born 1930), and several others across the 20th century have lived on or written about Öland. Novelist Johan Theorin (born 1963) and poet and novelist Magnus Utvik (born 1964) continue that tradition into the present.

  Every September, thousands of visitors arrive for Skördefesten, the island's annual harvest festival. Farmers from across Sweden gather to sell their crops and open their farms to visitors. In Borgholm, a pumpagubbe, a large scarecrow-like figure built entirely of gourds, is erected at the town centre as a symbol of the autumn bounty. Art exhibitions and an art night called Konstnatten run alongside the agricultural market, drawing a different kind of crowd to the same October festivities.

• 7. A Bridge and Its Reach

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  Before the 30th of September 1972, reaching Öland from the Swedish mainland meant a crossing by water. On that date, the 6 kilometre Öland Bridge opened, connecting the island to the city of Kalmar on the far shore of the Kalmar Strait. Kalmar is the county seat and the primary commercial centre serving the island's economy.

  The bridge changed Öland's relationship to the mainland in ways that still shape daily life. The island has over 26,000 inhabitants spread across two municipalities, Borgholm and Mörbylånga, named after their respective municipal seats. Öland has no separate political representation at the national level. It is fully part of Kalmar County, as it has been since 1634, with the brief exception of a separate Öland County that existed only from 1819 to 1826.

  Kalmar Öland Airport, which sits 17 kilometres from Borgholm on the mainland side near Kalmar, provides direct air routes to Stockholm operated by Scandinavian Airlines. The island's highest point, Högsrum, reaches just 55 metres. Its largest lake is Hornsjön. Each year the King's Rally, a vintage motorcade, passes through the island, adding another thread to a place where ancient ringforts and a royal summer palace share the same 1,342 square kilometres.