Sweden - Becky Ohlsen [267]
Finnair has direct flights from Helsinki (which Swedes call Helsingfors) to Stock-holm (around 15 daily) and Göteborg (up to four services daily). Blue1 has regular daily flights from Stockholm to Helsinki, Oulu, Tampere, Turku (known as Åbo in Swedish) and Vaasa, and from Göteborg to Helsinki.
Skyways has several flights daily from Copenhagen to Swedish regional centres such as Karlstad, Linköping, Norrköping and Örebro.
The budget airline Ryanair has frequent flights from Stockholm Skavsta to Barcelona, Brussels, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Milan, Paris, Riga and Rome.
The following sources may be useful for making arrangements.
UK & Ireland
Budget airline Ryanair flies from London Stansted to Stockholm Skavsta, Göteborg City and Malmö Sturup; Glasgow Prestwick to Stockholm Skavsta and Göteborg City; London Luton to Västerås; and Shannon to Stockholm Skavsta.
Between London (Heathrow) and Stockholm Arlanda, several commercial airlines have regular daily flights, including SAS, British Airways and bmi. Prices start at around UK£150.
SAS flies at least four times daily from Stockholm Arlanda to Manchester and Dublin via London or Copenhagen. SAS also flies daily between London (Heathrow) and Göteborg.
City Airline has two flights weekly from Göteborg (Landvetter) to Birmingham and Manchester.
USA
Thanks to the large ethnic Swedish population in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin, you may find small local agencies in those areas specialising in travel to Scandinavia and offering good-value charter flights.
Icelandair has services from Baltimore-Washington, Boston, New York, Min-neapolis and Orlando via Reykjavík to many European destinations, including Stockholm. Twice per week, between mid-May and mid-October, you can also fly from/to San Francisco.
If you’re planning on flying within Scandinavia, SAS offers a Visit Scandinavia/Europe Air Pass to its transatlantic passengers. SAS’s North American hub is New York City’s Newark Airport, with direct daily flights to/from Stockholm.
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LAND
Border Crossings
Customs and immigration posts on border crossings between Sweden and Denmark, Finland or Norway are usually deserted, so passports are rarely checked. There are many minor roads between Sweden and Norway that don’t have any border formalities at all.
Services across Swedish borders are operated by the following:
Eurolines (08-762 5960; www.eurolines.com) See also the boxed text.
Säfflebussen (0771-15 15 15; www.safflebussen.se, in Swedish, Norwegian & Danish) Long-distance buses within Sweden and to Oslo (Norway) and Copenhagen (Denmark).
Sveriges Järnväg (SJ; 0771-75 75 99; www.sj.se) Train lines in the southern part of the country, with services to Copenhagen (Denmark).
Swebus Express (0200-21 82 18; www.swebusexpress.se) Long-distance buses within Sweden and to Oslo (Norway) and Copenhagen (Denmark).
Tågkompaniet (0771-44 41 11; www.tagkompaniet.se, in Swedish) Trains in the north of the country, with services to Narvik (Norway).
Denmark
BUS
Apart from Eurolines (see boxed text), Swebus Express has five buses daily from Copenhagen to Göteborg (Skr356, four hours), as does Säfflebusen (Skr315).
CAR & MOTORCYCLE
You can drive from Copenhagen to Malmö across the Öresund bridge on the E20 motorway. Tolls are paid at Lernacken, on the Swedish side, in either Danish (single crossing per car Dkr260) or Swedish (Skr325) currency, or by credit or debit card.
TRAIN
Öresund trains operated by Skånetrafiken (www.skanetrafiken.se) run every 20 minutes from 6am to midnight (and once an hour thereafter) between Copenhagen and Malmö (return trip Skr140, 35 minutes each way) via the bridge. The trains usually stop at Copenhagen Airport.
From Copenhagen, it’s necessary to change in Malm