A landscape carved out by kilometer-thick ice during the last ice-age, leaving thousands and thousands of islands, islets and skerries for you to explore. We show you how.

Stockholm Archipelago is Sweden’s largest archipelago, and the second largest in the world, the largest being across the Baltic Sea in Finland. It is often discussed how many islands and islets Stockholm Archipelago really consists of. It depends on how you define what an island is (how small it can be), and where you draw the boundaries of where Stockholm Archipelago starts and stops, the archipelago continues to extend both to the north and south.

Typically, we say that the Stockholm Archipelago extend from Stockholm city (which is itself built on a bunch of islands) and roughly 60 kilometers (37 miles) to the east until we reach the open sea. North to south it is about 150 km from the island Arholma in the north to the island of Landsort in the south. Within this area, we count about 24 000 islands and islets.

In Sweden we have many names for islands depending on their size and shape. Ö, halvö, holme, skär, kobbe, sten. In English, the most suitable words are probably island, islet and skerry. The Swedish word for archipelago is “skärgård”, which roughly translates to “Garden of Skerries”. There are a lot of them, and they typically lie in groups with some larger islands in the middle and then smaller ones around it.

Our tours start and end at the best starting points in the central archipelago. From here you will easily reach many of the more well-known islands such as Grinda, Gällnö, Hjälmö-Lådna, Ingmarsö, Svartsö, Finnhamn, Möja, Harö, Sandhamn, Runmarö, Bullerö, Långviksskär and Nämdö. However, you will also be close to all the smaller uninhabited islands, islets and skerries, some so small they do not have a name.