Last weekend we finally made the trip to two of the most historically significant places in all of Sweden — Sigtuna and Gamla Uppsala. If you’ve been following the podcast, you’ll know these aren’t just names on a map. These are places where Swedish history was literally made.
Sigtuna is Sweden’s oldest existing town, founded around 980 AD by King Erik Segersäll — yes, the same Erik we’ve talked about in the podcast. Walking its main street, which has barely changed in width since the Viking Age, you get a genuine sense of what an early medieval Scandinavian town actually felt like. The runic stones scattered around the town are extraordinary — some still standing where they were placed over a thousand years ago. We stopped at the ruins of St Per’s church, one of several medieval stone churches that once dominated the skyline, and it’s impossible not to feel the weight of history standing among those walls.
Gamla Uppsala was something else entirely. This was the religious and political heart of pre-Christian Sweden — a sacred site of enormous importance. The three great burial mounds dominating the landscape are believed to contain the remains of ancient Svea kings, possibly from the 5th and 6th centuries. Standing on top of one of them and looking out across the flat Uppsala plain, you start to understand why this place held such power over the imagination of early Scandinavians. The old church nearby, built partly from the remains of what may have been a great pagan temple, is a quiet but powerful reminder of how Christianity physically replaced the old religion — stone by stone.
It was one of those days that reminds you why we started this podcast in the first place. History isn’t just in books — it’s right there under your feet.
