Swedish travel magazine names Saskatchewan— and Stockholm—one of 15 places to visit in 2026
February 23, 2026, 12:46 pm
Donna Beutler
Saskatchewan folk don’t need to be told how beautiful their province is, and the residents of Stockholm, Sask. and area certainly know their little spot on earth is pretty special, but when writers of a renowned Swedish travel magazine list Saskatchewan as #6 in the 15 best places to travel to in 2026 (January edition) with special mention of Stockholm, it takes on a whole new meaning! Writers of the article, Ola Liljedahl and Lena Nyblad of Vagabond magazine (Sweden), flew to Canada and traveled from Montreal to Vancouver several months ago and reported on many places across the country for an article on Canada.
Vagabond, founded in 1987, was initially geared toward young backpackers and independent travelers but has become the go-to magazine for travel inspiration and information for all kinds of travelers because of its in-depth travel articles and stunning photography. It was Vagabond who gave them the ‘Canada’ assignment.
“We got an assignment to do a long road trip story, going by car from Montreal to Vancouver,” Liljedahl and Nyblad said in a recent interview with the World-Spectator. “When we started planning at our kitchen table in our house in Gävle, Sweden, in front of a Canadian map we noticed that Saskatchewan looked, eh, empty. We even talked about skipping driving through the province and instead flying over it. But during the research we found the small town of Stockholm and decided to make a visit there. We contacted the Stockholm Arbor bed and breakfast that we found on the internet and booked some nights. That was actually the only nights of 42 nights we booked in advance.”
Fortunately, Saskatchewan ended up being included in the couple’s travel itinerary and Stockholm, Sask. became part of their “Canadian” story. The pair drove to Stockholm and recognized immediately that the community was something special.
“When we do a road trip story we prefer to take the day as it comes and see what happens,” Liljedahl and Nyblad said. “Immediately we felt that Stockholm was something special. Samantha and Jamie Smart-Sondergaard at the Stockholm Arbor B&B came up with ideas who we should meet and made a schedule for our days—and invited us to have dinner with their family. They even took a day off to drive us around. We met so many nice and interesting people who gave us both their time and freshly baked Swedish thin bread from an old recipe (Barb Persson, Bev Szumutku, Angie Herperger, Wayne Selin, the brothers Vincent and Alden Fredlund, Delvin and Louise Szumutku and many more).
“Many of the people we met in Stockholm had of course Swedish ancestors and we got tears in our eyes when we saw all the Swedish names on the gravestones in the cemetery. How brave were the people who left the—at the time—poor Sweden to start a new life in another part of the world!”
Liijedahl and Nyblad enjoyed visiting the locals in the Stockholm area and hearing their stories. One of those locals was Delvin Szumutku who, in a telephone interview with the World-Spectator, said he and his wife Louise got to know them.
“They came to our farm,” Szumutku said of the couple, “where we immediately became fast friends. Ola and I had our picture taken with our horses and since that day we keep in touch by e-mail. I love hockey,” Szumutku said, “namely the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ola helped with hockey player Börje Salming’s (who once played with the Leafs) autobiography, so we instantly had a hockey connection.”
The New Stockholm Lutheran Church, one of the places the Swedesh writers visited southeast of Stockholm, was built in 1919. Swedish settlers had built the original church and cemetery in 1891 but in a few years, it had become too small. The church is the only Lutheran Church of the Augustana Synod left in Canada and features a central bell tower with an eight-sided broach spire and louvered belfry and pinnacles. Its windows are absolutely beautiful. Services are still held in the church buildings today.
The Arbor Bed & Breakfast in Stockholm holds its own share of history as well. The place where the two Swedish writers stayed, hosted by the Smart-Sondergaards, is located on the outskirts of town in an old brick convent building. The transformation by the Sondergaards began after the couple, Samantha and Jamie, moved to Stockholm in 2020.
“The building was formerly a convent and home base for the ‘Sisters of Social Services’ from the 1920s until they sold it in the 1980s,” Samantha Smart-Sondergaard explained. The historical building “served not only as a home for the sisters, but also as a hub for the community,” she added, concluding that it “was built in three stages over a period of 40 years with the original structure being built in 1904.” Today the transformed “nunnery” is one-third private home and two-thirds bed and breakfast with nine B&B rooms, a yoga studio, two sunrooms, a guest kitchen and a living room/breakfast area. Smart-Sondergaard says the B&B floors of the building have been completely renovated but their priority has been to preserve the building’s historical features.
Some of the photos of Stockholm that appeared in the cross-Canada article included the ‘Village of Stockholm Library and Fire Hall,’ an abandoned farmstead in the middle of a wheat field, the New Stockholm Lutheran Church and cemetery located in the RM of Fertile Belt approximately six kilometers southwest of the village of Stockholm, and two descendants of Swedish immigrants, Alden Fredlund and Vincent Fredlund. The more recent publication which includes the top 15 places to visit across the world includes a picture of a prairie grain elevator.
One of the things these reporters considered when including Stockholm, Sask. in their magazine’s list of places to visit was the name. Despite its size in comparison to Sweden’s capital city (Stockholm), there was a distinct connection with the writers to the people who call Stockholm, Sask. home.
“The first thing of course was the name—Stockholm,” Liljedahl and Nyblad explained. “That’s our 1.5 million people capital, and in Saskatchewan it’s a small town with only a few hundred people.” They went on to say that they didn’t know what to expect when they arrived and that it could have stopped “with two days and 10 sentences in the article—but the people we met with the old stories about the Swedes who founded the town so many years ago made it a major part of our story.”
The top 15 places to visit in 2026 include: Mumbai (Bombay), India (1st); Basel, Switzerland; Busan, South Korea; Pemba, Tanzania; Northumberland, England; Saskatchewan, Canada (6th); Sifnos, Greece; Halsingland, Sweden; Galway, Ireland; South Greenland; Kanazawa, Japan; Aland, Finland; Naples, Italy; Basque country, France; and Kosovo.
The freelance duo saw much more of Saskatchewan than just Stockholm that endeared the province to them and, in their words, “We really fell in love with Saskatchewan: the people, the open landscape, the skies…”
“While Stockholm became an important part of our story, we also found out that there is much more to see in Saskatchewan,” the writers added. “We stayed in Yorkton and visited a Pow Wow in Fort Qu’Appelle which was a new experience for us. The First Nation people welcomed us and explained and shared everything. A true memory for life— and interesting for our travel story of course.”
Their Saskatchewan travels took them to a few other communities as well. They drove to Saskatoon where they found out that both Joni Mitchell and Gordie Howe grew up there. From there, a chance meeting with a lady took them to Swift Current.
“In a travel story, when you haven’t planned a lot in advance, spontaneous meetings always take you in new directions,” Liljedahl and Nyblad said. “A next day’s plan changed when we met a young woman in a restaurant. She talked about her hometown of Swift Current and called her dad to ask if he could help us. The next day we were sitting in an ice hockey arena to watch the Swift Current Broncos in a game. And, the next morning, we went to a Farmer’s market in Swift Current and started talking to some, from our point of view, strangely dressed people. They were Hutterites and invited us to visit their colony the next day. We spent a day with them which was, of course, also a day to remember and an interesting part of our story.”
The duo never sits still for long and obviously, as travel writers, they are on the road or in the air, as the case may be, many times throughout the year.
To do the Canada story and some other stories for other magazines, they were on the road in Canada for six weeks and will be spending six weeks in Australia soon. They spend about 100 nights a year in hotels.
According to Ola, “Lena is 61 years young and I am 61 years old” and their home city of Gavle, located in the middle of Sweden, is comprised of 100,000 citizens. Lena’s background was radio, working for the Swedish National Radio, whereas Ola at one time worked for ‘Expressen,’ one of the largest newspapers in the country.
Liljedahl and Nyblad who live in Gavle, Sweden, have been together for 40 years and have three grown children all of whom love to travel. The couple have been freelance writers for the past 20 years and were assigned to do the cross-Canada road trip for Vagabond magazine. They of course love to travel and to write and have various other accomplishments and interests as well.
“Lena was the motor behind a food book that was awarded Best Food Book of the Year in Sweden some years ago—and, yes, her passion is cooking,” says Ola, while Ola helped with the ice hockey-player Börje Salming’s autobiography which has been a bestseller in Sweden—and will be released in Canada next winter (publisher Simon & Schuster).
Every day can be a little different for the duo but often it involves writing and planning the next adventure at the same time.
“In Canada, for example, we were writing our book, ‘Picasso in the Swedish Public Home,’ which was released in November and has been a huge success,” says Liljedahl and Nyblad who don’t necessarily work together on every story they are writing. They do, however, always do their travel stories together. They also write for many magazines in Sweden as well as produce some magazines and papers for companies and organizations.
The editorial staff for Vagabond is based in Stockholm, Sweden and consists of five people as well as freelance photographers and writers in Sweden and other parts of the world. According to Liljedahl and Nyblad, the editorial team includes recipients of awards like ‘Journalist of the Year’ and ‘Columnist of the Year.’ Tweet
