SkogstrolletThe free map for exploring Sweden’s outdoors.

Near Linköping

Nature reserves near Linköping

Linköping Municipality has 33 nature reserves wholly or partly within its boundaries. Mature pines within the city, an extensive oak landscape and a calcareous fen reveal three sharply different settings at Linköping’s edge.

Urban woodland and an Iron Age landscape

Tall, mature pines give Vallaskogen its character close to central streets. Near Gamla Linköping, grazing maintains more open woodland and traditional timber fences mark an older cultural landscape. Tree cover becomes denser and less managed farther from the built-up edge.

Tinnerö eklandskap begins where the city ends. Grazed oak pasture, veteran trees, woodland and bird-rich wetlands form a broad mosaic. Cattle and sheep maintain the open ground required by many uncommon species. Stone boundaries, burial grounds and fossil fields also preserve one of mainland Sweden’s clearest Iron Age landscapes.

Orchids on lime-rich ground

Kärna mosse differs from both woodland reserves. Its open fen is wet and lime-rich yet poor in nutrients, conditions that favour highly specialised plants. An exceptional diversity of orchids occupies the fen, surrounded by coniferous and deciduous woodland.

Together the three places form a revealing sequence around Linköping: urban pine woodland, a deeply historical working landscape of old oaks, and a fen where water chemistry controls the vegetation. Their differences come from management, soil and water rather than distance from the city.

Three reserves near Linköping

Tinnerö eklandskap

4.5 km in a straight line from the centre

An extensive oak landscape and traditionally managed grassland
Open the area on the map

Map of nature reserves near Linköping