From tigers and bears to wildebeest and lions, Lola A. Åkerström shares photos from Scandinavia’s largest wildlife park – Kolmården.
The closest thing Stockholm has to a full-scale zoo is quite impressive. Located 90 minutes driving from the city itself, Kolmården Animal Park (Djurpark) is the largest in Scandinavia with about 750 wild attractions from all the jungles, savannas and oceans of the world. What makes the park interesting in addition to its wide array of wildlife is the fact that it opened the world’s first Wildlife Park gondola.
The gondola takes you high above the trees with spectacular views of the bay and Baltic Ocean as you cruise over while coming as close as possible to animals from around the world including lions, bears, wolves, elephants, and giraffes.
Its Marine World offers up dolphin and seal shows while you can get up close to Siberian tigers in its Tiger World. For kids, there’s a storybook setting of Bamse’s World, Wild Camp adventure camp with Sweden’s largest slide and a petting zoo.
If you’d like to spend an extra day or two, onsite accommodations include a South African safari tent in its Safari Camp savannah as well as the adjacent Vildmarkshotellet hotel.
Getting there
– It takes about 90 minutes by car from Stockholm, and Kolmården is sign-posted from the E4 motorway.
– There are also good bus and rail links. InterCity trains stop at Kolmården station.
– Stockholm Skavsta and Norrköping airports also provide good connections to Europe’s largest cities, and to Gotland and the Öresund region.
Visit www.kolmarden.com for more information.
Snapshots from Kolmården
Kid’s Farm
While there, I stopped by the children’s farm (usually called a petting zoo in the US), and got to watch kids chase after little pigs and/or run away from heavily feathered chickens called Silkies.
Facing Sharks at Tropicarium
While it may not be as heart-pounding as getting into the water in scuba gear and actually swimming with sharks, watching them at Kolmården’s Tropicarium swim towards you in slow motion with their razor-sharp bared teeth is still frightening.
