Östergötland County

Östergötland is a county with two large cities and eleven small municipalities around them. Linköping and Norrköping lie 30 km apart, are the county's two heavyweight centres and set the pace for the rest. Between them the plain spreads out, to the west lies Lake Vättern with Vadstena, Motala and Omberg, and to the east Bråviken bay and the archipelago wind out towards the coast. To the south forest and lakes take over, and in the south-east the county shades into Småland. It is a county where a lot can be done close to home if you live near a city, and where distances become part of everyday life if you don't.

Two cities, two kinds of life

Linköping is Sweden's fifth-largest municipality, with just over 168,000 residents, and is built on the university and the aircraft industry around Saab. It has one of the strongest job markets in the country outside the big cities, and just over four in ten residents have at least three years of higher education. It is also the county's youngest municipality, with the lowest average age of all. The price is a student city where the rental market is badly squeezed and where anyone outside the student clubs and associations can easily feel left out. Skäggetorp is the county's only area in the police's most serious category, especially vulnerable area.

Norrköping is the twin, with its brick industrial landscape, trams and water running through the centre. Housing is cheaper, cultural life is rich and nature is close in several directions, but the divides are wider. Unemployment is the county's highest, just over seven per cent, and Navestad and Hageby are on the police list of police-designated vulnerable areas. Commuter trains run between the two cities roughly every twenty minutes, and many people live in one and work in the other. Both lie on the way to Stockholm, and the new Ostlänken railway is expected to cut journey times.

A county of commuters

Much of the county is shaped by where the railway and the E4 motorway run. Mjölby is the railway junction where the Southern Main Line meets the lines towards Motala and Hallsberg. Just over 43 per cent of the people who work there come in from outside, while even more commute out, and alongside Linköping it is the fastest-growing municipality in the county. Söderköping and Finspång lean on Norrköping, while Åtvidaberg, Kinda and Ödeshög have Linköping as their nearest large job market. In Motala the commuter train to Linköping runs like a thread through life, offering cheaper houses by Lake Vättern but also a reason for young people to leave for good. Söderköping is the extreme case, where roughly six in ten of those who work do so in another municipality.

Anyone who can't or won't commute has a harder time. Valdemarsvik and Ydre are thoroughly car-dependent areas, and public transport in Valdemarsvik is sparse. Boxholm and Finspång have many young people who have to search a long time for a job locally, while Ödeshög and Ydre, by contrast, have unusually many young people in work, often straight after school.

Incomes, ages and downsides

The county is close to the national picture on most things, but incomes are a little lower and the population is growing more slowly. Median incomes range from just over SEK 305,000 in Valdemarsvik, one of the lowest in the country, to just over SEK 357,000 in Linköping and Mjölby. In Valdemarsvik, only around one in seven also has longer higher education, and it is the main town, not the countryside, that is weakest. The leather industry, which closed in the 1960s, left serious chromium pollution behind.

Things are moving in two directions. Mjölby and Linköping have grown by 1.5 per cent in recent years. Ydre, Valdemarsvik, Ödeshög, Finspång and Kinda have shrunk the most. Vadstena has the county's oldest population, with an average age close to fifty, a small medieval town on Lake Vättern that is more often visited than lived in. At the same time, small municipalities such as Kinda, Ydre, Söderköping and Boxholm are among the safest. Reported crime in the county is below the national level and lowest in Kinda, but the figure plays out differently in city and countryside, and it is in Norrköping and Linköping that the vulnerable areas are found.

Östergötland suits anyone who wants a large job market within reach but chooses for themselves how close to live, from a cheap former mill town with a railway station to a small-town house by the canal in Söderköping. Anyone after a career and student life ends up in Linköping, anyone who wants a city, water and lower prices in Norrköping. If you are looking for quiet and nature, Ydre and Vadstena work, but then the car, the distances and the limited services should be a choice made with your eyes open.