Västernorrland County

Västernorrland is a northern coastal county where Höga kusten, the High Coast, meets the forests and river valleys of the inland. The Ångermanälven river runs through the county and links the coast with towns far inland. Around 240,000 people live here, spread across seven municipalities, and it is first and foremost the coastal towns of Sundsvall and Örnsköldsvik that carry the county. What sets the municipalities apart is less the nature, which is strong almost everywhere, than the jobs, the distances and how close you live to a larger centre.

The coast carries the county, the inland shrinks

Sundsvall is the county's hub. Just under 100,000 people live in the municipality, and the city has most things: a hospital, a university, a stone-built town centre, the Birsta shopping centre and a choice of restaurants that beats anything else in the county. The train to Stockholm takes about four hours. Örnsköldsvik, Övik in everyday speech, is the other big industrial town, with its own airport and the High Coast right on its doorstep. Between them lies Härnösand, a small county seat that lives in Sundsvall's shadow and has to get used to travelling there for bigger shops and some medical appointments.

Further north and further inland, things look different. Sollefteå, Kramfors and Ånge are small-town country where the main town has the essentials and the surrounding villages have a grocery shop and the bare necessities. A car is a must as soon as you leave the town. In Sollefteå people speak openly about their worry over shrinking public services, and in Ånge several of the smaller villages have thinned out over time.

The figures point the same way. No other region in the country has had a weaker population trend than Västernorrland since 2021, and the average age is clearly above the national one. Kramfors is the oldest, with an average age of nearly 48, and Sundsvall the youngest. No municipality is growing. Sundsvall is shrinking least, Kramfors most.

Money, jobs and commuting

Incomes are slightly below the national average, and the range between municipalities is wide. In Sundsvall the median income is just over SEK 364,000, in Sollefteå and Kramfors around SEK 310,000. Härnösand, Sollefteå and Kramfors also have more households with a low economic standard than the country as a whole. The level of education follows the same pattern. In Sundsvall just over one in four has a longer post-secondary education, in Ånge and Kramfors considerably fewer.

Unemployment is lower than in the country as a whole, but that hides a difference. Örnsköldsvik has the lowest in the county and an industrial job market that makes neighbouring municipalities point their job search there. Härnösand has the highest, and a weak labour market is singled out as the town's biggest drawback, despite its higher education institutions and high level of education. There it is common for young people to move away to study and for some to come back to buy a house.

Commuting shows who depends on whom. Timrå, just over 10 km north of Sundsvall, is a pure satellite where roughly six in ten working residents work in another municipality. It is Sundsvall's businesses that carry the economy there, which is why Timrå stands on firmer ground than you would expect of an industrial town. From Ånge the train gets you to Sundsvall in just over an hour, so anyone who wants to live cheaply in a mill town is reasonably well placed. Anyone living in Sollefteå or Kramfors and looking for work should expect long commutes, not infrequently an hour each way.

Everyday life and the downsides

Housing is the county's strongest card. In Övik it is described as affordable, in Ånge's depopulated mill towns as very cheap, and in Kramfors you can swap a small flat in the big city for a large house near the water. The large number of homes for sale there should more often be read as depopulation than as a bargain.

Safety is good. No municipality in the county has areas on the police list of vulnerable areas, and reported crime for the county as a whole is below the national level, with Härnösand the municipality where it is highest. Nacksta and Skönsberg in Sundsvall are nonetheless mentioned as areas with more drug problems, and Nacksta also has the municipality's highest share with a low economic standard.

The downsides are the usual ones for northern Sweden. Winter is long and dark, nightlife is thin even in Sundsvall, and without a car everyday life becomes difficult almost everywhere. In a small town like Härnösand people keep an eye on each other, and newcomers may have to work at the social side. Anyone who needs a broad labour market for graduates will find it mainly in Sundsvall and Örnsköldsvik.

Västernorrland suits anyone who wants nature, coast or river on their doorstep and cheaper housing than in the south, and who can either work remotely or lives near Sundsvall or Örnsköldsvik. Anyone looking for big-city buzz, student life or a growing local community should think twice.