Västra Götaland County

Västra Götaland holds almost everything Sweden has, in miniature. Here you find the country's second largest city, a long belt of archipelago in Bohuslän, the lakes Vänern and Vättern, the table mountains and plains of Skaraborg, the textile country of Sjuhärad and the forests and canals of Dalsland. Almost 1.8 million people live in the county (län), spread across 49 municipalities. The distance between a suburb of detached houses in Härryda and a forest municipality in Dalsland is large, in income as in everyday life.

Gothenburg and its ring

Gothenburg is the county's centre of gravity, and its residents describe it as a big small town or a small big city. The sea, the trams and green wedges right in the middle of town make up for a grey, wet climate and a tough housing market. The city's average age is the lowest in the county and the population is growing, but this is also where the sharpest contrasts are. Biskopsgården, Hammarkullen, Bergsjön, Hjällbo and Lövgärdet are on the police list of police-designated vulnerable areas. Borås and Trollhättan also have areas on the list.

Around the city lies a ring of municipalities where prosperity is almost the default. Härryda, Lerum, Partille, Mölndal and Kungälv have some of the highest incomes in the county, low unemployment and few people living on tight budgets. Härryda comes top with a median income of just over SEK 430,000, against just under SEK 300,000 in Gullspång. Kungälv is the municipality that has grown most, by just over four per cent since 2021, closely followed by Partille. The price is the commute. People in Kungälv warn about the traffic queues into town, and several of the surrounding municipalities, Partille among them, are described as commuter towns with plenty of schools and tradespeople but few local jobs. In Mölndal it goes the other way. Pharmaceuticals and research mean that almost three in four people who work there live in another municipality, and newcomers are often specialists. There, as in Gothenburg, rental flats are hard to come by.

The towns of Älvsborg and Skaraborg

Further out lie the mid-sized towns, each with its own hub. Borås is a textile and university town with a reputation worse than its everyday reality, and the train to Gothenburg is at times so slow that most people take the bus. Trollhättan and Vänersborg form Tvåstadsområdet, the twin-town area on the Göta älv river. Trollhättan lives on the legacy of Saab and on Högskolan Väst, University West, but its unemployment is the second highest in the county. Uddevalla is the shopping town of northern Bohuslän, around three quarters of an hour from Gothenburg.

In Skaraborg, Skövde works as the hub, with fast trains to both Gothenburg and Stockholm and Volvo as a major employer. The town is practical but many find it soulless, and it can be hard to get in socially if you move here on your own. Lidköping on Vänern is the calmer and prettier neighbour, Falköping lives on the railway and is cheap to live in, and Skara, Mariestad and Hjo are smaller towns where the pace is slow. Hjo is at its best in summer, and Mariestad is waiting for Volvo's planned battery factory, though many doubt it will bring as many jobs as promised. Karlsborg belongs here too, a place where the armed forces shape almost everything.

The coast, the islands and the sparsely populated areas

Bohuslän is the county's public face, and the season rules. Tjörn, Orust, Sotenäs, Tanum, Lysekil and Strömstad fill up with summer visitors and go quiet when they leave. The population is older than elsewhere. Sotenäs has the highest average age in the county, over 51, and Lysekil, Orust and Tanum are not far behind. The range of harbour restaurants, campsites and hotels is large for the size, but in Lysekil people complain that young people have too little to do outside the season. Strömstad is closer to Oslo than to Gothenburg and lives on cross-border shopping, with chaos around Norwegian public holidays. Stenungsund shares its coast with the petrochemical industry, and Öckerö is a group of islands where the car ferry sets the rhythm of the day and incomes are high all the same.

Furthest from the city lie the municipalities that are shrinking. Bengtsfors lost more than three per cent of its population in three years, and Gullspång, Dals-Ed, Åmål, Färgelanda and Grästorp are not far behind. In most of them incomes are among the lowest in the county, and in Gullspång, Åmål and Bengtsfors unemployment is high. In Gullspång it is the highest in the county. No direct trains run to Bengtsfors, and the municipality has no police station of its own. At the same time, the Dalsland canal, Vänern and the forest have a lot to offer anyone who wants water and silence. Almost everything requires a car.

The county compared with the country

As a whole the county holds up well. Incomes are slightly above the national average, unemployment slightly below and the population is growing faster than in the country at large. But that figure hides a county moving at two speeds. Those who want jobs, services and trains move towards Gothenburg, Mölndal, Skövde or Borås and pay with more expensive housing or a long commute. Those who want calm, nature and cheaper houses find them in Skaraborg, Sjuhärad and Dalsland, but should expect a car to be a necessity and jobs to be fewer.