Vi

Vi lies on Alnön in Sundsvall municipality, in Medelpad, about ten kilometres north-east of central Sundsvall. The town was called Alvik until 1980 and is sometimes also called Alnö centrum. Just over 6,800 people live here, in a municipality with a total of about 98,000 inhabitants.

Daily life is close at hand. A grocery shop, ICA Supermarket, is within walking distance but not close, and the schools, among them Vibackeskolan and Uslands skola, are equally far. Most houses stand more or less right next to a larger road, so traffic noise is part of daily life. To get to the railway station you have to take the car, as it is some way off.

The forest lies right next to most properties, and the sea is only a short walk away, while the lakes in the area are further off and require a car. The downside is that soil contamination is strikingly close in the town, with about thirty known sites and the nearest only a couple of minutes' walk from the centre.

Central Sundsvall is reached in a quarter of an hour by car, and Stockholm is just over five hours away by car. In the area around Vi the age distribution is relatively even, with a little over a quarter children and young people and a little over a fifth older people, and more than half are unmarried.

The range is broad for a town of this size: a health centre, a pharmacy, gyms, a handful of restaurants and a couple of cafés, and several preschools. Vi suits those who want to live near Sundsvall without living in the middle of the city, with the sea within reach, but who can live with the main road lying close to the houses.