Skåne for Kids

Most places you could think of going in Skåne will have something for kids to do, but we have a few suggestions that might be particularly good, depending on the character of your kids and your parenting style.

Like most of Scandinavia, Skåne is a fairly kid-friendly place: pretty much anywhere you go, you’ll find little difficulty in just turning them loose for a few hours, once they’re of a certain age. Indeed, it’s a strategy with some merits—and that’s why the Rough Planet team (or at least the members of it who are or have been parents) recommends renting bikes for young visitors, no matter how brief the visit may be. It’s surprising how effectively cycling can tire out a young human being!

Most places you could think of going will have something for kids to do, but we have a few suggestions that might be particularly good, depending on the character of your kids and your parenting style. Festivals are illustrative of the options, here: you can carefully expose them to unusual foodstuffs at the floating harvest festival on Hammarsjön, or you can instill communitarian values by volunteering them as KPs at the Brösarp food festival, or you can take the real hardcore Adventure Parent option of having them accompany you to a Low Water Festival out in the flexmarks. (Don’t forget your earplugs!)

If festivals sound too loud and busy for you and/or your kids, well, solar camping’s about as peaceful as it gets (curious goats notwithstanding); if they like swimming, a day at Ystad’s eelgrass safari will wear them out thoroughly (and leave you some time to sample the local delicacies). Those with a more urban inclination—or just those who like the idea of festivals more than they like the idea of sudden changes in weather—might choose to treat the old Emporia:Evolved mall as the 24/7 indoor festival that it basically is.

Want to go harder on the outdoorsy stuff? Now you’re thinking like a Swede! Take them to see (and perhaps make) sandalas on the beach at Ängelholm; attempt to abandon them in the middle of the pea labyrinth near Bjuv; set them to treading biochar in Holma’s permacultural “living labs”!

There are a few places it’s worth exercising a certain degree of caution over, though. For instance, we would suggest that kids should be discouraged from making unaccompanied visits to flexblocks unless they’ve been invited by their local peers; likewise, unless accompanied by an adult, flexmark land is maybe not the best place for kids to go free-range.

Similarly, intentional communities such as Famnen in Malmö, or some of the more secretive villages of the Heartlands, are not what many parents would consider safe spaces for children to be wandering unsupervised… though others might consider them exemplary. Of course, your parental instincts should be your first guide—but whenever possible, we recommend reserve them for the supervision of your own children, and not of other people’s.

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