Simrishamn is the name of both a kommun and a town, though much of the kommun is more widely thought of as the Slow Coast (and that’s how we’ve filed it here). The town, however, is pretty special in its own right.
Nearly 1,000 years old as far as formal records go, and likely inhabited even earlier than that, Simrishamn is a little fishing harbour town which diminished somewhat around the turn of the century, thanks to the industrial model of fishing that prevailed at that time, with far bigger boats coming all the way around from Gothenburg and beyond to scoop up herring and cod from the Baltic waters. Recolonised as a second-home spot for wealthy Stockholmers, the town arguably swapped one problem for another: plenty of well-off residents, but a paradoxically tiny tax base.
Reforms in the Swedish tax system helped somewhat—you still hear a lot of Stockholm accents in the summer, but the place is no longer a total ghost-town in winter—but the revival of small-scale herring fishing, along with various other forms of ocean agriculture, gave Simrishamn an industry other than tourism to rely on.
Often used as a base for expeditions further up or down the Slow Coast, Simrishamn is within biking distance of Baskemölla, Vik, Stenshuvud, and even Kivik if your thighs are up to the challenge! (For locations further north than that, Brösarp‘s the better bet.)
But don’t discount the town itself, which boasts plenty of good eating (and some rather more, ah, edgy options), and a harbour which almost demands you take your shoes off and hum the old Otis Redding classic to yourself, in between licks of ice-cream…
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