Agricultural Landscape of Southern Öland

Agricultural Landscape of Southern Öland is a cultural landscape on the southern part of Öland in Kalmar County, southeast Sweden, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. It is characterised by a combination of farmland, villages and open limestone plain.

The area is noted for its extensive limestone pavement known as the Stora Alvaret, traditional dry-stone walls, windmills and dispersed farmsteads. Visitors encounter open calcareous grasslands with specialised plant communities, linear field systems, and a network of small villages and agricultural features. Important viewing points include the low, open plain where geological exposures and floristic contrasts are most visible.

Human use of the island’s soils and the creation of its field systems and settlements developed over many centuries, with archaeological remains and historic farm layouts visible across the site. Traditional agricultural practices shaped the current mosaic of fields, pastures and scattered hamlets.

The landscape occupies the southern tip of Öland, an island off Sweden’s southeast Baltic coast separated from the mainland by the Kalmar Strait. It lies within Kalmar County and is reached by road across the Öland Bridge from the Swedish mainland.

• Stora Alvaret habitat: Contains extensive limestone plain habitats with specialised flora adapted to thin soils and summer drought.
• Historic field patterns: Many traditional field patterns, dry-stone walls and windmills survive and are concentrated in the island's southern agricultural landscape.

What to See #

• Stora Alvaret: The Stora Alvaret limestone plain, a large calcareous pavement that supports specialised grassland and rare plant communities.
• Ottenby: Ottenby Nature Reserve at the island's southern tip, known for bird migration and a historic lighthouse station.
• Eketorp: Eketorp, an archaeological site and reconstructed ringfort that illustrates past settlement and defensive structures on the island.