When I began to help my husband plan a family pilgrimage to a small village in Sweden 300 miles south of Stockholm, I wasn’t sure what we would do beyond a visit to the local cemetery to make rubbings of his grandparents’ graves. What I soon learned is that Granna, Sweden, is a quaint holiday destination with plenty to entertain.
This hamlet sits on the shores of Lake Vattern and is only a 25-minute ferry ride from Visingso Island. Legend says that the giant, Vist, created the island by throwing a tuft of grass into the lake for his wife to step upon. Now this island bustles with tourism in the summer months and offers rich history, too. We came in the off-season, so we missed the traditional horse-drawn carriage tours that have run since the late 19th century, taking sightseers past Iron Age burial mounds, 2,000-year-old stone grave circles and to the ruins of Sweden’s first royal castle, Visingsoborgen, in the village of Nas. Abandoned and burned by 1318, the fortress ruins still perch on the southern coast of Vinsingso.
