Jönköping County

Store Mosse National Park and nature reserves in Jönköping County

Jönköping County has 187 nature reserves and one national park. Upland forest, mires, lakes and steep hills surround Vättern and divide the flow of water among four major drainage systems.

High ground dividing the waters

Much of the county occupies the southern Swedish highlands, a rolling region of forest and numerous lakes. To the north, the deep basin of Lake Vättern opens between high slopes and richer broadleaved woodland. Rain falling here may enter Vättern and the Motala ström, travel east through the Emån, or drain south through the Lagan and Nissan. The county therefore feeds watersheds extending far beyond its boundaries.

Moraine covers much of the bedrock, while glacial rivers and ice-dammed lakes left sand, gravel and deep sequences of sediment. Changes in elevation, soil and moisture produce conifer forest, swamp woodland, farmland and broad open mires. Around Vättern, dry rock can stand close to lush broadleaved slopes; farther south, wetlands spread across flatter ground.

Eight millennia of peat growth

Store Mosse National Park preserves the largest largely untouched raised-bog landscape in Sweden south of Lapland. Rain supplies almost all of the water, and accumulating sphagnum remains have lifted the bog above its surroundings. Peat has been forming for at least 8,000 years. Wooded sand dunes known as rocknar cross the open mire as long islands and ridges.

Skurugata records a very different action of meltwater. A powerful glacial river probably exploited a weakened line in the bedrock and enlarged it into a kilometre-long gorge with walls up to 35 metres high. Summer temperatures can differ greatly between the height of Skuruhatt and the gorge floor. Cold humid conditions below allow mosses with predominantly northern ranges to persist.

Rock controlling living conditions

Isaberg is a bedrock hill rising 150 metres above the surrounding country and reaching 310 metres above sea level. Older spruce and pine occupy its slopes, where dead wood supports mosses, fungi and insects. Eurasian eagle-owl, one of the world’s largest owls and formerly close to extinction in Sweden, breeds among the cliffs.

Taberg is more unusual still: an isolated body of titanomagnetite olivinite containing iron, vanadium and titanium, with only one other known occurrence worldwide. Mining continued from the fifteenth century until 1951, yet the same rock created distinctive plant communities with rare ferns. Six Swedish bat species winter in the abandoned passages. Store Mosse, Skurugata, Isaberg and Taberg reveal how water, ice and bedrock can produce radically different habitats across one highland county.

National park in the county