SkogstrolletThe free map for exploring Sweden’s outdoors.

Örebro County

National parks and nature reserves in Örebro County

Örebro County has 323 nature reserves and 2 national parks. A low plain around Lake Hjälmaren crosses its centre, sharply framed by forest uplands and fault scarps.

A low plain enclosed by forest

Örebro County is divided by a striking central depression. The Närke plain and Lake Hjälmaren occupy low, open ground, whereas Bergslagen and Kilsbergen rise to the north in wooded heights, broad valleys and lake systems. Tiveden and Tylöskog form a southern forest belt. Major faults sharpen the boundary between cultivated lowland and the surrounding uplands.

Ice and people have both reorganised this terrain. Glacial rivers deposited sand plains, eskers and dunes; shallow lakes and peatlands developed in hollows. Lowering Lake Hjälmaren in the late nineteenth century transformed extensive wetlands. Several protected areas now demonstrate two complementary forms of care: allowing natural processes to continue and actively restoring water or traditional land management.

Two national parks, two kinds of continuity

Tiveden National Park, shared with Västra Götaland County, occupies a fracture grid that began forming roughly a billion years ago. Glacial ice later left boulders up to ten metres high among lakes, swamp woodland and fire-influenced pine. More than 770 beetle species have been recorded within this rough forest landscape.

Garphyttan, below Kilsbergen, depends on a different history. The park was established in 1909 to protect flower-rich former farmland. When mowing and grazing ceased, scrub began replacing the meadows. It took about thirty years to recognise that centuries of work had created the diversity people wished to preserve. Annual management returned in the 1940s, while much of the surrounding woodland now follows a less directed course.

Lost lakes and surviving pools

Kvismaren once consisted of two shallow lakes bordered by broad hay meadows. After Lake Hjälmaren was lowered by one and a half metres, reeds advanced across the former open water. Embankments and straightened channels altered it again. Restoration has since recreated lake surfaces and shore grassland for breeding and migrating birds, while large numbers of snakes gather among the warm stones of Öby kulle in early spring.

Knuthöjdsmossen developed above sand left at a glacial river mouth. As conditions became wetter, peat formed a raised bog over the outwash plain. Hundreds of pools reach down towards the sand, and a ten-metre dune records the brief period when wind could move the surface before plants stabilised it. Red-throated divers nest beside fish-poor pools but travel to larger lakes to feed. Together, these places show bedrock, ice, water and management reshaping the county on very different timescales.

National park in the county

Tiveden’s grid of fractures began forming about a billion years ago and was later strewn with glacial boulders, some up to ten metres high. Old fire-shaped pine woodland, lakes and swamp forest develop between the rocks; more than 770 beetle species have been found.

Örebro and Västra Götaland counties
View the national park on the map

Selected areas in Örebro County

Tiveden, Garphyttan, Kvismaren and Knuthöjdsmossen represent boulder forest, managed meadow, restored bird lakes and a pool-filled raised bog.

Garphyttan National Park

Lekeberg and Örebro

Meadows, a traditional farming landscape, spring flowers and woodland
Open the area on the map

Map of selected areas in Örebro County