Swedish Wanderlust

I haven’t even set foot on Gotland yet, and already I feel like I’m standing on something ancient. Not just ruins or legends—but time itself.

Did you know Gotland was once a coral reef? Four hundred million years ago, this island lay beneath a shallow tropical sea. And now it’s one of the most fossil-rich places in Europe. Not in a museum-behind-glass kind of way. But in a “you might trip over a trilobite” kind of way.

Seriously—there are fossilized sea lilies in the limestone under your feet. Whole ancient reefs exposed in cliff walls. Children grow up here collecting fossils like seashells. I’m already jealous.

🐚 Fossils I can’t wait to find:

• Trilobiter (trilobites): bug-like sea creatures that crawled the seafloor before dinosaurs were even a thought.

• Brachiopoder: clam-like shells, but not quite clams. Some fossils are so crisp, they look alive.

• Koraller: coral fossils shaped like honeycomb or horns, like stone versions of sea flowers.

• Crinoider: delicate, star-shaped fossils—aka “sea lilies”—that look like jewelry from the Silurian period.

• Snäckor & bläckfiskar: gastropods and cephalopods. Snails and squid with beautifully coiled shells.

They’re everywhere—on the beaches, in the cliffs, even in the paving stones of Visby’s streets. This place is a “Silurian Rosetta Stone,” and I’ll be walking across 400 million years of life.

And here’s where it gets even wilder: the limestone that makes Gotland keeps going. It stretches underwater across the Baltic to Salme, Estonia—where ancient Scandinavian seafarers were laid to rest in ships, including VK554 and his likely brother. Men whose DNA has ties to Gotland.

My own mitochondrial DNA—haplogroup J1c8—shows up in remains on Gotland, too. So in a way, when I finally step onto that stone… I won’t be just arriving. I’ll be returning.

🇸🇪 Swedish Word of the Day: urtid

Urtid (noun) – prehistory; literally “primordial time.”

Used in a sentence?

“Gotland känns som att gå i urtid.”

(Gotland feels like walking through prehistory.)