A Windmill Tour of Skåne: Mills on Sweden's Southern Plains
Drive across the plains of southern Sweden in late summer, when the wheat has turned the colour of brass, and sooner or later a windmill will rise out of the fields. Skåne — Scania in English — is Sweden's southernmost province, and it is flat, fertile and open to the winds of the Baltic and the Öresund in a way that no other part of the country quite matches. For centuries that combination made it Sweden's great windmill landscape. Where the forested provinces further north ground their grain at water mills on rushing streams, the farmers of the Scanian plain raised sails to the sky. Many of those mills still stand, lovingly kept by local heritage societies, and together they make one of the most rewarding windmill tours in northern Europe.
Where the mill is called a mölla
The first thing a visitor notices is the word itself. In standard Swedish a mill is a kvarn, but in Skåne it has always been a mölla — a dialect word that immediately reveals the province's history. Skåne was Danish territory for most of the Middle Ages and beyond, and mölla is a close cousin of the Danish mølle. The province only became Swedish in 1658, under the Treaty of Roskilde, and the language of everyday life changed far more slowly than the borders did. The word survives everywhere: in the names of the mills themselves, in village names, in the seaside resort of Mölle on the Kullaberg peninsula, and in the affectionate way local people still talk about their mölla. When Scanians organise open days at their restored mills, the events are möllardagar, mill days, and the volunteer millers are möllare. For anyone touring the region, the word is a useful signpost — a name on the map containing mölla is very often a promise that a mill once stood there, and sometimes that it still does.
A windmill landscape shaped by geography
Skåne's windmill wealth is no accident. The province sits on some of the most fertile soil in Scandinavia, and its southern and western plains — above all Söderslätt, the broad flatland between Malmö, Trelleborg and Ystad — have been intensively farmed since prehistory. The region has long been described as Sweden's granary, and grain in quantity needs milling in quantity. At the same time, the open plain offers little of the fast-falling water that powers mills in hillier country. The streams of the flatlands are slow and modest, while the wind sweeps in from the sea on nearly every side, for Skåne is a peninsula between the Baltic, the Öresund and the Kattegat. Wind was simply the power that was there. The result, by the nineteenth century, was a landscape studded with mills: nearly every parish on the plain had at least one, and prosperous districts had several within sight of each other. Travellers of the era remarked on the horizons broken again and again by sails, a scene more reminiscent of Denmark or the Netherlands than of the rest of Sweden.
The old guard: post mills, or stubbamöllor
The oldest windmill type in Skåne is the post mill, known locally as a stubbamölla. In this design the entire timber body of the mill balances and turns on a single massive upright post, so that the miller can rotate the whole building to face the wind. It is the earliest form of European windmill, and in Skåne it remained in use for centuries, well suited to a landscape of modest farms and shifting winds. A stubbamölla is an unmistakable sight: a boxy wooden cabin perched above its trestle, often tarred black or painted red, with a long tail pole reaching down to the ground for turning the mill. A number of these venerable machines survive in the province, preserved as some of Sweden's oldest wooden buildings still standing in the open landscape. Among the best loved is the post mill at Skanör on the Falsterbo peninsula in the far southwest, which stands on open grassland by the sea and has become an emblem of the town. Others survive inland and along the Österlen coast in the southeast, cared for by parish heritage societies. Stepping inside one is stepping into a medieval idea that kept working into the modern age: everything — machinery, stones, sacks and miller — housed in one small turning room above the fields.
The Dutch mills of the nineteenth century
Most of the windmills a visitor sees in Skåne today, however, belong to a later and grander generation: the smock and tower mills that Swedes call holländare, Dutch mills. In this design only the cap carrying the sails rotates, while the body — often a substantial multi-storey tower of brick or timber, frequently set on a high stone base — stays fixed. The type allowed far larger machinery and far greater output than any post mill, and it spread across Skåne during the nineteenth century, when agricultural reforms and rising grain production created demand for serious milling capacity. These are the stately mills of the Scanian plain: tarred or shingled octagonal towers, white-painted caps, galleries running around the body from which the miller could tend the sails. Kronetorps mölla in Burlöv, between Malmö and Lund, is a celebrated example of the type, a tall and complete Dutch mill preserved with its machinery beside what is now a growing suburb. In Malmö itself, Slottsmöllan stands in the greenery near Malmöhus Castle, a working reminder of the mills that once ringed the city. Dozens more holländare survive across the province, from the Bjäre and Kullen peninsulas in the northwest to the villages of Österlen.
Boom, grain and the long decline
The nineteenth century was the golden age of the Scanian windmill, and the reasons lie in the fields around them. Skåne was at the forefront of Sweden's agricultural revolution: it was at Svaneholm in the south of the province that the reformer Rutger Macklean famously consolidated his tenants' scattered strips into single holdings in the 1780s, anticipating the enclosure reforms that later transformed the whole country. Consolidated farms, new crops and better rotations meant more grain, and more grain meant more milling. Mills multiplied, and milling became a respected rural trade with its own dynasties of millers. The decline, when it came, was swift. From the late nineteenth century onwards, steam power, and then electric motors and industrial roller mills in the towns, could grind faster, finer and in any weather. One by one the sails stopped. Some mills lost their caps and wings and were converted to stores or silos; others burned or were demolished; a fortunate minority were simply left standing as the countryside changed around them. By the middle of the twentieth century the working windmill was essentially gone from Skåne — but affection for the mölla was not, and that affection is what saved the survivors.
Visiting the mills today
Today the windmills of Skåne are heritage in the best sense: not museum pieces behind glass, but buildings in the landscape, many of them opened and even run on summer days by volunteers. The open-air museums are a natural starting point. Fredriksdal in Helsingborg preserves a windmill among its historic buildings and gardens, and Kulturen in Lund tells the wider story of Scanian rural life. Beyond the museums, the pleasure lies in the touring itself. Österlen, the gentle southeastern corner of the province beloved of painters, hides mills among its villages and apple orchards. Söderslätt offers mills against enormous skies. The Falsterbo peninsula has the Skanör post mill by the sea, and the northwest coast pairs mill visits with the dramatic headland at Kullaberg — with the village of Mölle at its foot carrying the old word in its name. Many mills open for local mill days in summer, when the machinery is explained, coffee is served, and on the best days the sails are set turning. Check opening arrangements locally before you travel: most mills are cared for by small societies and open on limited hours, which is precisely what makes a visit feel personal.
Explore on the map
Skåne rewards slow travel, and its mills are perfect waypoints: never far apart, always in fine landscape, each with its own parish story. Before you set out, open our interactive map and zoom in on southern Sweden — you will find the province's surviving stubbamöllor and holländare marked and ready to be strung together into a tour of your own, from the Öresund coast to the orchards of Österlen.