Just a couple hours from Copenhagen, inland Halland County offers an enchanting escape from city life, with wild landscapes and an unexpected food scene
“A weekend in…” is a series exploring easy weekend escapes from the cities Singapore Airlines flies to. From charming islands and countryside retreats to historic towns and hidden gems, each guide highlights destinations that can be discovered in just a few days.
As dusk settles over Rydöbruk, birch smoke begins to fill the air. In a fire pit fashioned from the circular saw blades once used in the village’s mills, chefs at Knystaforsen feed another log into the flames.
Inside, the first guests settle in with sea buckthorn whisky sours, watching the Nissan River turn the colour of aged steel as the last daylight fades.
The restaurant, which specialises in open-fire and campfire cooking, is an improbable sight in a place like Rydöbruk.
A couple of hours from Copenhagen and home to about 400 people, with a handful of brick buildings nestled among wild pines and rolling hills, the village is hardly where you would expect to find a Michelin-starred restaurant, featured in a Gordon Ramsay-produced Apple TV series, which is breathing new life into open-fire cooking.
Rydöbruk is in the forested inland stretches of southern Sweden’s Halland County. There are no major sights to tick off and no need for an itinerary packed with stops. People come to hike, swim, play golf, forage or hunt. You can spend a morning cycling through the forest and let an afternoon melt away beside a lake.
It was exactly this slower, outdoorsy life that drew Nicolai and Eva Tram here a decade ago. Nicolai was a chef on a self-directed sabbatical, working in Copenhagen’s television industry. Eva was a food writer and photographer.
Money was tight, and every afternoon brought the same question: who was going to buy the groceries, and what could they cook for dinner quickly?
“We were just done with it all,” Nicolai explains.
They sold almost everything they owned and moved to inland Halland. For the next few years, they made cookbooks and wrote recipes. Then the pandemic brought the work to a halt.
With around $60,000 to invest, they decided to re-enter restaurant life, but in a way that only made sense here. They worked together, thrifted their interiors and began cooking refined bites made from wild game, freshwater fish and foraged produce over an open fire.
Their DIY ethos and elemental approach was an instant hit. Now, guests travel from as far as Singapore and Los Angeles to eat at Knystaforsen. Once there, though, they find that Halland has far more to offer than one memorable dinner.
How to get there
Halland is about two hours by train from Copenhagen – and less from Gothenburg and Malmö. Trains from those hubs bring you into Halmstad.
From there, you can take bus 401 to Rydöbruk. For exploring the countryside, though, a car offers the most freedom. But you may want to rent a bicycle and bring a pair of hiking shoes, too.
The Hallandsleden trail stretches 612 km across Halland in 35 sections, passing through woodlands, river valleys and scenic countryside, while the 182–km Hylteleden cycling route follows the Nissan inland from Halmstad through pines, pastures and lake country.
What to see and do
Start with breakfast at Fika by Steph, an artisanal bakery in Rydöbruk’s old artists’ village. Owner Stephanie Johansson won Hela Sverige bakar – Sweden’s answer to The Great British Bake Off – in 2021 before opening her own bakery, where she serves fresh sourdough bread, pastries and cardamom buns alongside excellent drip coffee.
Then head into the woods. The Hallandsleden offers everything from gentle forest walks to longer treks, with nearby trails winding through beech woods, around lakes and alongside streams. Around Rydöbruk, the 19km section of the Hallandsleden trail from Långesjön winds through pine and birch forests before crossing the Nissan beside Knystaforsen, the small waterfall that gives the restaurant its name.
The shorter Rydöbruk–Kvarnforsen route is even more accessible, covering 10km through forests and along gravel roads.
For those who want to go even further off the grid, Swedish hiking operator Vandra offers longer journeys.
Their four-night self-guided route goes all the way from Rydöbruk to Halmstad. The hiking package starts with a night in Rydöbruk and then heads to Simlångsdalen. After a night there, a driver will take you to Halmstad to continue along the coast and Prince Bertil’s path.
After a day hike – and if the weather calls for a swim, visit Fors badhåla, a natural bathing pool in the Klubbån stream near Rydöbruk.
The short walk there passes the former mill workers’ village and the spot where they once washed their clothes and met for beers after work. A small forest path behind the pool leads into the woods, where you can forage for flowers, berries and mushrooms, depending on the season.
Where to eat
Dinner at Knystaforsen is the reason many visitors come to the inland part of Halland, and it’s worth planning the weekend around it.
Across nearly two dozen courses, the tasting menu draws on nearby produce, including Halland cheese from Skrea Ost, a small organic farm dairy just south of Falkenberg, and wild ingredients gathered by local forager John Bolin. Dishes are paired with Swedish wines and house-fermented drinks that Eva and the kitchen team make in their spare time.
Fire-cooking influences every dish, something Nicolai fell in love with after moving to Sweden. The flambadou – a medieval cast-iron cone that drips burning fat over food – has become one of his signature tools, and every guest gets to watch it in action around the fire pit at some point.
“You can’t get that ribeye flavour any other way than with the flambadou,” he says. Nicolai’s cooking is deliberately stripped back, an approach he describes as “subtraction” – removing “all redundancies” rather than adding ingredients simply to impress.
For example, moose tartare comes with herbs from the garden, horseradish and deep-fried sourdough, while burnt onion, smoked cottage cheese and trout roe demonstrate how much flavour can come from just a handful of ingredients.
“I like food that makes the hair on your neck stand up and has a story behind it,” he explains.
That same philosophy extends to the restaurant’s interiors. The restaurant occupies not only an old sawmill, but also the couple’s former home, furnished with flea-market finds and handmade pieces.
Nicolai even hand-paints the menus. It reflects the Japanese notion of wabi-sabi, which he says is “embedded in our DNA”: “It’s in the imperfection that genuineness exists.”
For a deeper taste of the region’s terroir, make time to visit Ahla Mossens Vilthägn, a family-run farm about 3km from Laholm that supplies Knystaforsen with game meat.
Jonas and Vivianne Albjär have raised red deer, fallow deer and mouflon – thought to be the ancestor of all domestic sheep breeds – since 2007. The farm shop also sells seasonal game sourced from local hunters, including elk, deer and wild boar.
During summer, you can try some of it at the farm’s outdoor restaurant, set inside a wooden hut overlooking a pond in the reserve.
Where to stay
The simplest option is to stay next door to Knystaforsen. Nicolai and Eva offer three double rooms in a beautifully renovated cottage facing the Nissan, making it possible to finish dinner and be in bed within minutes (from SEK 3,400 / $450).
About 2km away, Lahult is a tiny farmstead with two double rooms. The hosts offer a free ride to and from dinner at Knystaforsen if you’re booked there (from SEK 2,400 / $325). It’s close to Rydö Badhåla, a forest pond where locals like to go swimming, and the Hallandsleden runs right past the guesthouse, making it a convenient base for hiking excursions.
Those seeking a wilder escape can camp. Sweden’s right-to-roam rules allow camping in much of the countryside, as long as you pitch your tent away from homes and respect local restrictions.
With long days immersed in nature, nights spent over fire-cooked dinners and quaint stays, you’d be forgiven for extending the weekend and leaving Copenhagen for another time.
For more information on Singapore Airlines’ flights to Copenhagen, visit singaporeair.com
