Stora alvaret

Stora Alvaret on southern Öland is one of the world's most distinctive cultural landscapes - powerful, desolate and dizzyingly beautiful in a strange combination. Several thousand-year-old grazing traditions and the thin soils on the limestone bedrock have created the conditions for a very special plant and animal life.

A WORLD HERITAGE
With its 26,000 hectares, Stora Alvaret is one of the world's largest alvar. For thousands of years, Stora Alvaret has functioned as the villages' common pasture and wood storage. Here are plenty of prehistoric tombs, ancient ringforts and house foundations. During the Iron Age as well as during the 19th century, Stora alvaret was heavily exploited. Today, Stora Alvaret is part of the world heritage Södra Öland's agricultural landscape.

THE ENVIRONMENT
Alvar occur in a few places in the world on flat rocky soils on calcareous soils and are characterized by the fact that they lack or have a very thin soil cover, changing access to water, a harsh climate and a peculiar plant and animal life. The species that live here must cope with the sometimes almost desert-like heat of summer, the autumn rains and the winter frost and snow drifts.

FLORA
At Stora Alvaret, plants from all over the world meet. Here are mountain plants and southern European plants. There are also endemic species, which occur only on Öland in the whole world, Öland rockrose. On the deeper soils, which consist of swollen moraine, there are many orchids.

RESTORATION EFFORTS
Through projects and environmental compensation part-financed by the EU, efforts have been made to clear, restore and resume grazing on Stora Alvaret. At the end of the 1990s, 40% of Stora Alvaret was ungrazed and overgrown. Nowadays, the whole of Stora Alvaret is grazed again.