About Forsakar
The Forsakar Waterfall was the southernmost of the waterfalls that we encountered in Sweden, which alone kind of made it stand out to us as we didn’t expect any waterfalls this far south in the country.
It featured a nearly 11m drop over two tiers as well as a 7m upper waterfall though we didn’t get to visit the upper part.
Indeed, what you see pictured above was the modest lower falls, which I believe to be the main drop anyways.
Signs here have made references to Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné), who visited Forsakar in 1749 and noted observations about the waterfall’s ravine with walls that were “steep and tall as church walls.”
Linnaeus happened to be Swedish, and he was credited with being the “father of modern taxonomy”, which was the practice of naming and classifying organisms in a binomial manner (a more scientific and consistent way of assigning names and categories).
He nearly correctly surmised the falls’ drop at 10m and he also made the first documented observation of the rare and threatened blue ground beetle in the area (which was only confirmed 200 years later by zoologist Per Brinck).
The name of the falls was said to have originated from “karet”, which refered to some basin-shaped ledge.
Experiencing Forsakar – Hiking to the Forsakar Overlook
There were a couple of ways to experience the Forsakar Waterfall. In this section, I’ll first describe the upper route to the overlook of the lower waterfall.
From the large and well-signed car park (see directions below), we then went to a signed fork in the footpath.
We took the left fork to ascend steps leading up to the upper trail along the rim of the ravine. The path on the right went to a swimming pool as well as a trail within the ravine.
After getting past the steps, the trail was mostly flat (or gently ascending) for about the next 600m or so.
The trail seemed to also skirt the boundaries of the reserve as we noticed cleared land on the other side of a fence along this trail.
Eventually, we arrived at a steel stair-stepped catwalk leading down to an overlook peering right down at the Lower Forsakar’s pair of drops.
While the views of the falls from here were somewhat obstructed and left much to be desired, we could at least appreciate the pair of drops and their full extent from this vantage point.
There were some steep trails of use that appeared to link the trail on the valley floor with this rim trail, but there was plenty of signage to discourage doing this due to the likelihood of deadfalls and landslides.
Once we had our fill of the falls from here, we had the choice of continuing the hike towards the upper waterfall some 50m later or to the upper car park another 400m later.
But we headed back the way we came, which took about an hour for the whole excursion.
Experiencing Forsakar – Hiking to the bottom of Forsakar
Starting from the fork in the walking path, this time, I would take the right fork to head towards the swimming pool.
After passing a restroom facility, I then reached a trailhead just before getting to the swimming pool entrance.
From there, I followed the trail that followed along Forsakarbäcken (the Forsakar Creek) as it meandered for about 600m to the base of the lower drop of the Forsakar Waterfall.
This was the dead-end and turning back point of the trail as I didn’t see a way to continue any further.
However, I did notice trails ascending to the upper trail along the ravine’s rim, but signs discouraged doing that given the life-threatening hazards and erosion it would cause.
Doing the trail in this manner took me about the same amount of time as the upper rim trail mentioned earlier.
Authorities
Forsakar was near the city and municipality of Kristianstad in Skåne County, Sweden. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you may want to try the local municipality website.
Forsakar was near the village of Degeberga.
The nearest city to Degeberga was Kristianstad.
Driving from Kristianstad to Forsakar
So driving from Kristianstad, we would make our way to the E22, then continue south at the interchange to go south on the E22 for another 8km.
We then took the turnoff on the left for the Route 19 towards Ystad.
Then, we’d follow the Route 19 for a little over 14km to the signed turnoff on the right (there’s a Forsakar sign).
Then, we followed the Forsakarvägen for the remaining kilometer to the signed car park on the right.
Overall, this drive would take about a half-hour.
Driving from Copenhagen to Forsakar
We actually drove to Forsakar from Copenhagen, Denmark.
That meant, we drove east on the E20 over the international bridge into Sweden, then we followed the E6 to the E22, where we then followed this high-speed motorway for 76km to the Route 19.
Then, we turned right on the Route 19 and followed the directions as given above.
Overall, this drive took us about 1 hour and 45 minutes.
For geographic context, Kristianstad was 96km (a little over an hour drive) northeast of Malmö, 130km (over 90 minutes drive) southeast of Halmstad, 140km (over 90 minutes drive) northeast of Copenhagen, Denmark, 228km (2.5 hours drive) south of Jönköping, and 547km (about 5.5 hours drive) southwest of Stockholm.
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Sweep checking out the immediate area around the base of the falls
Short sweep showing the perspective of the falls from the upper lookout
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Forsakar February 12, 2012 3:51 pm - Situated in Degeberga, Skåne (southest part of Sweden) these falls are really easily accessable from a walk through the beautiful ravine from where the stream flows through. The falls are best to visit in early to mid spring when the waterflow is at its highest. In the summer the waterflow is less, but the surroundings… ...Read MoreNearest Waterfalls
