3-Bed Historic 1753 Cottage with Lake Mälaren Views — Vacation Home in Stallarholmen



Toresunds Backe 4, 647 91 Stallarholmen, Strängnäs kommun, Sweden, Mariefred (Sweden)
3 Bedrooms · 2 Bathrooms · 140m² Floor area
€399,500
House
No parking
3 Bedrooms
2 Bathrooms
140m²
Garden
No pool
Not furnished
Description
Stand on the upper floor on a calm July morning and you can see the light doing something unusual over Lake Mälaren — it splinters across the bays of Stallarholmen in a way that makes the water look like hammered silver. The windows are original hand-blown glass from the 1800s, so the view has a very slight wobble to it, like looking through old eyes. That detail alone tells you what kind of house this is.
Toresunds Backe 4 in Stallarholmen started its life in 1753 as a soldier's cottage in Mariefred. It was part of the Ekeby estate, a piece of the Norra Ekeby historical landscape, and it has been standing — in one form or another — through Swedish winters and summers for nearly three centuries. In 2024, the house was carefully relocated to a brand-new 1,122 square metre plot and is undergoing complete reconstruction, due for full completion in 2026. New foundation, new installations throughout, every system modern and fresh. But the original 18th-century timber frame? Still there. Still load-bearing. Still the soul of the thing.
This is genuinely rare. You don't often get to own a house with a documented provenance stretching to the mid-1700s, combined with the practical comfort of a newly built home. No compromises on insulation. No aging electrics. No worrying about what's behind the walls — because what's behind the walls is brand new, wrapped around centuries-old timber that craftsmen have gone to extraordinary lengths to preserve.
The entrance porch — the so-called punsch veranda, a classic feature of 19th-century Swedish summer house culture — is fitted with that hand-blown glass, casting warped, amber-edged light into the hallway when the afternoon sun hits from the southwest. The kitchen is hand-painted and designed in the spirit of the early 1900s, anchored by a Husqvarna No. 26A wood-burning stove from around 1890. Not a reproduction. The actual stove. On winter evenings, when the lake freezes and the birch trees outside go white and skeletal, that stove earns its place in the room many times over.
Downstairs, the living room and family room give you generous, flexible space — one of them exposing the original 18th-century timber beams, which have a warmth and texture that no decorative treatment could replicate. Three bedrooms sit upstairs, along with a dedicated office that could easily convert to a fourth bedroom if a growing family needs it. Two fully modern bathrooms, a laundry room, and a custom-built staircase made using traditional joinery techniques round out the interior. The staircase, particularly, is worth mentioning — it was crafted in the same way such things were made two hundred years ago, and it shows in every smooth, slightly curved step.
At 140 square metres, the house is spacious enough to feel genuinely liveable for a family, but compact enough to maintain without enormous effort — a crucial consideration for anyone using this as a holiday home or second home in Sweden rather than a primary residence.
Stallarholmen sits on a peninsula jutting into Lake Mälaren, Sweden's third-largest lake and the waterway that historically connected Stockholm to the interior. The town itself is quiet and unhurried, the kind of place where people nod when they pass on the gravel path along the shore. Local services — a school, preschool, a handful of restaurants — are all within easy reach. The lake, just 200 metres from the front door, opens up the full range of Swedish lake-life: sailing, kayaking, pike fishing in the reed beds come autumn, and swimming off the rocks in August when the water temperature finally climbs into the low twenties.
Ten minutes by car and you're in Mariefred, a town that has somehow held onto its 19th-century wooden architecture without feeling like a museum piece. Gripsholm Castle sits on the water's edge there, housing Sweden's national portrait collection — the kind of place you'll visit once out of obligation and then go back to six more times because the rooms keep revealing something new. The narrow streets around the main square fill up on summer weekends with day-trippers arriving on the century-old steamboat SS Mariefred from Stockholm, but by evening the tourists are gone and the town is yours again. There's a small but serious food scene: Gripsholms Värdshus is one of the oldest inns in Sweden, and its kitchen takes local produce seriously — smoked perch from the lake, root vegetables from farms up the road toward Strängnäs, wild game in late autumn.
Strängnäs, the regional hub with its striking medieval cathedral, is a 20-minute drive east. Stockholm is roughly an hour. That combination — genuine countryside quiet, a historic market town within minutes, and the capital within comfortable reach — is what makes this corridor of Lake Mälaren genuinely compelling for international buyers looking at second homes in Sweden. It's accessible enough to use frequently, far enough to feel like a real escape.
Seasonally, this area earns its keep all year. Spring arrives slowly along Mälaren, the ice cracking and shifting in March before the birch leaves open in late April in that electric yellow-green that only lasts two weeks. Summer is long-daylight and social — midsommar celebrations on the lake shore, evening rowing, fish grilled outside until ten at night. Autumn brings the smell of wet leaves and woodsmoke, foraging for chanterelles in the forests around Toresunds, and the kind of rust-and-gold light that photographers drive hours for. Then winter closes the lake down, and the world gets very still and very quiet, and the Husqvarna stove in the kitchen becomes the centre of everything.
For international buyers considering a vacation home in Sweden, there are practical points worth knowing. Sweden has no restrictions on foreign ownership of residential property. The buying process is straightforward, with transparent title registration through Lantmäteriet. Since this property is essentially new construction wrapped around a historic frame, buyers inherit none of the deferred maintenance that older Swedish timber houses often carry — the 2024-2026 reconstruction addresses everything from the foundation up. Swedish property taxes on second homes are low by European standards, and the rental market around Lake Mälaren — particularly for summer lets — is active, offering potential income during periods when the property isn't in personal use.
The 1,122 square metre garden is currently a blank plot, which is either a challenge or an opportunity depending on how you see it. The orientation toward the lake means afternoon sun on the south-facing side. A dock application for lake access is a realistic possibility given the proximity. Apple trees, a kitchen garden, a sauna cabin — this is exactly the kind of plot where those things make sense, and where the investment in landscaping pays dividends in daily pleasure.
Key features at a glance:
— 3 bedrooms plus dedicated office (potential 4th bedroom)
— 2 modern bathrooms and laundry room
— 140 sqm of living space on a 1,122 sqm plot
— Complete reconstruction 2024-2026 with all-new foundation and installations
— Original 1753 timber frame preserved and restored throughout
— 200 metres from Lake Mälaren with lake views from upper floor
— Husqvarna No. 26A wood-burning stove (c. 1890) in period kitchen
— Hand-painted kitchen designed in early 1900s style
— Punsch veranda with original late-1800s hand-blown glass
— Custom-built staircase using traditional joinery techniques
— 10 minutes to Mariefred and Gripsholm Castle
— 20 minutes to Strängnäs, 60 minutes to Stockholm
— No foreign ownership restrictions; straightforward Swedish title process
— Strong summer rental demand in Lake Mälaren corridor
— Move-in ready at completion 2026 — no deferred maintenance
A house like this doesn't appear twice. The combination of documented 18th-century heritage and full modern reconstruction is something builders simply cannot replicate from scratch — you can build new, or you can restore old, but you cannot manufacture three hundred years of history into a brand-new frame. This house already has that history. The new owners just have to show up.
If you're seriously interested in this holiday home in Sweden, get in touch through Homestra today to arrange a viewing or to request the full technical documentation on the 2024-2026 reconstruction project. The completion timeline creates a genuine opportunity to be involved in finish selections and to personalise certain elements before the project closes in 2026. These conversations are worth having early.
Details
- Amount of bedrooms
- 3
- Size
- 140m²
- Price per m²
- €2,854
- Garden size
- 1122m²
- Has Garden
- Yes
- Has Parking
- No
- Has Basement
- No
- Condition
- good
- Amount of Bathrooms
- 2
- Has swimming pool
- No
- Property type
- House
- Energy label
Unknown
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