Stand on Visby’s rocky beach and gaze out across the roiling sea, and it’s easy to imagine a fleet of wooden ships heaving into view over the horizon, bearing an army of snarling invaders ready to subjugate its inhabitants, or worse.
Dating from the Viking Age, this picture-postcard medieval town is the biggest settlement on the Swedish island of Gotland – a hunk of rock measuring 100 miles by 30 miles, located halfway between mainland Sweden to the west and Latvia to the east. Visby has been fought over down the centuries by the Swedes, the Danes, the Hanseatic League and more, and it has the ruined city walls to prove it.
