What is the oldest tree in Gothenburg?
The oldest tree in Gothenburg is the Thousand-Year Linden in the churchyard at Torslanda on Hisingen, a multi-stemmed lime that the sources put at roughly 800 to 900 years old despite the name. It stands beside Torslanda church, about 25 to 35 minutes from the centre by bus, and it has been protected as a nature monument since 1945, for eighty years the only tree in the city with that status.
The thousand in the name comes from the church rather than from the tree. The oldest parts of Torslanda kyrka date from the late eleventh or early twelfth century, and local tradition has long held that the lime beside it went in at the same time. The sources that have examined it more carefully, Swedish Radio and the parish among them, put the age nearer 800 to 900 years, which still leaves it the oldest thing on this page. It is not a single trunk. Centuries of cutting back left it regrowing from the stool, so it stands as a cluster of stems, nine of them by one old description, and one of those came down across Kongahallavagen in an autumn storm in 2024 and struck a passing car. The driver was unhurt, and the tree has been under active management since. The runners-up are oaks rather than limes: four boundary trees in Orgryte, one of them over six metres round and at least 500 years old, all protected in October 2025. Reaching the linden means a bus to Torslanda torg and a short walk to the churchyard, which is small enough that the tree is easy to find.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.