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Only four months ago, Ella Adman had just finished school and had never before held a gun. Now, standing in the shade in between drills at a military base on Gotland, the strategically important Swedish Baltic island where she grew up, the 19-year-old conscript is carrying a powerful assault rifle. In a matter of days, she is due to carry out her first official mission in Stockholm, guarding the royal family.
At first, Adman was taken aback by the length of her 15-month compulsory military service and the gruelling 16-hour days in which she trains and lives alongside her male peers. Now she is getting used to it. “You find out what you are capable of and how strong you become as a group,” she said.
Adman is one of hundreds of conscripts who have been sent to the base near the medieval walled city of Visby as part of a rapid remilitarisation process under way on Gotland, a popular summer holiday destination for Swedes, amid the country’s wider rearmament. At the height of the cold war, Gotland had four regiments and at full mobilisation had a strength of 25,000 soldiers. But in 2005 the last of its regiments, P18, was closed, leaving only a reduced Home Guard battalion.
Positioned 275km (171 miles) from Kaliningrad – the militarised Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland – and 87km from the Swedish mainland, it is seen as ideally positioned for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to get a foothold in the Baltic, sometimes referred to as the “Nato sea”, from which to attack the alliance. As Sweden’s largest island, home to 60,858 people and host to the country’s political leaders for Almedalen, an annual democracy festival started in 1968 by Olof Palme, who became prime minister the following year, an attack would also have huge symbolic significance.
In Swedish defence plans for 2025-30, a surprise attack on Gotland – either by air or sea aimed at setting up air and naval defence zones in the vicinity of the island – was named as one of seven potential situations that require prioritised planning. According to Swedish defence chiefs, from Gotland it is possible to control sea and air operations in the Baltic sea region and to control the entrance of reinforcements to Baltic states.
“If you are able to control Gotland, you are able to control the Baltic Sea as well,” said Col Andreas Gustafsson, the commanding officer for the Swedish army in Gotland, after inspecting the conscripts. “So we need to keep control of Gotland – for Sweden, but also for Nato’s sake.”
Since being re-established in 2018, amid growing fears of attack by Russia, P18 has been built up at unprecedented speed – only accelerated by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since Sweden’s accession to the alliance, the island is becoming a regular host for Nato training exercises.
This week, Nato leaders and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will visit Ankara for a Nato summit (7-8 July) amid US complaints over European defence contributions and with the war in Ukraine still raging. In recent years, Sweden has been keen to show its commitment, upping its defence contributions to 2.8% of GDP for 2026 and 3.1% from 2028 and changing rules to expand conscription.
But despite this, with much of Europe rushing to increase defence spending, re-armament is proving difficult, said Gustafsson. “Nato is currently in a major growth phase, which means everyone is out looking for military hardware which means it takes time to get hold of military equipment, particularly artillery systems, and acts as a limiting factor for expanding our capabilities.”
For now, there is not an immediate threat of a “conventional attack” on Gotland, said Gustafsson, with espionage and sabotage more likely, but it cannot be ruled out. The island could be particularly vulnerable in the event of a ceasefire or peace deal with Ukraine, he said, in which case Russian forces could be quickly redispersed towards Finland and the Baltic states. “The risk is always that Russia becomes desperate. The more pressure Russia is under, the more desperate they can be as well.”
If Russia were to attack, Sweden says it plans to defend itself and to keep its civilians largely in place. When mobilised, the combat group to protect it is about 4,500. “Of course, we would defend Gotland and do all we can to stop Russia getting a foothold on Gotland,” said Gustafsson.
But the hope is that remilitarisation will act as a sufficient deterrent and Gotland is also acting as a test platform for defending the whole of Sweden, particularly in a civilian capacity.
Clutching a two-week-old chick in each hand, Eva Rinblad emerges from her chicken and duck coop. “They’re getting panicky,” she says, colourful duck tattoos visible on her arm. The doctor has long been interested in growing her own vegetables and keeping poultry at her rural Gotland home. But a year ago her interest in self-sufficiency went up a gear when, amid growing warnings from authorities, Rinblad, 49, decided to set up an emergency preparedness group in her neighbourhood and they quickly set up a working group.
Following the advice of the Stark socken (strong parish) scheme, a Gotland-wide civil preparedness initiative, they started by carrying out a collective neighbourhood inventory of supplies including water, electricity and communication. Next they are planning to map all available water sources. Gotland regularly has water shortages, but many of those living rurally also have their own wells.
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Rinblad also plans to set up a local safety hub in case of emergency where residents can go for updated information, heat and somewhere to cook, charge phones and sleep overnight if needed. At home they have a dedicated food cellar, extensive fruit and vegetable patches which they share with another family, chickens, ducks, solar panels and rain collection butts.
If Russia were to attack tomorrow, Rinblad hopes local authorities would help the most vulnerable but that, if possible, wider society should continue daily life where possible. “Society should try to go on as normal – preschools should be open, schools should be open, you should go to work.”
Later this year, Gotland will carry out a test emergency evacuation of several hundred people from one part of the island to another.
Mikael Frisell, the director general of the Swedish civil defence and resilience agency (MSB), said: “We have a very serious world situation and we notice out on the Baltic Sea that it is an area in which we are very close to Russia and there are incidents both above and below the surface.”
To ensure “total defence” of Gotland, Frisell said a military presence and a “strong and robust and resilient civilian defence” were needed. “If we have that it contributes to the whole of Nato’s collective defence in this region.”
In case of attack, Gotland risks becoming “isolated” and having supply flows disrupted, said Frisell. “We are working to get Gotland to be as self-sufficient as possible as it is an island in the Baltic Sea.” As part of that, they are working on strengthening emergency services on the island using findings in Ukraine, including being able to better handle mass casualties, manage unexploded ammunition and search demolished buildings.
By geographical necessity, Gotland is ahead of much of Sweden in its preparedness, with MSB using it as a template for the rest of the country. Sweden’s approach to civilian defence is also catching the attention of other countries, including the UK, said Frisell, who recently met the British ambassador to Sweden.
Emil Edenborg, a Stockholm University professor who studies the changing role of the Baltic islands, said although most people supported the return of the military on Gotland, the changes had not been without friction. As well as discourse over building permits and implications to windfarm development, it was sometimes referred to as a “wet blanket on island life”, he said. “Complaints are not so much about local armed forces but about Stockholm and bureaucrats, seen as neglecting the interests of islanders.”
Standing in Visby harbour as a ferry full of holidaymakers comes in, Per Wikberg, the preparedness strategist for Gotland, describes it as the “highway” to Gotland. While the island is well on its way to self-sufficiency, there is still much to be done.
“You can never be finished,” he said. “When shit hits the fan, what happens then? Is our planning good enough or do we need to make changes?”
