Netflix’s first Swedish Christmas film was not shot on a soundstage in Stockholm. It was filmed in Härnösand and the Höga Kusten – Sweden’s High Coast, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northern Sweden where the sea inlets cut between steep granite cliffs, the red wooden houses sit low beneath the snowline, and the outdoor ice rink in Docksta became a film set with local hockey players as extras.
Bara till jul (The Christmas Switch) is directed by Adam Pålsson – the actor from Young Wallander, making his feature film debut as director – and written by Christin Magdu and Mikael Syrén, based on Eleonor Sager’s popular audiobook Jul i Sankt Anna (Christmas in Sankt Anna). Sager also produces, through Breakable Films.
Real-life sisters Felice and Happy Jankell play on-screen sisters Mathilda and Freddie – two women whose lives could not be more different. Mathilda stayed in the small town where they grew up, helping out at the family shop among hyacinths and amaryllis. Freddie lives a hectic city life in Stockholm, where career and parties fill every hour. In the weeks before Christmas, they swap.
Christian Fandango Sundgren, Celie Sparre, Anastasios Soulis, Bahar Pars, Maria Kulle and Dag Malmberg co-star.
A large part of the production was filmed in Härnösand – the coastal city in Ångermanland, northern Sweden, founded in 1585. Specific filming took place at Strandgatan 12 in Härnösand, at Kronholmen, in the historic wooden-house quarter Östanbäcken and in Locke.
Östanbäcken is a charming, well-preserved neighbourhood of 18th and 19th-century buildings – low wooden houses painted in traditional colours, narrow streets, the kind of place that does not need a production designer to look like Christmas.
This is Mathilda’s world. The small town she never left. The streets she walks every day. Härnösand is not pretending to be somewhere else – it is playing the kind of Swedish town where everyone knows your name.
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Scenes were also filmed on country roads in different parts of Nordingrå – the parish at the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage High Coast. “The Nordingrå roads were mainly chosen for the fine views,” said Per Sjöberg, logistical coordinator for the film project. “It’s very beautiful there.”
Nordingrå’s landscape is among the most dramatic in Sweden – sea inlets reaching inland like fjords, cliffs rising steeply, traditional red wooden houses behind every bend. The roads through this landscape give the film its establishing shots and its sense of place.
Some scenes were filmed on the outdoor ice rink in Docksta – visible in the trailer, with hockey and Christmas atmosphere on the ice. Local extras participated as both audience and hockey players. Docksta is a small settlement on the coast beneath Skuleberget, the High Coast’s most recognisable mountain.
The Stockholm sequences provide Freddie’s world – the city life she lives and the city life Mathilda must learn to navigate when the sisters switch. Swedish press has described the film as featuring “wintry Stockholm views” alongside the snow-covered small-town romance. Specific Stockholm locations have not been publicly confirmed, but the contrast between the capital and the northern countryside is the visual engine of the story.
The Christmas Switch premieres on Netflix on November 12, 2026.
Tidningen Angermanland // Metro Mode // Netflix // Social media posts
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