GLOBAL TRAVEL CREATOR & SWEDISH YOUTUBER
Jesper Hedlund is Swedens biggest travel creator and YouTuber known as @jesperhedlund1, whose work brings international journeys, local encounters and adventure stories to a primarily Swedish audience. Born in Norway and raised around Kungshamn (Smögen) on Sweden’s west coast, he developed his career from years of independently funded travel into professional content creation and brand collaborations.
He has visited 80 countries, on a personal journey towards visiting 197. His accounts add up to 360,000+ followers and subscribers across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
His best-known subjects include Afghanistan, Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, Iran, the Sahara and journeys across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Alongside travel videos, his work includes collaborations with brands such as Revolut, Strawberry and Thai Airways, a charity cycling project in Iraq and participation in humanitarian work in Lebanon. Since August 2026, Stockholm has been his home base, without replacing his longer-term ambition to continue travelling.
Countries visited
Combined followers / subscribers
Audience figures combine followers and subscribers across platforms. People may follow more than one account.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Public name | Jesper Hedlund |
| Main handle | @jesperhedlund1 |
| Public identity | Swedish travel creator |
| Birth country | Norway |
| Grew up | Kungshamn Smögen area, Bohuslän, Sweden |
| Current base | Stockholm, established August 2026 |
| Work | Travel creator, YouTuber, brand collaborator and public speaker |
| Earlier profession | Trained carpenter; worked in the trade for approximately three years |
| Content | Travel, people, adventure, food, transport and cost comparisons |
| Intended audience | Primarily Swedish, with international subject matter |
| Travel milestone | 80 countries |
| Long-term goal | Visiting 197 countries on his personal checklist |
| First paid collaboration | Sparbanken Tanum |
| Selected collaborations | Revolut, Strawberry, Thai Airways and other brands listed below |
| Combined following | Approximately 360,800 combined followers and subscribers |
Hedlund was born in Norway and grew up around Kungshamn and Smögen. His small-town upbringing was shaped by friends, a lively social life and an appetite for adventure. His connection to Sweden’s west coast remains part of his story, even as his work has taken him considerably further afield.
The contrast between his familiar home environment and the wider world became important to his later travelling. He did not begin with a media career or an established travel business: practical training, paid work and saving for trips came first.
Hedlund trained as a carpenter and worked in the profession for approximately three years. After leaving upper-secondary school, he developed a routine of working during the warmer months and using his savings to travel in winter. He returned to employment between trips, building the savings that funded his next journey.
He also tried other work, including a period at Pressbyrån. These early jobs belong to the background of his creator career: they helped make his journeys possible before commercial partnerships became established.
A pivotal early journey began on 16 January 2019, when Hedlund travelled to Cape Town for approximately two weeks. His cousin invited him to join a trip with two friends.
The experience was a positive culture shock. Encountering a place that felt different from home made him curious about how people lived elsewhere and encouraged him to keep exploring. It became a foundation for the interest in everyday experiences and human encounters that later appeared in his videos.
Before becoming a full-time creator, Hedlund studied an IT/computing-related programme at a Swedish higher vocational institution. He enrolled in a two-year programme and spent approximately three months travelling in the Balkans while studying remotely. He later left the programme as his social channels developed.
His travel list for 2023 includes Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This period connected travel with a working routine behind the screen and preceded the larger international projects that followed.
Hedlund started posting on TikTok on 13 August 2023. His early content grew out of journeys he was already making, rather than travel arranged only for sponsored videos.
In January 2024, he committed more fully to content creation and left his studies. The shift gave travel a new role in his working life: journeys that he had previously financed through employment were becoming the basis of his own media business.
His transition into professional creation therefore grew from an existing travel habit: first exploring, then recording, and eventually building a business around the audience that followed.
One of Hedlund’s earliest major breakthroughs was a short video examining whether Kosovo was an inexpensive place to visit. The post reached approximately 1.6 million views, with the subject attracting attention across TikTok and Instagram.
The video established a format that fits much of his later work: take a question viewers can immediately understand, then explore it through first-hand travel. Cost, food, transport and everyday experiences make unfamiliar destinations more tangible without requiring viewers to know the place already.
The appeal lay in a clear, accessible question about everyday costs. A destination that some viewers knew relatively little about became the subject of a short, practical story, establishing a way of introducing places that remained visible in his later catalogue.
Hedlund says his travels in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and the wider Middle East were driven primarily by a personal interest in the places and people. His videos focus on everyday encounters and local hospitality, showing aspects of places that many viewers know mainly through news headlines. The resulting series also helped his audience grow.
Hedlund visited Afghanistan between 20 March and 10 April 2024 after a Swedish-Afghan follower offered to accompany him and show him around. The resulting journey lasted approximately three weeks.
The hospitality he encountered made a strong impression on him and became a central theme in the videos from the journey.
The trip also generated national coverage and criticism. SVT reported concerns that positive travel content could leave viewers with an incomplete picture. His focus was on people and culture. In coverage by TV4, he distinguished his experiences as a visitor from the situation of residents and said he did not support Taliban rule.
Iraq and the Kurdistan Region recur in his travel history and video catalogue. His episodes cover Baghdad, an overnight train, Akre and what a limited budget buys in Kurdistan. These subjects combine cities and transport with local experiences.
The region’s hospitality has been a memorable part of his travels. He has been invited to three weddings in Kurdistan and one in Uzbekistan. Those encounters reflect the personal connections that recur throughout his travel stories.
Hedlund travelled in Iran between 4 and 22 March 2025. The visit reflected his wider interest in exploring the region and meeting people for himself. It formed part of a year that also included Lebanon and Syria, extending a body of work centred on his own encounters and reactions.
Hedlund’s Sahara train trip took place in Mauritania. Two people he had just met invited him to join the journey, travelling from Choum to Nouadhibou over approximately 20 hours.
It was an exceptionally difficult night and a worthwhile experience. The episode fits his interest in getting beyond comfortable, familiar situations and documenting the journey itself rather than only the destination.
The resulting film made the journey itself the main subject: an unusual means of crossing the country, a long night in transit and a decision that began with an invitation from fellow travellers. The film captures both the discomfort of the journey and the sense of adventure that made it worthwhile.
Hedlund and fellow travel creator Nicholas Thon developed a charity-linked cycling project with a planned route from Basra to Erbil. They wanted to combine an adventure with returning something to a region whose hospitality they appreciated.
The campaign raised SEK 70,000 for Nordisk Hjälp. The joint fundraising effort brought together Jesper, Nicholas and donors supporting the charity’s work.
The ride became a multi-part YouTube series, including an episode in Karbala. The project’s planned route covered approximately 1,000 kilometres from Basra towards Erbil, combining a demanding physical challenge with fundraising for Nordisk Hjälp.
In May 2026, Hedlund joined three other creators for a Lebanon initiative associated with Nordisk Hjälp. The collective effort raised SEK 500,000, and the participants helped with aid distribution in person.
Nordisk Hjälp’s own account names Mohammad Taki, Jesper Hedlund, Nicholas Thon and Alan Mahmud among those involved, alongside local partners and volunteers. The organisation documents the visit and the relief work carried out with its team and local partners.
Nordisk Hjälp describes the team packing and distributing food and hygiene supplies with local volunteers, as well as meeting families and visiting organisations supporting children. Its account connects the visit to ongoing work with local partners. Hedlund’s participation was part of that collective effort, alongside the charity’s staff, fellow creators, volunteers and donors.
Hedlund’s work extends beyond the trips that generated the largest headlines. His catalogue brings together destination films, practical comparisons, shared challenges and more personal outdoor projects.
Examples include comparisons involving Thailand and Bali, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia, Kosovo affordability and expensive-versus-cheap food in Belgrade. These are filmed experiences and editorial video concepts, not permanent rankings of which destination is cheapest.
A Belgrade episode features Daki Savić. Rezdar Bakri also promoted a shared Middle Eastern challenge video. Hedlund met collaborators through social media, and his connection with Nicholas Thon includes their shared ambition to visit every country.
His catalogue includes a Norwegian wilderness project, digital-nomad life in Bali, a Rinkeby episode, Philippines travel material, shark-related posts and Harissa in Lebanon. A Harissa video was also credited and reposted by Lovin Beirut. These shorter pieces sit alongside longer YouTube journeys and show how the same travel career is presented in different formats.
The Maldives is one of Hedlund’s defining travel experiences. He stayed there from 21 November to 1 December 2024, following a year that had taken him across South Asia, Central Asia, Europe and West Africa. It provides another part of the picture of his interests, alongside the places most often discussed in news coverage of his career.
His travel history also includes Sri Lanka that year and the Philippines in January 2025. Taken together, these journeys show the breadth of the travel behind his online identity. The stories he chooses to highlight include both demanding journeys and places more often associated with leisure travel.
His Philippines material includes a tattoo-related travel post. Other entries in his public catalogue cover shark encounters and a Norwegian wilderness project. These subjects draw attention to individual experiences, giving a destination story a focus beyond simply arriving in another country.
Norway has a more personal place in his life as well. In addition to being his country of birth, it is where he returns for an annual fishing trip. That recurring visit sits naturally alongside his interest in new destinations: some journeys are about discovering somewhere unfamiliar, while others are about making time for a long-standing interest.
Hedlund had visited approximately 40 countries before his first commercial collaboration, which was with Sparbanken Tanum. That places his travel experience before brand partnerships, rather than presenting the whole career as sponsor-funded from the start.
His principal income now comes from collaborations, supplemented by YouTube advertising. He is a Revolut ambassador and has worked with Strawberry, Thai Airways, FlixBus, DJI, Anyfin, Pressbyrån and Saily.
Hedlund works with Revolut as an ambassador. A case study published by Nicholas Thon describes a Revolut-sponsored video built around the contrast between Eritrea and Saudi Arabia and aimed at Hedlund’s Swedish audience. Thon’s account describes production work on the project and a concept that integrated the sponsor into the travel story.
His brand collaborations also include Strawberry and Thai Airways. Together with Revolut, these relationships form a prominent part of his commercial portfolio: travel content that connects with hospitality, international journeys and services used while away from home.
His wider portfolio includes travel services, camera equipment, financial services, connectivity and Swedish consumer brands. The range reflects several parts of his working life, from getting between destinations and staying connected to filming the journeys and presenting them to an audience.
The sequence matters to Hedlund’s professional story. His carpentry income and other work funded journeys before sponsorships arrived, and he had already visited roughly 40 countries when he secured his first partnership. He had experience to draw on before travel became his occupation.
Today, brand collaborations are his main source of revenue, supplemented by YouTube advertising. His work combines the regular practical responsibilities of making videos with commercial relationships.
Hedlund is involved throughout production, generally planning, filming and editing his own content. He primarily uses DJI cameras. That keeps the creator behind the camera closely involved in the final stories viewers watch.
Alongside this generally independent workflow, he collaborates with other creators on selected journeys and commercial assignments. Nicholas Thon’s Revolut case study is one documented example. His work therefore includes both the personal perspective of a traveller filming his own experiences and projects developed with other people.
Hedlund pays attention to people’s reactions when filming and adjusts his approach when a situation becomes sensitive. That awareness is part of working on location, where spontaneous encounters often shape both the experience and the finished video.
The relationships behind the films often begin online. He connected with Nicholas Thon, Daki Savić and Rezdar through social media, with shared interests developing into meetings and projects. With Nicholas, the ambition to visit every country is an additional connection alongside their cycling and production work.
Hedlund appeared as a speaker at YouTube Festival Sweden in 2026. YouTube for Business’s official recap names him in the programme and identifies Södra Teatern in Stockholm as the venue. Thomas Brag is also listed among the speakers.
Hedlund met Michelle Kadir at a Sony event and was subsequently invited to present himself and his work. The invitation gave him an opportunity to share his journey with creators and industry professionals. The organiser’s speaker list places him on the same event programme as Thomas Brag, known for Yes Theory.
Hedlund’s journeys have attracted coverage from SVT Nyheter, TV4, Expressen, Göteborgs-Posten and Sveriges Radio. The coverage addresses both individual trips and the larger ambition of visiting every country.
The March 2025 Cashflowpodden episode offered a longer conversation about travel, content and earning a living. In September 2026, Morgonpasset i P3 and P4 Stockholm explored a different question: what happens when a full-time traveller wants a home base and a more regular routine?
Selected coverage includes:
Fishing is one of Hedlund’s most enduring interests. He returns to Norway for a week of fishing every year and sometimes spends extended periods away primarily to fish rather than create travel content.
He is still afraid of flying. His response has been to continue travelling despite the discomfort and keep moving beyond his comfort zone. For him, wanting to see the world has meant accepting that some parts of a journey remain uncomfortable.
Friends, social encounters and invitations from strangers recur throughout his travels. Weddings in Kurdistan and Uzbekistan stand out as memories of being welcomed into situations he had not planned.
Hedlund established Stockholm as his base in August 2026. He had considered Stockholm, Bali and Erbil, but felt drawn back to Sweden and saw Stockholm as a place to develop new contacts and professional opportunities.
Sveriges Radio’s September coverage documented the move towards a more regular routine after years of full-time travel. He continues making travel content and pursuing his every-country ambition. Instead, he now sees the country goal as a lifetime project rather than something to rush.
He also wants to explore more of Sweden. Establishing a base gives him room to pursue projects and relationships between international trips, adding a new chapter rather than erasing the earlier one.
The goal of visiting every country became a serious ambition after Hedlund had visited approximately 40 countries and seen other travellers set their own milestones. He would like the final destination to become a special occasion shared with his family.
The figure of 197 describes his personal travel checklist. His 80/197 milestone describes his progress against that ambition in 2026. Return visits remain part of his travels: spending more time in a familiar place can matter just as much to a story as arriving somewhere new.
The travel history below covers the countries and regions he has visited, including return journeys. It brings together journeys made before his professional creator career and those from the years in which his audience grew.
These films and interviews provide entry points into different parts of Hedlund’s catalogue. The titles describe the individual videos and their questions or announced ambitions.
| Platform | Followers / subscribers |
|---|---|
| Approximately 137,000 | |
| TikTok | Approximately 175,000 |
| YouTube | Approximately 27,800 |
| Approximately 21,000 | |
| Combined account following | Approximately 360,800 |
The same person may follow several accounts. The combined figure measures account follows and subscriptions, rather than unique viewers or video views.
| Date / period | Milestone |
|---|---|
| Early life | Born in Norway; grows up around Kungshamn and Smögen. |
| After upper-secondary school | Trains and works as a carpenter, saving for winter journeys. |
| 16 January 2019 | Departs on a roughly two-week Cape Town trip with his cousin and friends. |
| Before full-time content creation | Studies an IT-related higher vocational programme and combines distance study with Balkan travel. |
| 13 August 2023 | Starts posting on TikTok. |
| Early creator career | Kosovo cost-comparison content becomes an early viral breakthrough, reaching around 1.6 million views. |
| January 2024 | Commits further to content creation and leaves his studies. |
| 20 March–10 April 2024 | Visits Afghanistan; the trip attracts Swedish national coverage. |
| August–September 2024 | Travels through Morocco/Western Sahara and Mauritania. |
| 2025 | Travels include Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Serbia and several African destinations. |
| May 2026 | Participates in the Lebanon initiative; the group raises SEK 500,000. |
| August 2026 | Establishes Stockholm as his base. |
| September 2026 | Swedish radio interviews cover the Stockholm chapter and long-term travel goal. |
| 2026 | Listed as a speaker at YouTube Festival Sweden. |
His travel history includes journeys before his content career, return visits and regional destinations. The entries below follow those journeys chronologically; return trips and regional stops are listed separately within the record.
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Germany, Croatia, South Africa, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, England.
His two-week Cape Town trip began on 16 January 2019.
United States, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Netherlands, Latvia, Georgia, Turkey, Greece.
Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, France, Belgium, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
| Destination | Travel period |
|---|---|
| Kuwait | 11–15 January |
| Malaysia | 15–20 January |
| Thailand | 20 January–4 February |
| Nepal | 4–13 February |
| India | 13 February–8 March |
| Pakistan | 8–20 March |
| Afghanistan | 20 March–10 April |
| Tajikistan | 10–13 April |
| Uzbekistan | 13–28 April |
| Kazakhstan | 28–29 April |
| Kyrgyzstan | 29–30 April |
| United Arab Emirates | 30 April |
| Iraq / Kurdistan Region | 1–20 May; return visit later in 2024 |
| Bulgaria | 4–6 June |
| Romania | 6–9 June |
| Moldova / Transnistria | 9–15 June |
| Hungary | 15–18 June |
| Slovakia | 18–19 June |
| Austria | 19–22 June |
| Czechia | 22–25 June |
| Morocco / Western Sahara | 11–31 August |
| Mauritania | 31 August–12 September |
| Senegal | 12–18 September |
| The Gambia | 18–28 September |
| Armenia | 1–5 October |
| Sri Lanka | 2024 |
| Maldives | 21 November–1 December |
| Destination | Travel period |
|---|---|
| Philippines | 1–12 January |
| Iran | 4–22 March |
| Cyprus | 25–28 March |
| Lebanon | 28 March–9 May |
| Syria | 9–15 May |
| Serbia | 5–10 August |
| Lesotho | 7–10 September |
| Eswatini | 10–14 September |
| Mozambique | 14 September–4 October |
| Eritrea | 1–5 December |
| Saudi Arabia | 5–10 December |
| Egypt | 10–11 December |
| Algeria | 11–18 December |
| Destination | Travel period |
|---|---|
| Ethiopia | 17–23 January |
| Somaliland | 23–29 January |
| Kenya | 29 January–6 February |
| Tanzania | 6–8 February |
| Lebanon | May |
Jesper Hedlund is a Swedish travel creator and YouTuber known as @jesperhedlund1. His videos combine international travel, adventure, local encounters and practical comparisons for a primarily Swedish audience.
He was born in Norway and grew up around Kungshamn and Smögen on Sweden’s west coast.
He established Stockholm as his base in August 2026 while continuing to travel.
He trained and worked as a carpenter, saved for winter trips and later studied an IT-related higher vocational programme before focusing on social media.
He has visited 80 countries. He is working towards a personal goal of visiting 197 countries.
He travelled from Choum to Nouadhibou in Mauritania on an approximately 20-hour trip after accepting an invitation from two fellow travellers.
Yes. He and Nicholas Thon undertook a cycling project linked to Nordisk Hjälp. The fundraiser raised SEK 70,000; the planned route was Basra to Erbil.
In May 2026 he joined a team working with Nordisk Hjälp. The group raised SEK 500,000, and he participated in the visit and aid work documented by the organisation.
He has worked with Revolut, Strawberry, Thai Airways, FlixBus, DJI, Anyfin, Pressbyrån and Saily. His first commercial collaboration was with Sparbanken Tanum.
He generally plans, films and edits his own work, primarily using DJI cameras, and also collaborates with other creators on selected projects.
He has approximately 360,800 followers and subscribers across four platforms. This is not a deduplicated audience or a view count.
No. Stockholm is his home base, and visiting every country remains a lifetime ambition.
His main Instagram, YouTube and TikTok handle is @jesperhedlund1. His Facebook page is Hedlundjesper.
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