Education in Europe after the Second World War has been transformed within a wider context of societal modernisation. It has also become part of the efforts made towards a more common platform for transnational cooperation within the EU. This development has been recognised within educational research as a process of Europeanisation within the educational field homogenising national policy. This strand of research has provided important knowledge on the development of new policy arenas at transnational and national levels, but has paid little attention to the local level where these policies are acted out and interpreted within specific historical, cultural and political conditions and where transnational exchange is initiated at the local level. Against this background the aim of this paper is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the internationalisation of the Swedish school, seen from a municipal level. The paper draws on an examination of local school policy in two Swedish municipalities between 1950-2010 from a historical curriculum theory perspective, taking into account the socio-historical context of schooling, including school politics, school administration and school practice. The transnational exchange within the two municipality cases has been traced by searching for educational efforts that include international elements such as introducing new subjects, programmes, immigrant education, study trips abroad and/or conferences. The result shows that the Swedish school has been subject to transnational exchange long before entering the ‘era of globalisation’. It also shows that the extent and the forms of transnational exchange differ radically between municipalities, which in this paper are discussed in terms of ‘different worlds of internationalisation’. Since little historical research has been done on the internationalisation of the Swedish school from a municipal perspective this study is of great relevance. It contributes to a deeper understanding of the varying role that the local level has played and continues to play in the internationalisation of the Swedish school.