“The baggage and departure halls were evacuated, which has affected departing flights but not arrivals,” police duty officer Roland Lindkvist said.
The halls were re-opened several hours later, after a bomb squad arrived from central Stockholm (about 100 kilometres or 60 miles away) and moved the bag to a safe area for examination.
“The bag in question belongs to an elderly lady and she is cooperating with us … She says she doesn't know how the powder got on her bag,” Lindkvist said.
Skavsta Airport is the fifth largest in the country and serves primarily low-cost and cargo carriers, handling around 2.5 million passengers a year.
This is the second airport bomb scare in Sweden in the last week.
Last Tuesday the police cordoned off an area at a Stockholm Arlanda airport car park at terminals 2 and 3 after security staff discovered the item in a rubbish bin outside the building.
“They found a small parcel in a bin and reacted to that, and made the assessment that a forensic team should look at it,” Stockholm police control room officer Sven-Erik Olsson told the TT newswire.
Police were called to the scene at 4.41am and later took the suspicious item to a forensic lab for analysis. But by 9.30am they had reported that the item was not dangerous.