Having a Swedish island to yourself gives you the chance to chill out, get close to nature ? and pretend to be lord of the manor
"Henriksholm is not a place for people who keep their thumbs in the middle of their hands," our host Staffan informed my girlfriend and me rather enigmatically on picking us up from the succinctly named railway station of Ed.
We added this intriguing titbit to the tiny stockpile of information we had managed to garner about the place prior to setting off the day before from St Pancras. Our intelligence ran to this: Henriksholm is a skinny three-mile-long island on a lake in Dalsland, western Sweden; the only building on it designed for permanent residence is a gorgeous old mansion never before let to visitors; and now this new thing about the thumbs. What we were childishly excited about was that for a few days we were going to live like a lord and lady in our very own country house on our very own island. All our delusions of grandeur satisfied at once.
However, since we arrived rather late in the day, the wiry, bald and thoroughly outdoorsy Staffan took us for our first night to Stenebyn�s, 20 miles or so from Henriksholm, where he lives with his wife, Maria, and their children. His is no ordinary home, it turns out, but a former orphanage, whose six lakeside buildings the couple have converted into cute holiday cottages.
Lars von Trier fans might recognise the place from the film Dancer in the Dark. "Bj�rk lay on this very lawn, just over there," Maria told us in hushed tones, and we duly paid homage at the patch of grass in question.
But Henriksholm was calling. Staffan drove us to the shore of �nimmen lake ? Windermere-ish in size and shape ? via a small supermarket where we stocked up on provisions (Henriksholm being many miles from the nearest shop). Carried the short distance to the island in Staffan's motorboat, we were greeted with fields newly shorn of their hay and a track across them to the house, a shining citadel crowning the heights on the far side of the island.
Built in 1815 by Gustaf Wohlfart, a local big shot, the house had fallen into disrepair when Staffan and Maria bought the island in 1993, precisely 25 years after Staffan had sneakily wild-camped there as a young man and fallen in love with the place. They've since completely renovated the mansion, from its white wooden walls to its green tin roof, and furnished the 24 high-ceilinged rooms with an eclectic assortment of antique pieces bought at auction. We swept in to find the walls adorned with paintings by Scandinavian artists, many showing views of Henriksholm in days gone by.
In the evening, with the candles set out on a long, polished dining table that could have been straight out of Downton Abbey, we feasted to the sound of, well, silence. The quietness that had played about the island like an unseen guest during the day had settled into a stillness that, for city dwellers like us, was almost eerie.
Come morning, when we opened the shutters and light cascaded into our bedroom, the desire to fill the isle with our own noise and energy was pretty much irresistible. So, with the sun beating down hard ? apparently such weather is not as rare in Sweden as you might think ? we began exploring our temporary fiefdom, escorted by Staffan's companionable Scottie dog, Skugga, who had been allowed to stay with us on the island for a night, much to her delight. We struck out south through woods teeming with rare wild flowers.
"So rare they are protected by Swedish law," Staffan had told us, though some beavers, evidently no respecters of legislative decrees, had chopped down a few of the trees to make themselves a cosy lodge.
With Skugga enthusiastically showing us the way, we finally burst through into the sunlight that was bathing the aptly named Kristallviken or Crystal Bay. We pulled our clothes off (there was no one around for miles) and swam with the breeze lapping the lake into miniature waves.
Lunches we prepared on a table in the sunshine while we nibbled on brown nutty rolls called dinkelbr�d. Scarcely can anyone ever have scrubbed potatoes and enjoyed such a delightful view at the same time. Successive stripes of blue cloudless sky, the green forest on the far shore, the placid blue lake and the graceful green trees that sparked into life sporadically with salvos of birdsong.
One morning ? yet another one born under a languorous sun ? we headed towards the northern end of the island in search of Highland cattle. "There are about a dozen of them," Staffan had said, "but they've gone wild so they're hard to spot and they stand stock still in the densest part of the woods."
We set off over fields adorned with a sprinkling of cranes. In woods jumping with pied wagtails, we helped ourselves to handfuls of alpine strawberries until ? hark! ? a lowing a little way off. Much quiet stalking later ? or as quiet as is possible on a carpet of crunchy pine cones ? and we suddenly popped out of the woods on to a rocky shore to catch sight of ? a herd of cows on the mainland.
We never did get a glimpse of a furry Highlander, but on our walk back we did stumble across two roe deer ? a doe and her fawn ? before experiencing a close encounter with a huge white-tailed sea eagle, swooping down on a field next to us.
Henriksholm ? despite a large slab of civilisation in the shape of its country pile ? is very much about getting a nature fix. There's no television, no internet and the only radio in the house seemed to pick up nothing but local stations with a penchant for obscure 1970s prog rock. As a consequence, our days passed in an almost Zen-like trance as we paddled about in kayaks, photographed wild flowers in the woods, took a trip on the island's motorboat, or idly half-read books on one of the balconies.
And when all the lazy pootling about became a little too blissful, there was one of Sweden's top restaurants just a short drive away from the island on the mainland (within a stone's throw of Stenebyn�s). A former schoolhouse, Falkholts Dalslandskrog (+46 531 35070, falkholt.com), run by husband and wife Christer and Carin, specialises in dishes derived from the local forests and lakes, and was commendably unfazed by our veganism. The five courses (yes five!) we were served were among the most sublime we've ever eaten ? I expect my tongue to crave the carpaccio of yellow and red beetroot with lingonberry sauce for some years to come. Omnivores can be pretty certain they're in for a treat too (though I defy even the most flint?hearted tourist to order the smoked beaver). Walking through the woods afterwards we encountered a young elk.
As for not keeping our thumbs in the middle of our hands, it turns out to be a Swedish expression for being self-reliant. When you're the only people on your own island that's certainly a handy trait, and I'm pleased to say that I didn't let the side down: I opened all our bottles of wine myself.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/apr/09/sweden-island-henriksholm-lake-dalsland
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