azdak

We are back, as brown as pirates from ten days of constant sunshine and wind (Wolfgang also has a surprisingly attractive Old Sea Dog beard, lightly grizzled with grey, but I've had to make do with the sun tan). We didn't drown, the plane didn't crash, and the children neither starved nor killed each other in our absence. It was, in short, the most fabulous holiday ever.

There are about 24,000 islands in the Stockholm archipelago, some big enough to support entire communities, with schools and supermarkets, farms and vets, and others which aren't more than a lump of rock with a tree sticking out. In between, there's a vast array of inhabited and uninhabited islands of every size and shape, and thanks to the Swedish law of Every Man's Right you can anchor anywhere that isn't actually somebody's front lawn and stay the night there. For free.

Here's a map of the archipelago. We mostly stuck to the central bit, going as far north as Ǻngsö (just below Furusund) and as far east as Lilla Nassa.





It's baby sailing, because there are no waves and no tides, and navigation is more a matter of looking at a map than doing calculations (although the GPS was exceedingly reassuring, because seen from the side, all the islands, which from the bird's eye view of the map are clear and distinct, melt into a single solid land mass, green with trees, as if you were sailing between the banks of the Amazon). The only really hairy moments come when you encounter the ferries. There are some really big fuckers, bigger than a lot of the islands, and almost silent. They lurk behind trees waiting to pounce out on you.





The first day we had to cross a main ferry route, and we must have arrived at rush hour, because each time we started to cross, yet another monster would emerge silently from behind an island, ready to pounce. We had to wait for SEVEN of the things to pass before we could cross. You can't tell from the photo just how huge they are, but one of them was eleven storeys high.





We felt like Swallows and Amazons in our little wooden boats.





We didn't have Miona this time, our boat (the dark one) was called Pierina (apparently there is a famous Swedish song about a girl called Pierina, but I'd never heard of it - all the Swedish songs I know are by ABBA) and C. and M.'s boat (the light one) was called Calypso.





They do very impressive lichen in Sweden, in a wide range of varieties. This is just a single sample.





They do very impressive sunsets, too. The sun went down at about 22.30, but it didn't actually get dark until hours afterwards, and by 2.30 it was light again. Amazing light, too. At sunset it's red and gold and pink, shading almost into violet, and it picks out the texture of things until you feel like you're seeing the world under a microscope. I suspect Klimt saw the world like this all the time, but I have to make do with northern sunsets to catch a glimpse.





This is an island that's been colonised by cormorants. The stuff that looks like snow is guano (and yes, that's another monstrous ferry in the background). The cormorant is a dire warning to mankind. One or two of them start nesting on a nice green island, more follow, and before you know it they've covered the place with shit and everything but them dies. The dead white islands with their dead white trees rise out of the sea like ghosts. It's very eery. It also smells FOUL. From a considerable distance if the wind's blowing your way.








The Swedes avoid causing this problem themselves by having a little hut on those islands that get regular visitors. One side of the hut contains litter bins, whose contents are regularly collected by litter ferries, and the other side contains earth closets, whose contents are composted. We were thus able to visit many beautiful uninhabited islands without behaving like cormorants. In the absence of a state-run earth closet, the guidelines state that visitors should act like bears, in order to preserve the fragile marine ecosystem. You also have to go on land to clean your teeth and to empty the washing up bowl. You may, however, swim in the sea as much as you like. It was so hot, we liked to do it several times a day, thus avoiding the need to use soap.





After a few days of practice, we'd gained enough confidence to sail to Sprickopp, on Lilla Nassa. Lilla Nassa is in the outer islands. It is astonishingly beautiful and so exposed that even in sunshine you find yourself brooding on the ferocity of nature and also on how the many frogs on the island managed to get there, and how they survive. We found a couple of rock pools filled with rainwater that were teeming with tadpoles, but goodness knows what the frogs do in winter, because there's very little in the way of earth. Everything is clinging onto life by its fingertips. No sooner had we arrived than Wolfgang was attacked by nesting terns, as he tried to hammer in a rock nail. They peck your head and it's startlingly painful.



Sprickopp is a natural harbour with the most fabulous rocks (the archipelago teaches you an aesthetic appreciation of rocks, and Lilla Nassa has the best).










Our boats looked tiny next to the others in the harbour, but they're lovely to sail in and reassuringly stable.




Did I mention that they do good sunsets in Sweden?