Everything comes to an end. 

The broken washing machine has now found its final resting place in a junkyard, about 800 meters away from the house, together with several of its brothers and sisters. I saw it lying there the other day, covered by snow, lit by the sun, like a memorial to all broken things.  

A friend of mine says I am clumsy, but this is an absurd accusation. In over a month living here, I managed to accidentally break only that washing machine, which was very old anyway and would break sooner or later, and a cheap plastic decorative lamp that can be found at IKEA a dime a dozen. It’s unfortunate, for sure, but at least I did not break any expensive crystals or furniture. But then again, how long even those things can last? Sooner or later, all things break, be it the work of clumsy people or just the work of Time, the clumsiest of all forces. 

Everything ends. And my period here in Björkö is ending very soon too. Sunday will be the presentation of my final project, which will include the exhibition of my short documentary “Three Questions About Sweden” and a reading of my (sort of) play “Landstigning” (or Ashore). I am not sure if there will be anyone there to watch it. There are not many people at Björkö this time of the year, there was hardly any promotion, and even my new friends, the nice elderly couple who live nearby, will not be here during this weekend as they have gone back to Stockholm. Perhaps there will be more people on the stage than in the audience, and it’s only three people on stage. 

Is it the rain that is turning me melancholy, or is it the end of my period here? 

Snow, sun, rain. The weather seems to follow a curious pattern in winter here, changing brusquely from one day to the next. Yesterday it was a beautiful sunny day. Today instead it was foggy and rainy. I prefer snow, but rain was what was on the menu.

I went to Stockholm today with a couple of other artists to watch a performance, but since the idea was to go and return the same day, there was no much  time to do much else. In the end, there was also no one except us to watch the performance, as it was done outside in a parking lot during this grey, rainy day. 

(Luckily, tomorrow it seems the sun comes again; the day after, perhaps the snow.)

Other than that, I visited only to the Nordic Museum, which is housed in a very elegant 19th century-style building (its construction took 19 years and it was only finished in 1907), but I do not know much about the content of its exhibitions — we stayed only in the foyer and then in the cafe. One interesting exhibition they have down there, though, is a life-sized apartment complete with room, living room and kitchen, decorated as a typical Swedish apartment in the 1940s. I could live there; I wonder if they would let me live there for free if I pretended to be part of the exhibition, dressed in 1940s clothes and reading 1940s newspapers?

Besides drinking several coffees, as refills are usually free, I ended up adding two more interviews to my documentary, with beautiful and elegant people from Stockholm, so it was not all time lost. 

Do all things end? Well, at least our souls are immortal, or so guarantee those who know about such things. August Strindberg, in his “Blue Book”, has the following dialogue related to that:

“If the soul is immortal, how is it that there are men who regard their souls as mortal, and speak of the present life as their only one?”

“Their feelings may be perverted, like a man’s who believes he has a snake in his stomach. Perhaps they have committed soul-suicide. Perhaps they think the doctrine of immortality foolish, or their souls are really so rudimentary that they can be buried and dissolved. If that is the case, one cannot argue with them, for they are right as regards themselves.” 

And that ends it for today.

Some days a lot happens and some days nothing happens, so perhaps the idea of dividing this texts in the form of a daily journal may have been a mistake. But then again, how many people can be interested in the travel journal of someone who is not a celebrity in any case? 

Besides, part of the challenge for me was to write a new text every day, anyone reading it or not, and since my time here is ending, I shall continue with the daily schedule for just a few more days now. 

But today’s text is really about yesterday, as in the morning when I was returning from the grocery store by bus, an elderly couple descended at the same time in front of the former school. Usually no one else descends at this stop, so I started talking with them, then eventually also did a short video interview with them for my documentary. At this point Lola, which is a Spanish artist who arrived a few days ago and will be staying here for a few weeks, dropped by and joined the conversation too. 

By the end of the conversation, the couple, who lives about 2km from the former school, invited us that same afternoon for tea at heir house. 

And so we went. Snow was falling heavily and the road was all white and cold, but at least it wasn’t so windy. We were received with smiles by the elderly couple. The man — let’s call him Max, to protect his identity and because I don’t remember his real name — spoke excellent English; his wife — let’s call her Ulrika — reasonably well too. Both are retired and live in Björkö part of the year, although they also have a house in Stockholm.

They were very kind. They offered us coffee, tee, rulltårta made by Ulrika herself with homemade blueberry jam — from blueberries from their own tree — and homemade honey as well, as they have some beehives and produce it; also cookies (pepparkakor), but those were not homemade, and finally some type of walnut cake. It was still cold and snowy outside, and it felt warm and cozy inside. When we finished our coffee, they also offered us some white wine which we gladly accepted. They showed us their house, all full of paintings and decorations done by Max’s sister, who is also an artist, as was his mother. Art seems to run in the family (he, however, does not seem to paint).

They told us about their family and their life. They discussed the blessings and problems of in living in Stockholm. (He would rather live in Björko the whole year; she however, said that “she needs to see people” and prefers to stay in Stockholm and come only a few times in the year). They talked about their church, about some kind of “beautiful, decorated graveyard” that we should visit, and about their favourite movies (among others, he mentioned “Life of Brian”). They gave us the recipe for the rulltårta. As we left, they gave us, as a parting gift, a jar of blueberry jam and another of their local honey. 

Are Swedish people friendlier or more hospitable than people in other European nations? I kept thinking that this would probably not have happened in Germany, Or, for that matter, in England, Switzerland or the Czech Republic. But it could happen in Italy or Spain. 

Then again, it might not be about nationalities, but about what I talked before, the personality split between the city and the country. In the country people tend to be friendlier to neighbours — this would probably not happen in Stockholm, where there is more distrust. The other time when something similar happened and I was invited for lunch or coffee at home by total strangers, was in Italy; but also there it was in a small village in the countryside where most people knew each other. 

Would I invite some random person I met at the bus stop to have coffee at my house? Knowing what I know, probably not, but I lived mostly in cities. Things are different in the countryside. 

Why such difference in mentality? I venture the following explanation. Most of the encounters we have end in disappointment. Someone you thought was nice is revealed to be a crook, a liar or a thief. If you live in the city, you are permanently surrounded by people, and you know that most of them are potential liars, crooks or thieves. But in the countryside, you already know most people around, and there’s not so much to do anyway. If a visitor comes, at least it’s something new: he may as well be a crook, a liar or a thief, but he provides just a few moments of entertainment and then you probably won’t see them again. 

This is pretty much what one of my interviewees said, in fact: that life here in winter is “boring”, so people just go to each others’ houses to have coffee. But “in Stockholm, everyone is afraid of each other”, and they may not even know their neighbours who live in the same building for 20 years. 

AUGUST: Is he still there, sitting by his desk, watching the snow fall? 

HENRIK: Yes, he is. His face shows a growing sense of depression and despair.

AUGUST: Is he typing anything at all?

HENRIK: I can’t see anything. His arms are resting and he’s just looking out of the window.

AUGUST: But the bird has not appeared there again. It will never appear again.

HENRIK: Perhaps his muse has deserted him.

AUGUST: Let this be his punishment, for having the gall to try to decipher the secrets of the Scandinavian soul. Ha! After one month here, he thinks he can know anything? 

HENRIK: If he was young, it could pass as mere naivety. But in his case…  

AUGUST: If it only stopped snowing for a while, perhaps he could go for a walk. 

HENRIK: No! Not his daily walks! Can you believe that he has been publishing a daily journal, and in it, he merely detailed his daily walks. Is it possible that he thought that this drivel could interest any reader at all?

AUGUST: In his last text, he wrote about seeing a squirrel. A squirrel!

HENRIK: Poor soul. I think he’s losing it.

AUGUST: Losing it? He’s never had it. Mediocre minds just have mediocre thoughts.

HENRIK: Should we haunt him into madness? 

AUGUST: No need, that he can do by himself. Let the snow, the cold and the loneliness do their work. Soon he will be leaving, never to return.  

HENRIK: He will not discover the secrets of the Scandinavian soul after all. 

AUGUST: Secrets of the Scandinavian soul? Jesus Christ. He wouldn’t discover them if they came in the form of a moose and trampled him to death. Look at him! Such a hopeless case. It almost brings a tear to one’s eye. 

HENRIK: He could have chosen any other subject. But he wanted to write about us! What does he know about us? 

AUGUST: To be fair, what can any man know about another man? One never really knows a man; one knows only his own, or others’ ideas of him. We are all phantoms to each other.  

HENRIK: Is the sun coming out? 

AUGUST: Yes. But just for a few moments. It is still very cloudy. Later it will snow again. 

HENRIK: He’s getting up now. Perhaps he’ll go for a walk, after all. 

AUGUST: Yes. He’s putting on his coat. 

HENRIK: Should we follow him?

AUGUST: Nah. Let’s torture him only at his desk, when he’s at his most vulnerable. 

HENRIK: That will teach him. 

AUGUST: Look! 

HENRIK: What?

AUGUST: A squirrel!

BOTH: Hahahahaha! 

[They disappear]

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. The strong winds died down, but snow came back with a vengeance, and today it has been snowing continuously the whole day. Perhaps it was not an ideal for walking, and more conducive to baking, but I feel I need to do at least a short daily walk everyday, especially since I will be leaving Björkö soon.

The morning started with a low flying object that turned out to be a red helicopter (to be precise, it was this helicopter here, SE-JOS), apparently used for liming. Liming is the process of spraying limestone or hydrated lime on the soil to reduce its acidity. At this time, however, it seemed to be just supervising the area. I waved.

The helicopter left; tired of looking up, I looked down, and saw a red squirrel. Red helicopters, red squirrels, that’s how it is in Sweden. In Canada the most common squirrels are the eastern grey squirrels, which reproduce like rabbits and look a bit like rats with fluffy tails, but Northern Europe has the red squirrel which is, to much mind, much cuter. They look as if they have large pointed ears, but it’s actually just hair around the ears protecting them from the cold. It appears to increase in size in winter, so from far away they can look almost like rabbits.

After looking at my camera, the squirrel fled. I walked a bit more through the forest, and as I was getting back to the main road, I saw a large bird flying high up, past me, towards the frozen lake. I thought it was an eagle, as it seemed so large, but I could not take a good picture (actually, there seemed to be two hovering around). I asked Anna Viola, and she said that it could be a sea eagle, as they have been seen in the area. In fact, the map of Björkö-Arholma down in the kitchen has a drawing of one of them, right on top of the picture of the local church.

However, it appears that sea eagles are a rare sight: once almost on the brink of extinction, they were brought back by conservationists but still not in large numbers: there are supposedly only around 350 breeding pairs in all of Sweden. If I saw two, then I saw a statistically significant number of all sea eagles in Sweden.

But was it really an eagle? I still had some doubts, so in the afternoon — after baking a carrot and orange cake — I went out again, this time to take pictures of the little church nearby. I don’t know why, but, for some reason, I find the image of a little church being covered by falling snow something very romantic. I had forgotten about the eagles, but, as I was taking pictures of the church, lo and behold, an eagle passed flying over it — just like in the map in the kitchen! Again I could not take a good photograph, but I checked her wings, comparing them to the drawing on the maps, and, yes, I am pretty sure it was a sea eagle.

So that was my contact with the local fauna today — I am still waiting for moose and lynxes, but still, it was better than nothing. And it is still snowing, and it will snow all day and probably all night, and perhaps all week.

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” (James Joyce)

I was told by locals that people in Stockholm were a bit more closed, less patient, less polite, less friendly, than people at Björkö. I don’t know if it is true, everybody seemed nice enough, but they did seem to be a bit more in a rush in general. They didn’t have much time to stop and give detailed information when asked, much less to give a full interview to some random stranger.

Perhaps the big difference between people in general is not so much related to their political views or their nationality or their culture, or even what team they cheer for, as it is to one much more basic and ancestral difference: are they from the city, or are they from the countryside?

Of course there are many differences between city people and country people, but I think the most remarkable one is their relationship with time.

Time in the country is related to the rhythms of Nature: the seasons, the sunrise, the sunset; the time of animals and the time of plants. In the city, time is more artificial, mathematical, dictated by the constraint of deadlines, schedules, office work; the time of calendars and the time of clocks.

People in the country need to wait for the harvest to be ready, there is no way to rush it. People in the city have to rush themselves and each other all the time, and if the printer or the photocopy machine doesn’t work for a few seconds, they get mad.

I recently watched a video of a 93-year old Sardinian nonna making handmade pasta; just kneading the dough took 30 minutes, then several hours to craft each little lorighitta, making sure to have enough to feed the whole family, plus the time to let it dry in the sun, make the sauce and so on. In the end, the whole operation, done well, can take the whole day. Who has time for that in a city, with our increasingly short “free time”?

This division can apply to anything, really. Art, in a way, is more related to country time. “You can’t rush art”, isn’t what they say? While many or perhaps most painters due to the constraint of having to find work, lived in big cities — Paris, Rome, Amsterdam — and in many cases followed bohemian lifestyles, hopping between cafes and bars, they would go several times to the countryside to paint. Not just because of the subject matter such as landscapes or themes from nature, but because it provided a relaxation that they couldn’t find in the town.

Appreciating art is also more related to country time —- going to a museum and silently looking at each painting takes a certain amount of time and patience, while looking at an artwork on a phone for a few seconds before clicking on “Like”, is really the wrong way of doing it.

Social media is city time. Blogs and books are country time. Running, aerobics, and anything done at a gym is city time. Taking long aimless walks is country time. Modern abstract art is city time. Traditional figurative art is country time.

I started here on country time, as appropriate, taking long daily walks and letting things slowly settle in. But now almost a whole month is gone, and I need to finish my project (there will be a presentation next weekend), and I feel time rushing past me like one of those ultrafast Japanese trains. I have so much still to prepare and I am afraid I can’t finish it — writing, editing the video, preparing the presentation, organizing everything, all this will take days that I don’t really have anymore. Even if you take things slowly, Time never stops.

You can slow down time, as they do in the country, or you can rush it, as they do in the city; you can stretch it or you can shorten it. You may even be able to bend it.

But you can’t escape Time.

The storm “Malik” is crossing Sweden right now — it was a hurricane before, but it appears to have been downgraded — and it is still very windy up here, although nothing terrible has happened. Just a lot of wind, and a lot of snow.

It is possible to walk outside, it just doesn’t feel very comfortable, as there’s a thin powdery snow blowing in your face at 36 km/h, and while it’s just a few degrees below zero, it feels like -15. So I and the others at the house, and I’m guessing most people in Sweden, just stayed indoors most of the day.

We took a lot of precautions in case there was a power outage — charging flashlights, filling bottles of water (as the water pump stops working without electricity), etc — but so far, everything is fine. The house here is slightly protected by a hill and the forest, so the worst appears to be happening a bit further up north where it’s just an open plain. Still, it does not seem to be anything very much out of the ordinary. Every winter has its bad days.

Many people complain about winter — even Swedes. Some tend to become depressed during this period. As for me, I’ve never been much of a winter person, but I am slowly getting used to it. Except perhaps for today, it hasn’t been all that bad up here. I could walk outside for hours most days. It was less cold and less snowy here than in Canada, where I lived for seven years. That’s my consolation, really. No matter how bad it gets here, in Canada it will always be worse.

Besides, if we didn’t have winter, the joys of summer and spring would certainly be diminished. You need the opposites complementing each other. Yin and yang and all that.

“The double windows are off, the floor scoured, fresh curtains at the windows — yes, it is spring again! The ice has gone out of the river, and the willows are beginning to bud on the banks — yes, spring has come and I can put away my winter overcoat. You know, it’s so heavy — just as tho’ it had absorbed the weight of the whole winter’s worries. Yes, the sun has come again. It left us in November. How well I remember the day it disappeared behind the brewery across the street. Oh, this winter, this long winter!” — So exclaims the character Elis in Strindberg’s play “Easter”, which takes place, well, during Easter week, which is just about the same time that winter ends in Sweden and springs begins. It’s one of the few plays by Strindberg that ends on a happy note.

Depression can be common in Sweden in those cold, harsh months of January and February, but less than it used to be. Checking the statistics, I found out that the peak of suicides in Sweden happened in the 1980s, where it really was the Western country with highest number of suicides. But numbers have been mostly decreasing ever since. While the documentary “The Swedish Theory of Love”, which I watched the other day, paints a picture of a hyper-individualistic Sweden that lost its sense of collectivity and has many people living (and dying) alone, the fact is that it is not all that bad. Or, at least, not much worse than other places.

There was even a reduction in the suicide rate from 2019 to 2020, when in most of the world the opposite happened, thanks to the “lockdowns” and other “Covid” measures. Perhaps because in Sweden rules were much softer and they never really had a full lockdown. Even now, it’s much more relaxed than anywhere else in Europe. For the last two years, Sweden has had a lower suicide rate than the United States, and even than sunny New Zealand (until 2020; there is still no data from 2021).

But what do Swedish people do during winter? Simple. They bake. The local grocery store, 7 km away, doesn’t have much in terms of fresh vegetables, in fact, it doesn’t have much in terms of anything — except products for baking. A whole corridor is devoted to baking products, including seven or ten different types of flour and equivalent types of baking powder and all kinds of spices you can imagine.

So today I baked fresh bread, and the NY artist is baking a sweet potato pie. The other artist is not baking anything and the coordinator is now in Stockholm, but well, I guess it’s enough for the day. Tomorrow it will be much less windy, and on Tuesday, even the sun may appear.

Friday was sunny and nice the whole day: perfect for a walk around Stockholm. Saturday, however, began foggy and rainy. Since I did not get many interviews in Stockholm, except with the woman at the reception of the Strindberg Museum, who gave monosyllabic answers, and weather wasn’t improving, I thought it was time to leave.

I took the train from Stockholm to Uppsala and in about 35 minutes I was already there. At Uppsala I met Karin, a former colleague from student exchange program Georgia Rotary Student Program (GRSP). We hadn’t seen each other in 28 years! But she still looks pretty much the same — I wish I could say the same of myself.

We met at the English Bookshop, then we went to a nice coffee shop nearby. It is supposedly an old coffee shop very popular with the students of the Uppsala University. Because Uppsala is traditionally a university town, and Uppsala University is the oldest university in Sweden, founded in 1477!

With Karin as a guide, I took a short tour of downtown Uppsala. I saw the oldest building of the university, the University Hall. Nearby, in a park, there are a few old rune stones. Rune stones are stones marked with runes, or the Old Norse alphabet.

They were typically memorials for the dead, but not necessarily grave markers. They could be put up on a road, to commemorate a deceased family member. Apparently the region of Uppsala is the place where most of those stones can be found — perhaps 70% of the totality of rune stones in the world were found in the region.

The ones I saw were dated from around 930 a.C., but even though they display an ancient alphabet, many of them already have Christian symbols, such as crosses. The Christianization of the country was happening right about then.

Nearby, the Uppsala Cathedral is a monumental church, consecrated in 1435 but with its construction complete only around 1470. It is the tallest church in Scandinavia and one of the oldest, although it was partially destroyed and rebuilt a number of times.

Built still when Sweden was a Catholic country, it contains the relics of King Eric IV of Sweden, also known as Eric the Saint, as he was later canonized. But the Cathedral is today a Protestant church, as has been ever since King Gustav Vasa joined the Reformation and confiscated all the Catholic Church assets. King Vasa is also buried in this church, together with his three wives (consecutive wives, of course).

Another famous person interred there is the 18th century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, who would have an influence in the work of many later writers, including Jorge Luis Borges and, surely enough, August Strindberg — who, by the way, studied at Uppsala University… The circle closes. Sweden is like a small village of a country where everyone is connected.

By 2:00 PM, it was time to leave Uppsala and return to Björkö. To be honest, I was already starting to miss its isolation and tranquility of the island, and now I am happy to be back. Only that there’s a storm, or rather a hurricane, predicted to pass by the island starting tonight or tomorrow, with winds of up to 100 km/h, so we will see if the house still stands after that. It is recommended to remain inside during the storm because of the possibility of falling trees or flying objects, so I may have to miss my daily walk tomorrow… We will see…

August Strindberg was born in Stockholm in 1849. At that time, it was still a relatively small and provincial place, at least compared to the main cities in continent. Its total population was 93,000 people and still had a rural feel. 

Although he lived a large part of his life in Stockholm, he left for France in 1883 and then took residency in different European cities, returning definitely to Stockholm only seventeen years later, by the end of 1899. When he returned, his shock was immense at the transformation of the city: it had grown and developed quite a lot, inspired by other European capitals. Strindberg apparently hated the changes, as it no longer resembled the city of his youth.  

I imagine that he would be horrified to find out that Stockholm, today, is a large cosmopolitan city with 1.6 million inhabitants in its urban area only, not counting the suburbs, and a city that has nothing to envy from any other European capital. Its National Museum, which I visited this morning, is a world-class art museum with excellent paintings by many European masters. It is also free. 

Of course, my main objective for the day was the Strindberg Museum, as I did not have much time to spend in the city. But I did walk along its dock and old town, and I was impressed at how beautiful it is. The day was sunny, perfect for a stroll.

On the way to the museum, I passed through the Intimate Theatre, a small theatre that was originally founded by Strindberg in his later years and where he performed his famous chamber plays that inspired Ingmar Bergman so much. The theatre has been remodelled with new seats and new lights, but it still shows mainly plays by Strindberg or about related subjects. In fact, there was supposed to be a performance that day, a modern reinterpretation of Strindberg’s “Gustav Vasa”, a historical play about a famous Swedish king. 

The theatre was the only place in Stockholm where I saw that, at least according to the notice on the entrance and the website, seemed to require “vaccine passes”. Ironically, the play had to be cancelled because some (vaccinated?) members of the cast tested positive for Covid… When I went in to ask for information, there were just technicians removing all the equipment, and there will be nothing playing this week. 

Just a few blocks from the theatre, there is a park where there are two famous statues. One of them is of classic children’s author Astrid Lindgren. The other one is of August Strindberg. Erected by Carl Eldh in 1943 and called “The Titan”, it is a curious bronze sculpture showing a giant, muscular and nude Strindberg, looking more like an Atlas or Hercules really, sitting in a somewhat tense position, with his hands pushing down against a rock as if about to raise up to conquer the world. Apparently it caused a certain scandal at the time because of the nudity. But Strindberg was an author used to scandals, so I suppose it fits him.   

Just across from this park we find the Strindbergmuseet.  It is a nice little museum which includes Strindberg’s last apartment in Stockholm, where he lived from 1908 until his death in 1912. The building still has a beautiful Art Deco elevator and the apartment was recreated with most of its original furniture and many of his personal objects. Lively sound effects as you get closer to some objects — a piano that starts playing, a telephone that ringing, footsteps, even a voice — provide the illusion that Strindberg, or a least his ghost, may still be living there. (A short video tour of the apartment that I made can be seen here.) 

The museum is completed by a large collection of several books, objects, manuscripts, photographs, and a lot of other material about Strindberg. I bought a nice book, a few postcards, and Strindberg’s own brännvin essens, a sort of herbal mix that he used to put in his drink to flavour it. The shop, by the way, still exists, a couple of blocks from the museums, and they still sell those and many other essences there.   

I didn’t have time for much more; next morning I would be leaving for Uppsala, and that’s what I did, but I’ll leave that for the next journal entry… 

My main project here is to work on a new script which is a sort of comedy about Swedish playwright August Strindberg and Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen meeting in the afterlife… Hilarious stuff, right?

However, this proved a much harder task than I imagined, for many reasons that I will explain another day, but the main one being that I don’t know as much about them as I’d like. I feel that I need to do so much more research, but there’s not really a lot of time left for that… So in those days when I am unable to write due to sheer panic of not being able to write anything, I am having fun with a lighter, easier idea, which is a very short documentary about Swedish identity, which consists of asking Swedish people just three simple questions about Sweden and how they view Swedish people like themselves.

Today the day was rainy and not so conducive to long walks in the woods, and I was a bit tired from the long day yesterday at Arholma, so this time I just took the bus and went to Älmsta, first to the public library and then to the local technical school, and managed to obtain a few very funny, interesting interviews. Hopefully there will be other interviews during the next few days, around here, and in Stockholm too.

You will be able to watch the full film when it’s ready, but for now, I think my main impression is that Swedish people think that their main quality is being friendly and nice, and their main defect is… being friendly and nice, too. In the sense that they can either be naive, or insincere, not saying what they really mean. But we will see how it goes as it progresses. I personally cannot say too much about the Swedish character, having been just for very a short time in the country, and having seen more birds than people so far here at Björkö…

Since I did not have time to take too many pictures today, I will leave you with a few stills of the future documentary, if a documentary it can be called — it’s really more an impressionistic portrayal of how Swedes view themselves, without being too deep about it.

If you thought that Björjko seemed lonely and desolate, that’s because you haven’t heard about Arholma yet. Arholma is the twin island of Björkö, just next to it but you need to take a ferry boat to get there. The ferry doesn’t come very frequently in winter, so you have to plan the journey carefully.

Cars are not allowed on the island. You need to move around by boat, bicycle or on foot. Its main attractions are an old beacon (båk) on the top of a hill — it’s similar to a lighthouse, only it doesn’t really have a light on top — and a supposed pagan cemetery. The graves have no names, they are just identified by stones put together, forming a spiral pattern. It is said that if you displace one of the stones, the spirits of the dead will haunt you forever…

There was no one walking around the island except me. The place seemed a bit spookier than Björko; perhaps it was just me, but it had some strange “Twin Peaks” vibe. There were some old, dilapidated cabins apparently abandoned in the woods. I could imagine some maniac living there who would take you prisoner into one of those cabins and torture you for hours, before throwing your body in the sea…

My original plan was to go at 1:30 PM and return on the 2:50 PM boat when it was still light. That didn’t leave me much time, but the next boat after that was only hours later. I went for a little walk to the local church and windmill, then started my return. I was a little afraid that I would miss the boat, so I walked fast to get to the dock in time. I saw that the boat was still there, and the time was 2:40. I relaxed. “I can get there in ten minutes”, I thought. Only that the boat started its engines immediately and left at 2:45 PM, five minutes earlier…

“Noooo!”, I almost cried, “Don’t leave me on this spooky island all alone!” But it was too late. The next boat came only at 5:50 PM, when it would be already very dark. What could I do for the next three hours?

Luckily, just then a middle-aged woman arrived. Come to think of it, she looked a bit like the “Log Lady” from Twin Peaks. She worked at the local grocery store. It was officially closed, as everything else on the island, but she was kind and let me in to have a coffee and buy something to eat.

Afterwards, there was nothing to do but wait. I walked up to the beacon, then just walked aimlessly all over the island. I saw no one the whole time, except for this creepy old guy riding this sort of four-wheeled scooter, up and down the road. I imagined he was a chainsaw wielding psychopath looking for someone to rape, but I wasn’t really his preferred victim. (He’s probably more active in the summertime, when there are half-naked teenagers swimming and frolicking in the sun, I thought).

I walked all the way up to the northern edge of the island, and by then it was already dark. There were a few empty, half-lit wooden cabins. But no one around. Then I heard a motor behind me. It was the creepy guy. Turns out he was some sort of watchman for the camping village, and he was just surprised to see someone at the island at all. He ended up being quite nice.

I walked back to the dock. Luckily, I did not find the pagan cemetery (at least, I don’t think so).

I arrived back at the dock by 4:50 PM, one hour in advance, but the boat was already there. I got in immediately, just in case, because the next and last boat was at 10:00 PM and I didn’t want to stay another five hours on that spooky island.

It was a nice visit, but I was happy to be back to the relative safety of Björkö by night time…