Kate Eshelby

Islands fit for Ingmar Bergman

Discover the brutally seductive landscape off Sweden's coast

Factory chic: the hotel Fabriken Furillen on the Swedish island of Gotland [Getty Images/Alamy/Shutterstock/iStock]

Who would have thought of staying in a factory? My view is of a grey industrial building, a gravel pile and a crane  standing like a metal giraffe at the end of the pier. It’s not your usual picture-postcard hotel vista, but it’s oddly beautiful.

Instead of following the masses to the Mediterranean, we had headed north to the Baltic islands off Sweden’s coast. Gotland is Sweden’s biggest island, and it’s here that the Fabriken Furillen hotel sits, on a remote peninsula in the far northeast of the island.

This hotel is the brainchild of photographer Johan Hellstöm. It takes an unusual man to see that an abandoned limestone quarry could be a hotel. Swallows swish past, leaving their home in a building previously used to house the conveyor belts for transporting the limestone. Close by, nestled on the edge of the Baltic Sea in front of a gravel hill, is an incongruous American Airstream caravan, and near that, the tunnel that was formerly used by the trains carrying the limestone. Now it’s a favourite location for people shooting car ads, looking for a dramatic exit into an otherworldly landscape.

I wander along the remains of the rusted train tracks, where old wooden carriages lie on their side amid tufts of wild flowers. Something catches the my eye: the flicker of a wind turbine. I decide to explore further, and borrow one of the hotel bikes. I cycle out along the sea’s curve, discovering gloriously wild shingle beaches. Alongside them, black and white cows graze in corn-coloured meadows.

Nearby is the fishing hamlet of Lergrav: a handful of beach huts along the water’s edge, all painted in the traditional rust-red colour, which originated from the copper mining industry in Falun. There is an old mystical-looking wooden statue of a fisherman with a pipe, and strange rock formations — arches and fists — on the surrounding hills.

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