“Waterloo”. “Money, Money, Money”. “Dancing Queen”. We jig around and hum to the tunes we know so well. And we can see them in hologram form in ABBA Voyage, where wishful lookalikes in bell-bottoms and knee-high boots and sparkly hats flock to see and hear the digital version of the “ABBAtars” (Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Frida) in startling reality.
ABBA’s real home is Sweden. Fly out on direct flights to Stockholm from Heathrow and within a few hours you’re in a city built, on water with around 30,000 islands making up its archipelago, all threaded together by bridges. The best way to explore is a sightseeing boat gliding past waterside homes and allowing the shape of the city reveal itself. I stayed at the Rival Hotel in Slussen, on the edge of the Old Town, owned by band member Benny Andersson who occasionally drops in to play the piano. (I’m assured it is him in person, not a hologram). Backstage Hotel, ten minutes from central Stockholm, is co-owned by Björn Ulvaeus. He also owns the Hotel Stottsholmen on Water in Västervik.
You can’t really escape ABBA in Stockholm where their music is part of the landscape, from the ABBA Museum to the hotels linked to band members. But head south-east to Västervik and then out into the Tjust archipelago and the volume switch changes. The familiar hits give way to a very different soundtrack, one created by nature.
Västervik is a scenic, classic tourist resort. Stroll along narrow cobblestone alleys lined with 18th-century boatmen’s cottages in the Gamla Norr area and to its 15th-century St Gertrud’s Church which dominates the skyline. Björn Ulvaeus spent his childhood here and still has strong connections to the town with his own hotel and restaurant, Slottsholmen on Water, now run by his family. Just outside the centre is Gränsö Slott a family-owned historic castle turned spa hotel, with enviable sea views and a quiet elegance.
It is out on the islands that Sweden reveals another side of itself. The region is Småland, a miniature Sweden, depicting almost every landscape the country has, from glittering lakes, densely packed forests and green meadows to thousands of islands, many uninhabited, scattered like a patchwork of puddles stretching through a vast expanse towards the horizon.
Our boat slipped into a tiny harbour, sitting like a dot on the archipelago. At the jetty, I placed my luggage on a tractor trailer and from the village shop collected a canary-yellow bike, you know the sort, those sit-up-and-beg bicycles, slightly rickety, fronted by an old-fashioned basket. Reached only by water, with no bridge to the mainland, the islands seem to operate according to their own clock. There was no hurry about anything at all, especially with a population tipping 30.
Forget fancy chandeliers, Hasselö Vandrarhem is more hikers’ hut than luxury hotel, reinvented from the original island’s old village school, built in 1870. It still looks much like one, with classroom posters pasted on the walls. Cosy, comforting and homely. Our morning was greeted with candles flickering over a homemade breakfast spread of breads, jams, hams, honey and eggs. It didn’t need to be luxurious. It needed to feel like somewhere you were looked after. And it did. A home in the forest.
Bicycles are the main transport here. The only sounds interrupting the silence were the tyres on gravel and squirrels scrambling up a tree trunk as though I had interrupted something secret. The islands’ contrasting colours looked as though they had been lifted from a postcard, particularly the red of the traditional wooden houses, made from pigment produced from Sweden’s Falun copper mine.
Connected by a small bridge, the two islands of Hasselö and Sladö have become one of the country’s best cycling routes, stretching for nine kilometres. The narrow roads wind through old-growth deciduous forests and rugged pine woodland. Sladö itself feels even more removed from the outside world. Just six people live here. The island is a nature reserve with a landscape shaped and protected by generations of small-scale farming, with glacial boulders still sitting where the ice left them.
Even dinner comes with a sense of place. Restaurang Sjökanten, tucked into an old carpenter’s workshop and boathouse at Slågaudden, is small and unpretentious. Featured on the menu are Swedish meatballs and Sweden’s oldest registered cheese brand, Wrångebäck cheese, which dates back to 1889 with Protected Designation of Origin status. The island’s cosy winter pub, Thirsty Winterswan, is tiny in size, mighty in character and flavour. I tucked into fish and chips, freshly caught perch and baked slices of potato with a side of pickled vegetables served in an individual wooden crate. The best I have tasted.
My love affair with nature continued on the water where cheeky seals played hide and seek as we detoured back towards the mainland. Then came a guided kayak tour with The Outdoor Hub through calm, sheltered channels where the islands break the worst of the wind. The stillness escorted me as we passed six islands and followed the shores of another. The journey itself became the destination, and the feeling lingered long after I climbed back onto dry land.
Yet it is the islands that stay with me and the harmony of the landscape. Sweden has more islands than any other country, with 267,570. What struck me was the laid-back culture and the freedom-to-roam attitude. You actually need very little to join this way of life: a rented bicycle, a pair of boots and someone lighting candles for breakfast, and enough silence to hear yourself think again.
In Stockholm, you can take your dancing shoes for “Mamma Mia” and hum along to “Dancing Queen” on ABBA’s home turf. But out here, among the islands, the soundtrack changes. The music becomes the crunch of tyres on gravel, the rustle of pine trees, the slap of water against a kayak and the distant cry of a seabird. The ABBA hits may have put Sweden on the world stage. But on these islands, the best soundtrack is silence.
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