I am standing barefoot on granite rocks on the west coast of Sweden. As I watch the sun strike the water with a violent shimmer, I feel I must be on a Bergman set. For the west coast provides an inspiring alternative to Stockholm’s forested archipelago. Once you’ve spent a week here in Bohuslän – with its inlets and islands of granite and gneiss, from Gothenberg up to the Norwegian border – you come away feeling spectacularly healthy.
In fact, it was Ingrid, not Ingmar, Bergman who made this region her own. She lived out her retirement in the seaside town of Fjällbacka, a perfect shamble of clapboard houses in pale butter stucco and eaved gingerbread cottages.
Fjällbacka is also the point of departure for the starkly beautiful Väderöarna, or Weather Islands, a group of 365 islets – Sweden’s most westerly territory – only 40 minutes from the coast, but no suburban picnic. This is a place of rock and sky. On board a small boat with a towering turret, we made our way past dozens of rocky outcrops, where seagulls cawed and cormorants dived, and seals flopped into the brine. When all the skerries were behind us, we had arrived at the largest island, Storö (pronounced Stawr-euh).
More of a smooth atoll than an island, Storö has a bewitching quality. Among its undulating granite hillocks, there are reed marshes, wild garlic and heartsease. And it is hugged by the purest water you’ll ever see, with moss and coral so clearly visible that you could sketch them from above. [...]