Gotska Sandön

If Gotland already feels like Sweden’s secret, Gotska Sandön is the secret’s secret. It floats alone some 40 kilometres north of Fårö, a low crescent of sand and pine in the open Baltic, and it has been a national park since 1909. There is no village, no shop, no harbour worth the name. There is sand, forest, sea, and the very strong sense that you have left the modern world a couple of horizons behind.

Getting there is an act of faith

You reach Gotska Sandön by a small passenger boat that runs in the warmer months from Fårösund and sometimes Nynäshamn, and the operative word is “weather permitting.” The island has no proper harbour, so depending on conditions you may be landed by a smaller craft onto the beach, luggage and all. I found this thrilling. Lia, who had packed a wheeled suitcase for reasons she could not later defend, found it character-building. We hauled it across soft sand while a colony of seals watched from the shallows with what I can only describe as judgement.

Once ashore, you either camp or stay in the simple lighthouse-keepers’ cottages near the old station, and you book all of this far in advance because numbers are capped. That cap is the whole point. I have rarely been somewhere so completely, gloriously underpopulated.

Walking the edge of nowhere

The island is small enough to circle on foot, and that is more or less the entire activity, which suits me fine. Trails thread through old pine forest carpeted in lichen and wild thyme, past drifting dunes that the wind genuinely rearranges, and out to lighthouses standing guard over a sea that has wrecked a frankly alarming number of ships here over the centuries. The seals are the headline act; bring binoculars and patience and you will get long, unhurried looks at them hauled out on the sandbanks.

At night the sky does the thing that skies only do when there is nothing electric for fifty kilometres. We lay on the cooling sand, Lia narrating the constellations with total confidence and roughly forty percent accuracy, and listened to the Baltic breathe. I did not check my phone once, mostly because there was no point.

Go prepared, or do not go

This is not a place for the casual drop-in. Bring everything you need, including food, because there is essentially nothing to buy. Check and re-check the boat schedule, and build in slack, because the sea decides when you leave as surely as when you arrive. We got stranded an extra day by a stiff northerly, which I count as the single best accident of the trip.