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As I have never been an ardent admirer of Ikea, Abba, or Seventies porn, Sweden was not on the list of my top twenty travel destinations. How wrong I was to be so blinkered! Since being sent by Harpers and Queen, I am a convert, and already planning my next trip - winter in Lapland.

The graceful capital city of Stockholm, which consists of fourteen islands between Lake Malaren and the Baltic Sea, is an obvious place to begin a voyage of the vast Archipelago, which stretches 80 km east into the Baltic Sea. Made up of 24,000 islands, islets, and skerries, the Archipelago is as yet undiscovered by the foreign tourist.

Stockholm is clean, quiet, and sparsely populated, so there is a liberating sense of space. The summer light is extraodinarlily bright, throwing the myriad styles of architecture into sharp relief against the wide, cobalt-blue sky. The city’s trams, squawking gulls, and horse guards, and the cobbled streets of the medieval quarter, Gamla Stan, imbue it with a quaint feel, strangely not at odds with the ultra-modern cafés, chic design ships, and new hip restaurants where designer-clad Swedes dine on haute cuisine. From the elegant centre of this city it is only a two or three hour ferry ride to one of many and diverse natural landscapes of the Archipelago. Urban sophistication gives way to unspoilt rugged wilderness, to pine and birch forests, fields of wild flowers, sandy beaches, and smooth rock-faces.

In the late nineteenth-century, the Archipelago was inhabited by remote farming, fishing, and hunting communities. August Strindberg and a group of writers and artists were among the first to rent cottages from the islanders during the summer. Strindberg described his first impressions in a fictionalised autobiography, ‘The Son of a Servant’: "rough granite islets,” he enthused, "with pine forests…stormy bay waters…Not the Alps of Switzerland, nor the olive hills of the Mediterranean, or the chalk cliffs of Normandy could ever force aside this rival."

Today, there are numerous ferries that run from Stockholm to some of the more visited islands, although timetables are quite hard to fathom. The summer season is short, but the advantage of this kind of holiday is that the views are unadulterated by high-rise hotels and big pleasure-cruising boats, and some of the outer islands are truly wild and unspoiled. It is a perfect destination for the robust traveller or keen sailor - anyone who enjoys hearty outdoor pursuits and games of Scrabble or backgammon when the rain sets in. This is most definitely not a holiday where you will stumble upon a sunburnt package tourist downing lager and chips in a video theme-pub.

It can be quite hard to find a hotel room, particularly in the outer Archipelago (although most of the inhabited islands have youth hostels and B&Bs). It is possible to secure the traditional re-painted clapperboard cottage on the water - with authentic wood-burning sauna and boat - although, in July at least, Swedes are fairly reluctant to release their holiday houses for rental.

Camping is also an option. Sweden’s public-access law allows anyone the right to enter privately owned land or water, providing they stay out of view of the owner’s house. We rented an outboard motor, and after an exhilarating ride through the billowing sea to the outermost Archipelago, anchored on the deserted and treeless islands of Tarnskar and Borgen, where we could, if we had wished, picnicked Robinson Crusoe-style in the nude. We had wanted to camp overnight in a hunting hut, barbecue some ‘fisk’, and wake to the sound of the waves, but the seas were high and the weather was turning bitter. We returned to the civilisation of a local krog on Ornö, where we drowned our sorrows in schnapps, and vowed to try again one day.

TRAVEL FACTS: STAYING ON THE ARCHIPELAGO
Grinda: This recently developed island is only an hour away from Stockholm by ferry. Step off on to a forest floor of pine needs and edible berries. The art nouveau Värdshus is an inexpensive nine-bedroom hotel (avoid number three, the small room). The food is spectacular - try its home-brewed schnapps and three kinds of marinated herring. The hotel can arrange for kayaks, motorbikes, and sailing boats to be rented.

From Dalarö, it is a twenty-minute taxi-boat or ten-minute bus-ride for a night or two of relative luxury at the Sma Dalaro Gard. Breakfast is a grand buffet of cold meat, fruit, eggs and cheese. The hotel has two wood-burning saunas on the waterfront. Dalaro has colourful turn of the century houses, and the look and feel of Cape Cod. The Custom House Museum, built in 1788 as a residence of King Gustav III, is worth a visit, as is the ark-style church, decorated with model boats.

Sandhamn (the ‘St Tropez’ of the Archipelago), Bullerön, and Tärnskär are three of the remotest islands that are popular with visitors. On Tärnskär, small hunting huts are sometimes available to rent.

We stayed in a basic B&B, Orno Inn on the outer island of Ornö, which has a stunningly beautiful horseshoe-shaped bay and a landscape of birch trees and sloe bushes. It is also bookable through Klaus Liljefors.

Möja, like most of the islands, is decked out with quaint, handpainted signs proclaiming ‘Bad’: it took a few minutes to realize that they would lead me to a stretch of beach or a group of rocks from which I could swim. We hired bicycles at Langviks Pier for £6 each a day and whizzed down the road, past idyllic flower-strewn fields, to Wikstrom Fisk Restaurant. A husband-and-wife team catch and cook the fish. The smoked eel with dill is fantastic.

Kymmendö: Known as ‘Strindberg’s island’ because he retreated here to write ‘Hemsöborna’and later referred to it as his ‘basket of flowers in the sea’. This is my favourite island: walking through the bucolic landscape to find Strindberg’s writing hut is profoundly moving.

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