Along the Bohuslän Coast by Amar Grover
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From high on the battlements of Carlsten Fortress in Marstrand, the town’s simple pleasures are plain to see. Pretty weatherboard houses cluster amidst a web of lanes where visitors wander in shorts and T-shirts. Yachts bob in the slender harbour. Bathers idle on smooth grey rocks that slip into the sparkling Baltic like lazy whales. Yes, it’s that warm and it’s Sweden. I am assured by all that the heat and sun are no freak – in summer it is invariably like this.
Stretching north of Gothenburg towards Norway, the name Bohuslän, or fief of Bohus, derives from Bohus fortress twenty-five kilometres inland. Yet once this stretch of coast was given to Sweden by Norway in 1658, it was Marstrand’s largely ice-free harbour that commanded the sea and still pleases the eye. The castle was begun soon after and quickly forged its own self-serving punishment. In 18th- and 19th-century Sweden ‘Marstrand Labour’ was just another term for hard labour expanding the fortress with an iron ball around one’s ankles.
Hundreds of shackled criminals and degenerates built the walls, paved the courtyards and raised the great round keep. There were just a few escapees, notably the Robin Hood-esque Lasse-Maja who dressed as a woman to entice and rob wealthy farmers. Marstrand became a free port and was among the first to get electricity. The return of great herring shoals meant the town prospered, and by the 19th-century the upper classes decided this was the place for curative baths and holidays.
These days it is now rather more egalitarian and, with typical Swedish orderliness and neatness, rather hard to imagine the old wild town of felons and fishermen. In the old quarter, you might stroll by the graceful yellow ‘Aruga’ villa, built by a tycoon in 1903 for King Oscar II’s annual one-month stay (though Oscar so missed his yacht he returned to it after one night). The Societetshuset, or Society House – a party and conference hall – has recently been restored to its 1886 glory and such was Oscar’s appeal that the Batellet, or Bath House, even used to bottle and sell his bath water.
If Marstrand seems a touch mainstream, the islands to the north – there are around three thousand, many no more than skerries – are rather more low-key. I crossed the imposing Tjorn island road-bridge and within minutes had taken another to reach Mjörn. And just as I thought ‘another island, this really is lovely’, my partner announced we had already left it and were now on Orust, which promptly ushered a bewildering and even more picturesque array of convoluted inlets and bays.
Our goal was Flatön Island, which still relies on canary-yellow flat-bottomed ferries to link the outside world. If Orust is sleepy, Flatön is positively comatose, its fields and woods dotted with cabins and cottages. Here, at Handelsman Flink, I was acquainted with the cult of the late Evert Taube, Sweden’s much-loved troubadour. He spent several summers here in the 1940s distilling, by the sound of things, women, wine and song, and befriending an old grocer whose lonely shop had became a vital supply line for weather-beaten fisher folk.
Today the locals seem bizarrely – almost comically – proud of the little shop and its retro displays of old packaging and curios alongside touristy knick-knacks. This is the place to pick up a replica striped pullover as worn by Taube, and there are Taube events and festivals that celebrate his flowery shanties and bucolic ditties. While much of this was lost on me, the serenity is appealing, particularly when kayaking the calm crystalline sea, weaving from bay to bay and navigating narrow channels that separate skerries and islands.
Later, on a launch that headed out to the mouth of the fjord-like inlet that surrounds Flatön, Jurgen the skipper underlined the former importance to Bohuslän of herring. Their vast shoals were capricious. For decades when they were plentiful, towns and villages prospered, and a ravenous industry even coaxed the Pope to sanction fishing on Saints’ days in Marstrand. Then, abruptly, the herring would disappear and communities wilted until their next unpredictable rise. Though still a Swedish staple, the Bohuslän industry is but a shadow of its past. Sparked by the holidaying royals, twentieth-century tourism saved this coast from utter desolation.
As if on cue, we chugged in to Gullholmen, a dinky village lying on the leeward side of one of the last coastal islands. Boats and yachts thronged the quays and (gosh, I really loved this place already) hyper-tanned blondes lazed in deckchairs on tiny wooden jetties. “You won’t believe the price of houses out here,” lamented Jurgen, distracting me further by pointing at one of its most prominent villas and quoting a fantastic sum despite it still needing modernising.
Most are holiday homes. As one of Europe’s largest countries with one of its lowest population densities, the second home or holiday cabin or even just ready access to one is almost universal in Sweden. Little wonder, then, that the reinvention of some of these decaying villages has – at least in season – been so beguiling and perhaps never more so than eight kilometres offshore from Hälleviksstrand.
Our ferry chugged past uninhabited Saltö, where cows grazed nonchalantly near kayakers’ tents, and continued through more open sea to car-free Karingön where the Swedish take on a holiday island is finely tuned. Burgundy and pastel-coloured cottages sit cheek by jowl, threaded by little lanes that peter out among the heaths and rocks. There are handcarts to shift luggage, no one seems to close their curtains and children play out until ten or eleven at night. A mecca for yachties, it is utterly quaint in summer but clearly rather tougher for the few families who remain through winter.
Down by the harbour, there is a puzzling statue of a woman carrying a basket of turf. Camilla, my guide, explained how it commemorates local tenacity. These rich fishing grounds drew hardy people who, this far out, also needed to grow some crops. The poor thin soil was so unyielding they resorted to bringing much more from the mainland. Today there are plenty of little gardens, some even with apple trees.
I delved into Karingön’s nooks and crannies (for there are no particular sights as such) and ended up at the tiny Karingö oyster bar, which seems to bear the gold standard in defying those old hardships. Their oysters sit in baskets suspended from their jetty, so from sea to shucking takes all of a minute. “And if you came in winter,” added co-owner Kent, “we could put you in the hot tub.”
The house speciality involves finding up to ten friends to strip off and sit in the fire-warmed tub perched on the jetty guzzling oysters and champagne – hail, sleet or snow.
We headed north, crossing Gullmarn – Sweden’s only fjord – by another ferry and wound on through a patchwork of fields and forests with occasional rocky bluffs. Fjällbacka is among the most popular spots in the northern part of Bohuslän, the main road dipping abruptly between weatherboard houses down to the harbour and Ingrid Bergman Square. The great actress often passed through town to reach her retreat, an isolated green cabin on the nearby island of Dannholmen.
“It’s way over there!” pointed Ingemar as his boat heaved through the swell towards the remoter Väderöarna Islands. Nearly fifteen kilometres offshore, their last permanent residents left only recently but a few visitors still come out here to stay in a handful of cottages clinging surreally to the bare rocks. It’s also popular with yachtsmen seeking a handful of pretty inlets but only the seals could ever truly feel at home here, and we paused to watch a small wary colony busy watching us.
Back on the mainland, I climbed stairs into the so-called ‘King’s Cleft’, a short deep mossy ravine that gnaws into a hill behind town. More stairs take one to the summit with its ponds and bracken edged by forest. In summer at least, people come up to picnic and sunbathe on the smooth grey rocks, and admire the views up and down a coast that cannot decide if it wants to be sea or land.
Taste of West Sweden
‘Västsvensk Mersmak’ or Taste of West Sweden was begun in 2000 with the idea of establishing an accreditation scheme for the region’s best restaurants who also involved high quality producers. Twenty-nine restaurants are currently accredited, nearly half of them strung out along the Bohuslän coast from Marstrand in the south to Sydkoster in the north. The emphasis is on seafood, in particular the ‘big five’: oyster, lobster, langoustine, mussels and prawns. Local enthusiasm for foodie culture is matched by the quality of produce (the cold Baltic waters mean oysters et al grow more slowly and therefore are more flavoursome) and popularised by, for example, an oyster shucking festival in April at Grebbestad and the well-known ‘lobster safaris’ which commence on the first Monday after 20th September.