A ferry to Gothenburg's isles opens up a slower pace of life and upliftingly beautiful landscapes
Pedalling through backwater Styrsö on a sit-up-and-beg bicycle, I follow lanes dotted with wooden weatherboard houses and apple and cherry blossom. Locals glide past in golfcarts as I near the polished rock shoreline, where the hammering sound of woodpeckers is replaced by that of garrulous gulls around quaint little fishing harbours like Tången.
Once prosperous through salting herring, its halcyon days are marked by the handsome homes of sea captains and rows of red fishing sheds. ’s southern archipelago in the Kattegat Sea, Styrsö is car-free. Bylaws permit the use of only bicycles, electric golfcarts and mopeds – plus, in the case of Köpstadsö island, wheelbarrows – which lends the islands a timeless unhurried ambience. Getting here from Gothenburg is easy and inexpensive, making a few days island-hopping a natural extension to a.
Having checked out of the city’s elegant 19th-century Hotel Royal, I took tram no 11 to Saltholmen to catch the 70-minute ferry to Styrsö, a journey costing just SEK37 . An island of 1,500 residents, Styrsö is scattered with forest and lined with ice-smoothed bedrock. In the 19th century, it was a popular location for health and wellness sanatoriums, with people travelling here from the mainland in search of cures for various ailments.
Excursions are available with local seaweed foraging expert Karolina Martinson “Styrsö’s sanatoriums used to treat conditions like TB in part due to seaweed’s high iodine concentration,” local seaweed foraging expert Karolina Martinson tells me. I’ve joined her beachside at Üttervik for fika – coffee, cake and a chat – soundtracked by the squeaks of oystercatchers.
Emphasising seaweed’s value as a healthy and sustainable food source, Karolina instructs chefs how to use it and takes children foraging to find 15 edible varieties. Today she’s baked delicious little tartlets sweetened with foraged sugar kelp and meadowsweet herb. It may also have featured in the diets of the ancient peoples who inhabited Styrsö as far back as 7,000 years ago, traces of whom can be spotted on a hike in the island’s rugged south.
I follow a forest nature trail through rowan, maple and birch stands, pausing by Tjonnkällan’s Stone Age settlement, a Viking cemetery, and a medieval fishing camp along the shoreline. By the time I return to Kusthotellet – Styrsö’s only hotel – my legs are weary. Just as well, then, that the hotel continues local wellness traditions with heat and saltwater treatments.
A prosecco-fuelled hen party has taken over the warm saltwater pool, but by 8pm their bubble has burst, and I let the restorative waters work their magic. Floating with a glass of wine, I watch a flaming sunset over Donsö island. The first ferry to Donsö the next day leaves at 8.23am. It’s Sunday morning and blissfully quiet.
The island has a strong religious community, and its pealing church-bells are borne on a fresh sea breeze. At Hotel Isbolaget, a former ice-storage house, I’m the only guest and the staff are not working so they’ve left my supper and breakfast in the fridge. A quayside interpretation panel nearby says Donsö has seen times of great economic success due to herring and shipping companies.
Amusingly, it also says that around 1870 Donsö had seven pubs, which led to much “drinking and fighting”. All is peaceful now though. Donsö is upliftingly beautiful, its northern hiking trail traverses sparkling spring oak forests and I gird my loins for a dip near Donsöhuvud lighthouse on the southeastern coast, one of many wild swimming spots. I lower myself in and gasp at the Kattegat Sea’s coldness.
But the sun is shining, so I stretch out on a warm, smooth rock to dry out as I watch terns perform arrowing dives to fish. Thankfully, there’s an easier way to procure fish: at Popsicle. This lively restaurant-bar with an outdoor area is run by Klara Gustafsson and her sister, born-and-bred islanders, and daughters of a North Sea fishermen.
Their seafood is locally caught, and their speciality is an open Gothenburg Royal sandwich: mussels and crabmeat heaped upon rye bread. Klara was at the hen party the night before, a rare opportunity to let her hair down as, alongside running the restaurant, she co-owns a family yarn business and raises children.
“Donsö people are hardworking and entrepreneurial, and our women are strong, used for generations to being alone while the men fished at sea,” she tells me. “People take care of each other here and with no cars it’s a very safe place to raise children”. If Styrsö and Donsö embody tranquillity, Köpstadsö has endearingly flatlined. After retrieving my breakfast from the hotel fridge, I sail to Köpstadsö, population roughly 125.
Waiting for me are Gunilla and Torsten, alongside dozens of wheelbarrows personalised by islanders and used for transporting goods and their small children between the ferry quay and their homes.
“There is a four-seater electric golfcart though for those who cannot walk,” says Torsten. A friend contacted the couple – ex-lawyers from Gothenburg, who fell in love with the island when renting a summer house here – to ask if they would show me their insanely pretty idyll.
The settlement’s 19th-century weatherboard houses snuggle between whaleback boulders, including the schoolhouse that closed in 1952 due to a lack of children . There’s no cafe, shop or accommodation – for visitors, this is just a place to feel a connection to yesteryear for a few hours. Gunilla and Torsten show me the marina where the city’s residents arrived in droves to bathe in the 1880s.
Here, we meet their friend, a 16th-generation islander descended from one of the original families that settled Köpstadsö in 1565.
“You need three generations buried in the churchyard before you’re considered an islander,” laughs Torsten, who settled here in the 1980s. Three days in the archipelago, however, proved time enough for me to disconnect from the outside world and let the islands soothe my soul.
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