A Photographer's Gotland: Limestone Cliffs, Cinnamon Buns and a Refinery Turned Hotel
Suitcase sends Stockholm photographer Petter Bäcklund back to the Baltic islands of Gotland and Fårö, where September light, farm shops and a 19-room former limestone refinery shape a short, slow season.
Suitcase has published a photographer's guide to Gotland and Fårö, the Swedish province lying roughly 100km off the southeastern mainland in the Baltic, built around Stockholm-based photographer Petter Bäcklund, who has spent every summer for 16 years at his partner's holiday house on Fårö and recently shot a photo essay on the islands for Afar.
The properties named are mostly conversions. Fabriken Furillen is a former limestone refinery turned 19-room hotel by photographer Johan Hellström, with Hästens beds, linen-clad staff and a foraging-led kitchen under head chef Lucaz Ottosson. Sibbjäns, a recent opening, is a 20-hectare working farm whose buildings have been refurbished by local craftspeople using reclaimed oak and upcycled furniture, with water conservation a stated priority. On Fårö's Mölnor Bay, Magnus Ek and Agneta Green, formerly of the two-Michelin-starred Oaxen Krog in Stockholm, run Ek & Greens Trä Gård from a restored 19th-century farmhouse, selling his hand-carved wooden homewares beside her preserves.
The rest is a day's itinerary: cinnamon buns at the second-generation bakery Sylvis Döttrar, cycling the Bungenäs nature reserve past Cold War ruins, barbecued lamb at Fårögården, a swim below the limestone cliffs at Hallshuk, tacos at Kappelshamn Bay. Daylight in September eases back to about 12 hours.