Hasselö is worth the Hassel
If you can make the trip, you should!
A few days ago, I met my team in Sweden for a mini conference of sorts, filled with constructive branding, product development and team building exercises. The location for this two-ish day event, was a surprise. All I knew was that I had to pack winter clothes, my swim suit, and enough to be here in the country of Sweden for 10 days. So far, I’m pretty impressed with my packing skills. They were much better for this trip than they were for Abu Dhabi (but then again packing for winter in the desert is a bit tricky).
I got into Sweden on Monday morning, but my bag was still stuck in Amsterdam. Luckily, they were able to send it through on the next flight and by the time I was ready for bed (with the 6 hour time change), it had arrived with all of my winter clothes and bathing suit. During the day, we swung by the office, ran some errands and got ready for this mysterious conference.
After trudging through a bit snow, and climbing aboard a rather posh Mercedes Bus, we still had no idea where we were going. We started running through some brainstorming and creative thinking exercises while still wondering where we might be headed. When we were about half way, they revealed our destination…after telling us that we were going to really get there by boat – but the name to me, still meant nothing.
Hasselö, part of a Swedish archipelago was our destination and man, was I in for a treat. It turns out, this is a small island, where the scenery is epic, the people are friendly and the service is amazing. We stayed in an old schoolhouse turned hostel and were served delectable dishes including deer and elk. There was plenty of coffee for Fikas and the desserts were amazing. There was even a hot tub out back.
Swedish landholding is much different than it is in the states. For example, the farm where I am staying is owned by the government but leased by the main tenants – who then can rent out other buildings if they choose. On this Island, there were fishing cabins along the water, all in a row. Then there were houses all next to each other along the “road”. I say it in quotes because most travel by tractor or ATV and we saw one small car the whole time on the island. Then, they explained that each house then had one of the barns, which were all next to each other a bit further off – and then each house also had a bit of land and a space to fish in the ocean, and these rotated every year so that everyone was treated equally. Imagine trying to orchestrate that in the US.
We were given a tour of the island in the Swedish version of a hayride – a galvanized trolly pulled by an ATV, huddled under blankets, hats, and coats on top of coats. They told the stories in Swedish and my team translated so I wouldn’t miss out. Then later in the trip we got to go to one of the places that they showed us, a small pub which used to be a fishing cabin, called The Winter Swan. People come during the Summer and on Saturdays in the Winter by boat and ATV from this and other islands to have a drink and a chat. Being an off day, they opened it especially for us and served us an amazing dinner. It was lit by candle light and fits about 14 people! Talk about cozy.
I didn’t realized that it was named after a swan until we were leaving the next day because there are wild swans all over this area – I’ve never seen so many in one place before.
Everyone on the island is so nice and caring – I felt totally at ease not knowing Swedish as everyone made an effort to speak to me as much as possible (my co-workers knowing english also helped a great deal). But it’s all a community effort you can tell. The hostel staff bought us to diner, and the pub owner’s husband brought us back. They even heated up their fire-heated hot tub and sauna next to the ocean for us – and I was brave enough to take a quick dip in between sessions in the hot tub. It was really a charming place to be, made even more enjoyable by the people.
It’s a different sort of scenery – the closest that we could come to it is probably parts of the North East like Maine, but even that is very different. There is a story to almost everything here, how the fish get their names, how the local milk farmer rows his milk jugs out to a pier for someone else to pick up, how there is a store that no one works in and people just take what they need and leave the money in the store – which is named Hannanora after a woman who tragically died on the island.
I would highly recommend making the trip here – it’s a bit of a hassle to get to Hasseloö from the US, taking a plane, possibly a train, a bus and a boat – but it’s definitely worth it.
