Djurö

Djurö is the national park almost nobody has seen: some thirty-five islands far out in the open water of Vänern, Europe's largest lake outside Russia, a good hour's sailing from the nearest mainland harbour. The park, established in 1991, is mostly water — around 2,400 hectares of which only a fraction is land — and the islands themselves are low and glacier-smoothed, pine forest and heather over bare rock, with the horizon of an inland sea on every side.

The archipelago has the feel of the Baltic skerries transplanted into fresh water, and some of the same history: fishing hamlets, grazing, and a lighthouse on the main island of Djurö that marked the shipping lane through the lake. The odder inheritance is the mouflon — wild sheep introduced to the islands in the mid-twentieth century, whose descendants still graze the pine heaths and keep parts of the island interior unexpectedly open. Ospreys and gulls own the air; the surrounding waters hold Vänern's landlocked salmon and whitefish.

What the park mostly offers is distance. There are no scheduled boats, no roads, no shop, no noise except weather; Vänern is big enough to make its own, and the open crossings can be seriously rough for small boats. It is the emptiest park in southern Sweden not because it is hard walking but because it is hard arriving.

What's worth knowing before you go

You come by your own keel, by kayak if you are experienced and watch the forecast, or by chartered boat — most easily arranged from the Kållandsö side, where Spiken fishing harbour is the natural jumping-off point. There are natural harbours and a guest jetty at the main island, simple overnight shelters, and nothing else; Vänern's reputation for sudden weather is earned, and crossings need respect. High summer is the season, and even then you may share the park with no one.

The connoisseur's moment is early morning on the main island's heath, when the mouflon come out to graze — wild sheep against a freshwater horizon, which is not a sight the rest of Europe supplies.