Öland

Öland stretches long and flat in the Kalmar Strait, joined to the mainland by a bridge that runs over six kilometres without a bend. The Alvaret at its heart is a limestone plain stripped bare by wind and thin soil, carpeted with orchids each May. Hundreds of windmills still stand along the roads.

Öland is Sweden's island of horizontals — 137 kilometres long, seldom fifteen wide, crossed by Sweden's longest bridge. Its southern half is the Stora Alvaret, a treeless limestone steppe so singular that UNESCO listed the island's agricultural landscape: orchids, rare butterflies and ground-nesting birds on pavement-thin soil farmed since the Stone Age. The island's four-hundred-odd wooden windmills are the leftover pride of farms that each milled their own grain. Borgholm's enormous castle ruin stares roofless from the western ridge — once among Scandinavia's grandest palaces — while the royal family's Solliden summer residence sits in the woods below it. The island dish is kroppkakor: potato dumplings hiding smoked pork, served with lingonberries and cream, entirely serious.