Trollskogen (Öland)

Trollskogen clings to Öland's northern tip — a forest of wind-twisted oaks and ancient pines bent permanently inland by centuries of Baltic weather, trunks frozen mid-stride like a spell interrupted. On the rocky shore at the forest's edge lie the remains of the schooner Swiks, stranded in 1926. The trails are flat, short and strange.

Trollskogen — the Troll Forest — is a nature reserve where woodland meets open Baltic at Öland's exposed northern point, and the wind has done the landscaping: oaks and pines lean, spiral and crouch in shapes no sheltered forest produces. A marked loop threads the sculptural woodland and the shore, passing the Swiks wreck slowly surrendering to the rocks, with Naturum Trollskogen at the entrance supplying the ecology and the coastal history before you walk. The veteran trees are protected — admired from the path, not climbed — which suits the place: it looks exactly like somewhere trolls would resent the intrusion. The reserve pairs naturally with Byxelkrok harbour and the rest of northern Öland.