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The diminunitive BB crew outside the unlikely luxury hotel in the old calcamine quarry on remote Furillen island outside Gotland

The diminunitive BB crew outside the unlikely luxury hotel in the old calcamine quarry on remote Furillen island outside Gotland's northeastern shore. Photographed by Johan Hedström

Finale in style on our grand Swedish odyssey

Claes Britton | Feb 28, 2007 | 2 comments

And so our great Swedish expedition draws to an end, as our official Sweden image film nears the editing phase. Not yet, however – we're still out there on those roads, trails, rails, seas and oceans, in among frozen forests, thorny bushes and busy streets, over stormy fields and boglands and up into the snowy mountains and grim black winter skies, our trusty old 16-millimeter camera humming restlessly in our unfatigable investigation and documentation of our vast and majestic homeland. One dark, unforgiving Tuesday evening late in February took us out in the extreme east, to the old limestone quarry on the remote island of Furillen outside Gotland's northeastern shore, where advertising photographer Johan Hellström has built his peerless, ultra-minimalistic luxury hotel, widely publicized in global lifestyle media and ranked as number one of Swedish hotels, no less, in business daily Dagens Industri's prestigious ranking. It was a surreal experience to drive slowly mile after mile on icy roads through a pitch black moonscape in heavy snowfall, finally arriving in this unique environment, reminiscent of some frontline New York design hotel, if anything, where we, as the only guests, were served a superb dinner of duck liver, lamb roast and almond semifredo, washed down with a modern Chianti, with the fireplaces burning ferociously all around us and the eastern wind howling in from the wide open Baltic winter sea. If you don't know about Furillen, do check it out on www.furillen.nu.

Now little more than just one more turn off to distant Lapland remains...

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