Somewhere towards the northern end of the Stockholm archipelago there is a red wooden house atop its own island, snug in a glade of pines and birches. There is smooth slanting rock to the east for morning sunning, same to the west for sunset viewing, a dock, an outhouse, a fire pit on a spur, a flagpole, and a sauna, all placed at polite distances from one another, connected by meandering paths through low brush. When I arrived there, I felt like I had landed into that immersive computer game Myst — onto an island built from an improbably aesthetic assortment of elemental shapes and textures. The rock faces are veined with pink, and the water they curl into sloshes with waves that are a little too fractal. The cotton-tufted sky is doused in polarized light that should not ever produce such blue hues in real life.

There are distinct soundscapes too. Sit to the west, towards the prevailing wind, and you notice the hissing of the reeds at the water’s edge, set against deeper notes of swaying pine trees. Higher up, a flagpole line beats a syncopated tang. The outhouse door operates with a squeak-thudA dunny for the D’ni, perhaps? Sorry, you have to be an Australian geek before that’s even remotely funny.. I half-expect to find a puzzle here, and indeed there is a strange round metallic contraption hidden amid a clump of trees, though I rather suspect divining its mysterious purpose would involve getting to know the outhouse composting system rather intimately.

It is on this island that Helena G. and two dozen of her friends celebrated her birthday last weekend, at a party that managed to sublimate all that is essential about the Stockholm weekend getaway. We trickled in via ferry and car, and then rowed the final stretch. Once there, I dumped my bags and quickly made for the water. The island had to be swum around; a marking of the territory, perhaps. Then, we sunned for hours, stuck like fridge magnets to the sloping rock, holding our towels in place.

As I lay there, A conversation I was half-monitoring veered past a word I couldn’t contextualize. Mambo? It’s a neologism derived from sambo (to live (bo) together (samman) as a couple but not be married) but it means to live with one’s mother. Were there any more such words? Certainly, I was told, as Swedes are nothing if not socially innovative. For example, there is kombo, which means to live together with a friend (kompis); ensambo, to live unattached alone (ensam); and särbo, which can mean to be attached but to live apart, for example when a relationship that begat children is undergoing a downgrade — and which upon first hearing I first thought was written serbo, i.e. to live with a Serb. There would have to be a pambo, then, too (to live with one’s father)? Yes, everyone conceded, though without much enthusiasm, as they turned back towards the sun. I decided I could take a liking to punning like this in Swedish: Bilbo, to live in one’s car (bil)? Lesbo, obviously? Hobo, without fixed abode? People were finding spots further afield. Limbo, when moving from one apartment to another? Bimbo, when you’re living on the set of Big Brother? OK, I’ll stop. Wait, no, yobbo, to live with a hooligan?

Much later, it was time to drag considerable amounts of booze to the spur, where the tables were being set for the kräftskiva, or crayfish party. Silly hats were donned, the aquavit glasses were filled to the brim but never for long, and drinking songs sounded out across the water towards the setting sun. The center of attention, however, was the crayfish themselves, hundreds of whom were sacrificed in an orgy of focused determination that lasted hours, until the fingers bledIf Ridley Scott’s aliens ever made a sci-fi horror film, I imagine it would involve hordes of giant Swedes with heinous headgear methodically ripping apart crustacean carapaces before bringing these mangled bodies to their mouths to suck out the flesh.. These things must have negative net calories, considering the effort it takes to eat them, and how the hunger for them never slakes.

A vignette from later still: Realizing that the sauna experience is just like jogging but while sitting still, and that it is thus a far faster and more civilized form of achieving the same inevitable result — total body meltdown. Furthermore, a dunking in a dark Baltic is a far more effective resuscitation tactic than a cold shower could ever be back in Stockholm.

The next morning, it was time to swim around the island again, followed by coffee and a day of lazing before taking a slow boat full of good food back to Stockholm. Weekends in the archipelago truly rank among the world’s best.