Simply the best

Author: By David Warsh, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, April 13, 1997

Page: M1

Section: Travel

``It is quite simply, one of the best places on Earth. But I suppose that is a matter of taste. It consists largely of limestone, so the summer light reminds one of Provence. The walled city is not as rich as Carcassone, but it is that kind of constellation. The sailing is good, so is the swimming. There are 84 churches of the 12th and 13th centuries. There are rare birds; the flora are quite unusual, too -- meadows of orchids, for example. And it is flat, so it is perfect for bicycling.''

I had heard so much, for so long, about the Swedish summer isle of Gotland that I finally decided to see for myself. During a short reporting trip to Stockholm in February, Istopped by ``the Pearl of the Baltic'' for a weekend. My daughter Lucy came along.

To be sure, it was winter, but we resolutely set the lenses of our imagination forward to summer. Nature cooperated; the sky was blue, the Baltic dark, the moss floor of the forest springy beneath our feet.

It turned out that my friend was right.

Gotland and neighboring Faro are Sweden's Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, idyllic islands in the Baltic barely half an hour by air from Stockholm, or, better, a five-hour trip by ferry from Nynashamn. There are some 125 miles of flower-filled meadows, ancient farms, deep forests, sandy beaches, tiny harbors, and the strange natural limestone monoliths that the Swedes call rokar.

But instead of an old whaling town, Gotland's center is a medieval trading city -- Visby -- built into a hillside above a perfect harbor and largely unspoiled from the days 700 years ago when it was a vital member of the the Hanseatic League of city-states. ``Rome in a nutshell,'' the biologist Linnaeus called Visby when he visited in 1741 -- and that was before a series of bucolic 19th-century resort settlements grew up around it. More than a few people I know consider that wandering Visby's ancient streets was one of the peak experiences of their lives.

It was in the 18th century that Visby became a ``romantic'' destination for well-to-do Swedes. It was in the mid-19th century that it became a summer colony. A fashionable princess sought the sea-air near Visby for her health; polite society quickly followed. There are plenty of other ways to experience a Swedish island summer today: Bornholm, off the Danish coast; Oland, with its bridge to the Swedish mainland; the countless islands of the archipelago east of Stockholm. But Gotland is clearly the top of the line.

Precisely because of the ancient city, the well-to-do continued to come to Gotland. What they found on the island were ruins of all sorts, not just of the medieval Hanse period of trading city-states thet flourished in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, but of Christian missionaries, Viking warriors, amber traders who had ventured down Russian rivers the Black Sea, Iron Age farmers, and Bronze Age rock-carvers. Life in Gotland was often dull, but seldom peaceful for very long.

Each age left remarkable relics: graves in the form of Viking ships; clifftop fortresses; the Bulverket in Lake Tingstade Trask, a large artificial island fortress built on stilts and containing a large number of wooden houses; rune stones and religious artifacts; and hoards of coins accumulated during thing island's prosperous centuries -- 700 caches have been discovered, nearly twice the number found in all the other Nordic countries put together. Indeed, it is illegal today to possess a metal detector on the islands, so rich is the trove of still undiscovered treasures.

The most singular of all these artifacts -- the turreted wall with its parapet walk that still that surrounds Visby -- is an outgrowth of a war between the city and countryside peasants that broke out in the spring of 1288. Three main gates served as choke points at which city dwellers charged peasants a fee to bring their wares to town. The amphitheater-like town and its harbor were snugly enclosed, along with a few strategic small farms.

Today, the little farms have become bontanical gardens; the old inner harbor has become a park built round a duckpond. But otherwise the stora torget, the central square, is just where it was in Stone Age times; the streets are those that were laid out by the Vikings; you can find your way as easily with the first map ever made of Visby, circa 1585, as with the latest turistkarte. For happily, the rediscovery of Visby coincided wih the turn-of-the-century preservation movement that has made Stockholm such a joy.

Portions of the wall have been completely restored, a greenbelt of unspoiled parkland surrounds the old town, and the level of preservation within is downright breathtaking. Some 2,200 persons live in the town year-round, in an array of beautiful little houses built round stone church ruins and medieval buildings and so successfully interspersed with hotels, restaurants, and shops that it seems that the town lacks a commercial district. A branch of the national university system has set up shop in an old malt factory on the waterfront and its adjacent warehouses. The history museum is first rate, and includes a fine exhibit of the daily life of the currently dominant tribe, its high school students. (The first Pippi Longstocking film was shot here in 1968.)

This is the Visby about which people rave -- the city in which every view subtends narrow winding streets, snug homes, overarching trees, and the sea beyond. At the height of the summer, the sun doesn't set until 10:30 p.m. Gotland is sunny more days than any other place in Sweden (though it still can cloud up for days at a time). Seemingly every gardener in the town cultivates roses, and their scent lingers on the evening air. Open-air restaurants are everywhere; artists display their work; the harbor is full of yachts. Only the tang of salt air is missing; since the Baltic is connected to the North Sea only by narrow straits, it is low in salinity.

Almost every week in summer brings some special event, including ``politicians' week,'' a schmoozefest made famous by prime minister Olaf Palme -- he had been a lifelong summer citizen of Gotland until he was assassinated in 1986. ``Medieval week'' in August finds the townspeople decked out in medieval garb, acting out a 1361 festival complete with jousting -- a cross between Brigadoon and Plimoth Plantation. In the church ruins there are concerts and productions of Shakespeare.

Language is not a problem; nearly everyone under 60 speaks some English (German was taught in schools before World War II.) It helps to learn a little Swedish, of course, and there are the peculiarities of Gotlandic pronunciation: Three times one evening I tried without success to order a glass of aquavit until at last the waitress said, ``Ah, you mean aqua-weet!''

Yes, rates soar -- a little cottage outside the wall starts at $800 for a week and goes steeply up from there. Many longtime residents rent their old town homes and go to the country or leave the island at the height of the tourist season. The old-town streets can feel congested. Occasionally there are too many drunken teenagers walking around late at night. But if Visby operates at fever pitch in July, it maintains a more relaxed pace in June and August, and it is glorious in September -- just like Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

Besides, it is outside the city that the real summer life of Gotland unfolds. Some 58,000 persons live on the island year round, only 21,000 of them in greater Visby. The countryside consists in equal part of farms, forests, and heath. Horned sheep (and a few wild island ponies) graze the meadows. Scattered over the landscape are a dozen towns: Larbro, Slite, Klintehamn, Roma, Hemse, Katthammarsvik, Farosunde, Stanga, Burgsvik, Ljugarn, Havdhem. Each has something to recommend it.

The Larbro church has a tower castle to defend it. It was in Klintehamn that the princess made her summer home. The English occupied Farosunde for a time during the Crimean War. The harbor at Slite is guarded by an island fortress. There are museum farms and rebuilt long houses and historic fishing villages and those majestic limestone pillars -- the rokar -- on many beaches. Every 5 miles or so is a remarkable church. In Katthammarsik and the southernmost tip of Gotland there are large colonies of artists. And of course there is a small working economy as well, concentrated mainly on beet sugar and cement. Nothing is more than a two hour drive (or a reasonable bicycle trip) from anything else.

It was, however, the island of Faro that presented the most rewarding payoff on this particular trip. Well do I remember my first glimpses of Sweden -- hunched forward in the Brattle Theater in Cambridge in the early 1960s, watching Ingmar Bergman films. Bergman came to Faro in 1960 looking for locations for ``Through A Glass Darkly,'' for rocky seascapes, a shipwreck and an ancient apple orchard. He found the shipwreck and the apple orchard and built a summer home in which he has lived for 40 years.

So powerful are these film images in the Swedish imagination that it was with an unmistakable excitement that Matts Jannson, head of the Gotland tourist bureau, leaned forward across our table at the Wisby Hotel and mentioned to us that the special military zones were being dramatically shrunk. These had prevented non-Swedes from entering much of northern Gotland throughout the Cold War; as of April 1 they would all but disappear: the Army already had ceased enforcing the ban. (What goes on in the secret bases? Who knows? The neutral Swedes have a robust high-tech military tradition.)

And so it was that Lucy and I became the first American tourists to ogle Ingmar Bergman's house. We did it from a distance, taking pains not to gawk, admiring the working farm, the austere but well-windowed home, the lake beyond, the few houses set close to a road that had been almost completely unaffected by the advent of the motorcar and, yes, the apple orchard and a windmill beyond.

Summer islands were something of a persistent dream in my family. I have spent time on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket -- as well as Monhegan, Vinal Haven, Naushon and Mackinac Island. I know something of Spetses, Mull, Borkum, Vashon and Prince Edward Island. In other words, I possess some standard of comparison. The Pearl of the Baltic outshines them all. Faro is about as elemental as they come. And with its walled medieval city, Gotland may be the most opulent of all the summer islands.

There are house brokers who will find you a cottage for any pocketbook, and people surely will be nice to you if you stay at the 4-star Wisby Hotel, or any of the other hotels in the old town. There are bed-and-breakfast inns all over the island.

Tours are a more economical way to tap into what is unique about Gotland. A Boston company that offers 10-day summer bicycle tours of Gotland is Backroad Travel in Sweden. Partners are Cecelia Franzel and Susanna Svedberg. (Svedberg, who lived in Visby for three years, goes back each May to plant the potatoes for her August vacation.) Franzel promises relatively easy place-to-place bicycling and comfortable accommodations in charming out-of-the-way places. They can be reached at (888) 646-2955, or fax (617) 648-3522.

A handy publication is ``Guide Gotland,'' which includes a calendar and telephone numbers and is available from the Gotland Tourist Association, Box 1403, S-621 25, Visby, Sweden (telephone 46 498 20 17 00; fax 46 498 27 89 40).