Fabriken Furillen

On the long, narrow bridge from the main island to Furillen, the mind focuses. Thoughts gather. It’s like the title sequence of a good thriller. We’re leaving one island for another. Who is going to die? After the bridge, a constricted road through a harsh moonscape towards the crescendo. In the valley that opens on the sea lies the old lime factory: raw, hard, beautiful. Fabriken Furil-len is not a hotel you lazily stumble across on a booking website; it’s a conscious choice that comes with expectations. It’s also a story of hard-headed entrepreneurship. Johan is a photog-rapher who discovered this landscape made to be captured by a lens, decades before Insta-gram. He bought the old factory and began a long and arduous journey through logistics and legalities in order to turn it into Sweden’s most offbeat hotel. A raw industrial aesthetic – not as a dated trend, but the very origin. Everything is of concrete and stone. There are so many shades of grey here that Christian Gray would be green with envy. Rooms are simple but com-fortable. The bathroom is perhaps a bit too brutalist in its barracks style. The toilet seat looks like prison standard issue. But everything matches in a style that merges seamlessly with the bleak landscape. Food-wise you never really know what you’ll get at Fabriken. Some years the restaurant dishes out top-class fare, others it’s woefully wobbly – but at least breakfast is al-ways competently executed. And best enjoyed on a grey sheepskin, with your back against the concrete and your head towards the sea.