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If you go down to the woods: Sweden's daring campaign to frighten tourists into visiting

Kiln narrator - Marcus Svanberg
Kiln narrator - Marcus Svanberg

I am woken some time around 3am by a noise overhead. It is a subtle sound, but one with an insistent hint of danger. In my scarcely lucid state, it suggests the scratch of nails across the window suspended above me; a hand dragged unseen along the pane.

Perhaps it is, because in the absolute nocturnal darkness of the Swedish forest, with the nearest light-switch marooned halfway across the room, I cannot tell. And with this, a thought invades my brain: Maybe I shouldn’t have listened to a horror story right before bedtime.

Sweden has a recent history of innovative marketing campaigns, designed to sell the country to tourists. In 2016, the “Phone a Random Swede” hotline took a quirky route, letting you ring a genuine local for a chat about the weather, Abba, the humble meatball, or whatever you fancied.

In 2019, “The Edible Country” made a virtue of both food and scenery, pitching long wooden tables in gorgeous rustic locations, for al-fresco feasts of freshly picked produce. But “Spellbound by Sweden”, its latest act of self-promotion, is a stranger thing, retaining the rural setting of three years ago, but conjuring a darker place – of nervous tension, potential peril and supernatural forces. Daring? That’s one word for it.

The abridged version is a striking two-minute video which taps into the shadows of Scandi-noir cinema. It finds a male hiker stepping keenly – but all alone – into the forest on a weekend break, only to realise that he is lost. His subsequent charged encounter with a young woman may be a coincidental occurrence – or it may be something more sinister.

The longer version is Kiln, a short story by John Ajvide Lindqvist – a writer who might fairly be described as “Sweden’s Stephen King” – which provides a complete account of this unusual meeting under the canopy. Offered as a 28-minute audio-file, only available on Spotify in Sweden, it is meant to be “enjoyed” in a suitably remote neck of the woods.

In my case, this is Trakt – a luxury forest hotel, near the village of Horsaback, in the southerly province of Småland. It is an exclusive spot; just five comfortable en-suite cabins tucked into the trees, each with broad windows for admiring the view. It is a newcomer too, opened in July by Sandra and Mattias Salleteg, who own the next-door Sallehagnad Farm. And there is food to go with the flora; a reception-restaurant space where cuts of beef reared in the adjacent field are offered up under flickering candlelight.

Trakt luxury forest hotel - Chris Leadbeater
Trakt luxury forest hotel - Chris Leadbeater

There are other people around me as I eat; locals in for a dash of fine dining. But the joy and conversation of the evening seem to dissipate with every step as I return to my cabin, the path illuminated only vaguely by intermittent solar light-posts. By the time I am five minutes into Kiln, these warm echoes have ceased entirely.

The voice of the narrator, softly female at first, adopts a mocking, amused tone as it draws the listener away from the trail, recasting them as the confused hiker of the video. “Take a couple of steps and watch where you put your feet,” she chides. “Don’t trip on a root, or sink into the moss.”

The tale takes its title from the charcoal kilns, defunct in places like this, that were tended by labourers in the 19th century. Theirs was a stark existence, shaped by long hours and the gloom between the boughs. Soon, the narrator is pulling towards a similar sense of isolation, warning me not to fall, break a leg, be left stranded.

“It may be years before anyone finds you, in the form of a skeleton,” she muses, “licked clean by the animals of the forest, impossible to identify.”

sweden holiday travel - Chris Leadbeater
sweden holiday travel - Chris Leadbeater

By the time the twist is revealed – that the woman in the woods is a huldra; a seductive forest nymph who steals your soul if you tell her your name, even as you indulge your desires in her arms – I am wrapped in the terror of it all. The wind whips about outside, a cold howl, and the cabin, perched on stilts, bends gently to its will. More surprising than my 3am awakening is that I fall asleep in the first place.

When the dawn begins to seep in through the uncurtained windows, shortly before seven, everything is different. The firmament is a flawless white, the soil a pale brown, the branches a rich green. The scratching talons of my would-be 3am assailant are revealed as several hard clumps of pine needles, dislodged by the wind, and blown along the skylight. The forest, apparently menacing at midnight, is now a haven of quiet welcome.

This, of course, is the point of the campaign; not to scare people away from a landscape which covers 70 per cent of the Swedish realm, but to intrigue them with its mystery and calm. “The Swedish forests have historically been home to many fascinating creatures,” explained Nils Persson, the chief marketing officer for Visit Sweden, when the short film was first released. “We want to introduce the world to their enchantingly beautiful home.”

Trakt Hotel Sweden - Chris Leadbeater
Trakt Hotel Sweden - Chris Leadbeater

There is substance to the superstition. Those who simply wish to hike arboreal paths can do so with ease (Swedish law enshrines the concept of allemansratten; the freedom to roam). But the idea of fantastical beings lurking off the trail is more than a fairytale; not least in Småland, where such stories have been woven into the social fabric for centuries.

Uncrowded, unassuming and overwhelmingly rural, the region shrinks from your gaze, even as your eyes scan the Swedish map in search of it. It exists elusively at the lower tip of the country, spread out between the metropolitan trio of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, but beholden to none of them. Its biggest city, Jönköping, is hardly big at all.

While it stands beside Lake Vättern, Sweden’s second largest lake, it claims just 145,000 residents. Småland has, though, come into focus this year. A direct twice-weekly Ryanair flight between Stansted and the even smaller city of Växjö was launched back in March.

It wears its mythology proudly. In 2018, the dedicated preservation of these hair-raising tales in the Kronoberg region – one of the three counties within Småland – was added to the Unesco list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, commended for connecting “storytelling to other forms of living heritage – helping to revitalise it, and promote it as a living art”.

These words take shape at the Museum of Legends (Sagomuseet) in Ljungby. Laid out in child-friendly fashion – and around the work of Gunnar Olaf Hylten-Cavallius, a Swedish author of folk stories – the building introduces the various stars of the supernatural rogues gallery: the huldra, the näcken (a malicious pipe-playing sprite keen to lure the careless into the lakes with his music), the troll, the lindworm (a serpent-dragon hybrid). In each case, the purpose beyond the superstition is detailed; the näcken a caution to children not to play at the water’s edge, the huldra a warning to unfaithful husbands.

The entwinement with real life continues outside. Earlier this month, a new kids’ adventure playground, implausibly but entertainingly in the shape of a gloso – a vicious ghostly boar, its back armed with blades designed to slice a man in two – was inaugurated in the centre of town.

adventure playground sweden - Chris Leadbeater
adventure playground sweden - Chris Leadbeater

The theme extends into the countryside, and a wider “Land of Legends” trail that links 43 sites of mythic relevance. Some have ancient roots: Högarör, a Bronze Age burial mound, just outside town, whose evocative pile of stones is reclaimed here as the hiding place of a dragon’s treasure.

Others gnaw at more recent infamy. In a lay-by on the E4 highway, near the village of Dörarp, an iron cross marks the spot where Metallica bassist Cliff Burton was killed in 1986, having reputedly drawn the Ace of Spades (“the death card”) in a game to decide who took the bunk he was thrown from when the tourbus overturned.

A further 60 miles north of this lonely landmark, Jönköping offers a less sensational take on the fascination with terrible tales. Its Lans Museum features a permanent exhibition devoted to the work of John Bauer, an artist, born in the city in 1882, whose illustrations saluted Swedish folklore.

Lans museum - Conchi Gonzalez
Lans museum - Conchi Gonzalez

His was a world of whimsy and wonder. Mother Love (1917) has a troll embracing her child in a shaded glade; The Fairy Princess (1904) used his wife Ester Ellqvist as a model, placing her on a flowery hilltop, in long robes of white and red.

You can wander further in his memory where the John Bauerleden (trail) spends some of its 29 miles on the east bank of the lake – winding through a forest which inspired his art.

There is an extra melancholy here. Bauer, Ester and their three-year-old son Bengt drowned when a ferry sank into the lake’s cold depths in 1918. A näcken? No, just a boat overloaded with cargo, floundering in bad weather. Vättern held onto their bodies for four years all the same. In some ways, it still does, its surface a mournful silver. Back amid the trunks, a huldra decides to pick another moment – as the pine needles murmur in sadness.

Travel Essentials

Getting there: Ryanair (01279 358 438; ryanair.com) flies to Växjö from Stansted, from £26 return.

Staying there: Cabins at Trakt Forest Hotel (traktforesthotel.com) start at £438 per night.

Visiting there: sagobygden.se; jonkopingslansmuseum.se

Further information: visitsmaland.se; visitsweden.com


Four more Småland hotels for rustic thrills

Teleborgs Castle

This grand Gothic pile on the outskirts of Växjö is not as old as it appears. It was only completed – as a private estate, on the shore of Lake Trummen – in 1900. But, as a hotel, it cos-plays earlier centuries, all epic corridors, high ceilings and a corner tower suite that Edgar Allan Poe might have dreamed of, a staircase winding to a parapet above the water.

Teleborgs Castle - Chris Leadbeater
Teleborgs Castle - Chris Leadbeater

From £143; teleborgsslott.com

Vastana Manor

There is no lack of authenticity to this country mansion, which haunts the east bank of Lake Vättern, just north of Jönköping. In its suits of armour, ghostly portraits (the eyes seem to follow you) and flagstone floors, it wears its 1590 birth-date with gusto. Lord of the manor Fredrik Von Otter still runs the property, and is often head chef as well as host.

Vastana Manor - Chris Leadbeater
Vastana Manor - Chris Leadbeater

From £294; vastanaslott.se

Hotel Slotsvillan

Set on a hillside above Lake Vättern, on the east side of Jönköping, this lovely 1895 house was once a home for the CEOs of the Husqvarna sewing-machine factory (whose huge red-brick complex still holds court down the slope). It has been lushly overhauled as a hotel in the last four years, but still feels like a Victorian oasis, its open fires crackling.

Hotel Slotsvillan - Chris Leadbeater
Hotel Slotsvillan - Chris Leadbeater

From £91; en.slottsvillan.se

Asa Herrgard

An example of Småland at its most remote, this small collection of rooms, in and around an 18th century manor house, sits in near-silence at the north end of Lake Asasjon. Said delicate finger-lake offers swimming and kayaking in summer, and trails along its edge in winter – while, back in the estate’s treeline, one of Sweden’s famous forest tables awaits.

Asa Herrgard - Chris Leadbeater
Asa Herrgard - Chris Leadbeater

From £115; asaherrgard.se


Does the idea of a 'horror forest' make you want to visit Sweden? Or is it uninviting? Tell us in the comments section below