The fog appeared out of nowhere, as fog is sometimes wont to do. One moment we were motoring along in brilliant sunshine, the next we’d slipped into a murky parallel world of cotton wool. It was all-enveloping and claustrophobic, and slightly unnerving.
A definite chill had seeped into the air. Swallowed up by the fog, the birds had stopped singing. All we could hear was the rhythmic purr of our engine.
Visibility had fallen to no more than 20 metres. I could just make out the lines of large trees slipping past on either side of the road. Beyond them was a milky void, an eerie nothingness that could have been hiding anything: thick forest, an undiscovered mountain range, even a herd of unicorns grazing by a brook. It was impossible to tell.
Until, that is, the castle of Bjertorp Slott materialised from the miasma. It was dark and brooding, vast and imposing, a wall of granite that seemed to be gently perspiring in the mist. I stopped the car and Lorraine climbed out of her seat. Her footsteps crunched on the gravel as she walked to a giant wooden door that was studded with bolts. She tried to push it open. It was locked.
Friends had looked at us askance when my wife and I said we were off to Sweden for a gourmet tour. The only dish associated with Sweden was pickled herrings, they said, and while these were tasty enough, they would get awfully tedious after a while. Why didn’t we go on a foodie trip to France or Italy, like normal people? Because we were better informed — Swedish cuisine is by no means exclusively concerned with pickled herrings. One of the regional tourist boards runs a programme called Vastsvensk Mersmak (A Taste of West Sweden). It picks the restaurants and provides the maps. All we had to do was turn up with an appetite. It had seemed like a very reasonable arrangement to us. Until now.
Lorraine rang a bell on the wall and we waited. When the door eventually opened, it should have creaked. It didn’t. A sliver of light appeared on the gravel and gradually widened. Standing at the threshold was a blonde waif. If I’d had to equate her with a meteorological phenomenon, she wouldn’t have qualified as fog; she’d have just about made it as a fine mist.
Something about the look on her face told me she knew who we were, however. “Good afternoon,” she said. “You’re just in time for tea.”
Inside, Bjertorp Slott continued in an unexpected vein, but without the fog. The first thing that met us on the staircase was a large, stuffed brown bear.
Following that, other taxidermic specimens started popping up everywhere we looked. A wolf lay relaxing under the grand piano; a fox ran down a wall; a moose head looked on dis- approvingly.
The castle, more like a mansion, really, was built in the early 20th century, seemingly for a giant. It wasn’t just extra large, it was outsized. The ceilings were so high, there was room for clouds. Our bedroom door was wide enough to drive through. In a coach and horses. It was as if the plans had been drawn up in feet, but the builders had thought they were in metres. Almost. In fact, the scale was boosted deliberately. Apparently, the wife of the original owner had thought the architect’s drawings looked too small.
We were ushered into an art-nouveau suite done out in marble the colour of lichen. Palm trees stood in pots with swirls on. The place was so large and verdant, it was probably where they shot the bear. Outside, the fog still lingered. This was Agatha Christie in Scandinavia. If it’d been a game of Cluedo, the murderer would have been the hotel’s creator, Knut Henrik Littorin, in the smoking room, with a poisoned herring.
But we’d come to eat and that’s what we did. That night, we had quail done in three ways (consommé, roast leg with lentils, and breast with parsnip purée) and fillet of beef with a red-wine risotto and thyme sauce. Quite delicious it was too.
West Sweden is roughly divided into three types of landscape. Our route to Bjertorp Slott had taken us through flat agricultural land. As we drove further west the following day, we slid through forests where red roadside warning triangles framed the silhouette of an elk. Closer to the coast, fish started to appear on the menu. At Thorskogs Slott — another castle, though definitely of the fairy-tale variety, with turrets and its own duck pond — we had halibut terrine and salmon smoked by the chef over alder wood. He made a mean egg-nog, too.
