My slow Swedish summer on the tranquil islands of Östergötland

Small boats and kayaks connect the sparse communities and flourishing wildlife living on the thousands of islets on the Baltic coast At 5am on Arkösund bay, it is so light it could be midday. I slip out of the pretty clapboard Arkösunds hotell , opened in 1895, as a small boat putters into the Baltic Sea, the sun sparkling on its calm waters. A wooden boardwalk invites me on to a string of tiny islets as geese arrow overhead and a mother swan coaxes her fluffy cygnets into a nook under a bridge. I’m on Sweden’s east coast to explore the Östergötland archipelago, a sprawl of about 9,000 islands

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