Getting to Seby on Oeland involved a ferry, a hire car with suspiciously spongy brakes, and me confidently telling my partner that I "definitely didn't need sat nav for the last bit." Reader, I needed sat nav for the last bit. We ended up down a farm track so narrow that brambles scratched a cheerful hello on both sides of the car, and I had to reverse two hundred metres past a field of sheep who looked deeply unimpressed with my life choices. My partner sat in silence. The meaningful kind.

The cottage itself appeared like a mirage between two birch trees, red wooden walls and white trim so perfectly Swedish I half expected ABBA to emerge with a tray of meatballs. It was smaller than the photos suggested, which I pretended not to notice while making enthusiastic noises about "cosy" and "authentic." The key was in a lockbox that required a code, a torch, and the finger dexterity of a concert pianist. I dropped the torch in a flowerbed. My partner found it with their phone, illuminating a toad who had been watching the entire performance with what I can only describe as Nordic judgement.

Inside smelled of pine and something faintly vanilla, like someone had baked biscuits and then thought better of it. The kitchen had a proper coffee percolator, the sort my grandmother used to wield with military precision, and a note from the owners saying the nearest shop was seven kilometres away. We had no milk. I made coffee anyway, black and bitter, standing at the tiny window watching the light do that particular Scandinavian thing where it hangs around for hours refusing to properly darken, as if the sky itself cannot quite commit to bedtime.

We decided to walk before unpacking, partly from restless energy, partly because I was avoiding admitting where I'd put the corkscrew. The lane behind the cottage led nowhere obvious, which of course meant we followed it. Within ten minutes the tarmac gave up and became compacted gravel, then grass between wheel ruts, then simply a path through waist-high meadow flowers that my phone later identified as mostly wild carrot and something called "perennial sow-thistle" which sounds like an insult but looks rather lovely. My partner, who normally plans walks with the rigour of a military campaign, started laughing at how thoroughly lost we already were. I laughed too, but mine had an edge of wondering whether Swedish adders were a thing. They are, apparently, though thankfully shy.

The path deposited us at a tiny cove I cannot name because it had no name, just a scrap of shingle beach and rocks worn smooth by Baltic water so calm it looked staged. An old rowing boat lay upside down, paint peeling to grey wood, with a hole in the bottom that spoke of retirement rather than tragedy. We sat on it. A seal head appeared fifty metres out, watched us with the same evaluating expression as the sheep, then descended without splash or ceremony. We stayed until the midges arrived, which in Sweden they do with punctuality if not enthusiasm.

Walking back, we took a different wrong turn entirely, found a well with a hand pump that actually worked, and filled our water bottle from it like characters in a folk tale. The water tasted of iron and something greener, and we drank it all before reaching the cottage again, where the lights we'd left on glowed welcome through the birch trees.

That evening I found the corkscrew in my own shoe, which I have no memory of placing there. We opened wine and sat on the little wooden deck as the light finally, reluctantly, dimmed to something approaching dusk. My partner said something about the ferry and the brambles and the toad, and we laughed properly, the kind that comes from relief and surprise and the particular pleasure of having no idea where you are and not minding even slightly. I think that was the moment Oeland got me, not in any dramatic fashion, but slowly, like the tide we couldn't see but could sense, turning something ordinary into something I already knew I'd want to remember badly.