Fjallbacka

We awoke to gorgeous blue skies and bright sunshine on our second morning on Malmon.  We decided to take advantage to see the nearby fishing village of Fjallbacka, originally made famous as the summer home of the Swedish movie star Ingrid (Ingmar) Bergman, star along with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca among other hits.  Along with her husband and three children, they spent summers on a nearby island that her husband purchased, and Ingrid was often seen in the village doing errands.  A street downtown is named for her, and there is an exhibit chronicling her distinguished movie career (including a couple Academy Awards) and a statue carved in Paris in the 1960s.  She really put the village on the map!

Upon arriving at Fjallbacka (about a 30 minute drive northwards up the coast) we called into a waterfront cafe to have a coffee - its walls were adorned by photos of Ingrid Bergman taken in the village). 

Though Bergman may be the local hero, we came to know Fjallbacka primarily through the Nordic Noir crime novels written by Camilla Lackberg.  She grew up in the village, and her Mom still lives there (though Camilla makes her home on the east coast of Sweden). Her books have been translated widely and have sold more than 20 million copies. Virtually all her novels are set in the village or in the immediate area (including the offshore islands). The town's police force and residents area filled with colorful figures who recur in each of the novels, giving you a chance to feel like you know the village and its culture!  So for us, this was a kind of pilgrimage - and we were disappointed to find out that the tiny village of less than 1,000 residents didn't even have a police force!  

Still, we saw how and why so many people find the village an attractive destination (there were at least 2 tour buses in the parking lot on the edge of town and there were lots of Asian tourists running around when we arrived.  It has a glorious harbor front and marina - after our coffees we strolled the entire circumference of the marina and loved looking back over the village and the looming granite cliffs that constrain the waterfront development.

We then strolled around the village, working our way up to the granite cliff-face where there is a famous gap between the stone cliff where a major piece has separated.  Three massive boulders that fell into the gap are jammed in place, making this a pretty dramatic scene!

This large crevice is the site of a crime in the Lackberg novel that Deb is now reading!

We climbed up the staircase and were met with a gorgeous vista out over the village and the surrounding islands.  

After this we strolled more around the village, stopped in a boutique to pick up some souvenirs, and generally admired the little domestic touches that abound in Swedish villages.

Having worked up an appetite, we returned to the waterfront cafe we'd visited earlier and ordered a wonderful lunch of seafood casserole, which was filled with salmon, the lovely local shrimp, all in a light cream/white wine/fish broth base.  Truly rich, filling, and delicious.  In Norway this kind of dish was called "fish soup"  - I think we've seen it advertised this way in Sweden also, but we had it several times in Norway and really love it.  One we'll be trying to recreate once we get back home.

So we left Fjallbacka in good form around 2:30 in the afternoon, stopping en route home at a local fish shop where we picked up a fresh halibut steak and some amazing local mussels for dinner.  The latter were much larger than the ones we're accustomed to getting at home, but delicious!

Once we got off the ferry on the way back we decided to drive to the other end of the Bohus-Malmon island.  Knowing that we'd be parting with our lovely car tomorrow in Gothenberg, I took advantage of several opportunities to take souvenir pictures of the car in it's native habitat!

That done,we returned to the apartment for a delicious seafood dinner followed by completing the episode of the Danish-Swedish crime thriller "The Bridge" on Netflix.  Another great day!