The ten-minute boat ride from Snatra jetty is the first hint that your life is about to slow down considerably. You cut through the glassy water of Lövstabukten Bay, the smell of salt and pine hitting you before the island does, and then there it is — Slanten, sitting on its plot of open lawn with that big wooden deck catching the morning light. You tie up at the jetty, step onto the dock, and the mainland starts to feel very far away. That's the point.
Skärplinge sits on the Uppland coast in Tierps kommun, roughly 40 kilometers north of Uppsala and about 90 minutes from Stockholm's Arlanda Airport. But Oxholmen itself — the small island where this property sits — operates on a different clock entirely. No through traffic, no neighbors cutting grass at seven in the morning, no delivery vans. What you get instead is the sound of water moving against the hull of your moored boat and, on still evenings, the occasional cry of a common tern wheeling overhead.
The cottage itself covers 46 square meters, which sounds compact until you realize how smartly it's laid out. The kitchen is built for long meals rather than quick ones — there's a proper dining area where you can seat a crowd and still have room to move around. A wood-burning stove in the adjoining living room means that overcast September days, when the archipelago turns steely and atmospheric, are genuinely comfortable rather than something to endure. The bedroom is quiet in the way that only island bedrooms are quiet. No street noise, no sirens, just whatever the wind is doing.
The glazed veranda is where you'll spend most of your waking hours. It faces the water, it catches the light from mid-morning onwards, and because it's enclosed, it extends the useful seaso ... click here to read more
