Our route out to the Åland islands was taking us roughly north-eastwards, to the outlying islands of the Stockholm archipelago. Out near the sea's edge, there are limited anchoring opportunities but a few miles short, there is an island called Fejan that has a small harbour and we opted to head for this for our last night together in the archipelago. It was only about 14 miles from the anchorage so again, we didn’t set off until 10:00 and again we were able to sail in the brisk F5 SW breeze. By 12:30 we were bows onto the pontoon on the island and once registered and dues paid, we had lunch in the cockpit, enjoying the sun.



Fejan may be a little island but it has a big history . The few buildings that today constitute the restaurant, a hostel, shower block, shop and café all have a different and grisly past. Additionally, some distance away is a boarded up, substantial red brick building. The story behind these various constructions is as follows.

During the 19^th century, cholera, which is essentially a tropical disease and which we now know is spread through polluted water, found its way out of the tropics and into Europe. During this period it killed over 60 million people and the Swedish government at the time was determined to prevent its spread onto the mainland. It therefore insisted that ships entering its waters went into quarantine for the gestation period of cholera, which is 48 hours. This quarantine restriction carried on throughout the century, the last major detainment being in 1894 when 196 ships containing 5000 passengers were detained, of which 4 people died of cholera. This leads us to the buildings. The restaurant, where we were to enjoy a really nice evening, was the autopsy room and morgue . The youth hostel was a quarantine hospital and the big boarded up building was a new hospital completed in 1906, by which time the danger had passed but it was used until the 1930’s then closed down, closed down that is until 1944 when 30,000 Estonians, desperate to escape the Russians who were taking over their country, travelled by sea to Sweden and many were quarantined in Fejan before being moved to better accommodation throughout the country. The shop, which today doubles as the harbour reception as well, was used for delousing the hapless Estonians upon their arrival to neutral Sweden. Finally, for both world wars, Fejan was used as a base for the navy, who were active in defending Sweden’s neutrality. So all in all, a fascinating past . One final building, which I’ve not mentioned, is the Kongohuset or Congo House. It was originally intended to be a chapel in the Congo but was expropriated for use in Fejan for the cholera epidemic of 1894 and served as the doctor’s residence.

Back to the near past – that afternoon we walked around the small island, enjoying the tranquillity and worrying about ticks (some of us!) and that evening, we went to the morgue/autopsy room for a really nice evening, whence three of us had rather good burgers and Elaine enjoyed a mushroom risotto and this time, the wine was more reasonably priced (everything is relative) at £25.00 a bottle. And then to bed.