I’m a sucker for quirky, remote places that revel in their magical weirdness. So after reading Danielle Pergament’s fabulous New York Times piece on Ingmar Bergman‘s home island of Faro, Sweden, I’m already dreaming of a Storybook Hollow wonderland of verdant fields, giant mushrooms, wild strawberry fields and a cast of enchanted characters. “Like Bergman, Faro is remote,” writes Pergament. “Getting to the island, off the eastern coast of Sweden, takes a plane, a train or a bus, a car and two ferries. Which is exactly what made it so appealing to the reclusive Bergman.”

Faro has a Bergman film festival, a full-moon party and the famous, rocky Langhammars shore (the moody backdrop for “Through A Glass Darkly,” a story about a woman’s descent into schizophrenia). The island also has its eccentrics, like Bror Bogren, an 87-year-old farmer who has lived alone in the same farmhouse in which his great-great-grandfather was born. He has no running water or electricity and told Pergament: “I’ve never seen a computer. But I saw a television once, 1980 I think.”

Bergman filmed several of his movies in Faro and also owned the island’s only cinema, a converted barn. He drove there in his red truck nearly every day. But as Pergament walks the shore at Langhammars, she is bewitched by this fairytale land—its fading light and lengthening shadows, vistas of wild flowers and deep pine forests—and writes: “It all seemed too vivid to capture on celluloid.”

Related on World Hum:
* Globalization Brings ‘Big Shift’ in Sweden’s Outlook on Vacations
* The Ikea Hostel: Norway’s New Take on Sleepover Tourism

Photo of Ingmar Bergman on Faro Island by AP.