
Courtesy of Stine Christansen/Stedsans
Before opening Stedsans in the Woods with her husband, Mette Helbæk owned a group of vegetable shops in Copenhagen.
Courtesy of Anders Guld/Stedsans
Flemming Hansen and his wife, Mette Helbæk, began refurbishing an old barn and seven acres of forest for Stedsans in the Woods, a rural retreat in southwestern Sweden.
After a couple of wrong turns, Lisa Abend finds a warm welcome (and some wonderful food) in the forest.
“Find some nice people and sit close to them.”
The man who told me this was tending a fire in the middle of a Swedish forest, the flames that illuminated his graying blond locks making him look like a hippie Viking. On the embers in front of him, he had laid a pike perch caught earlier that day in a nearby lake.
I did not feel like finding some nice people. I had left sunny Copenhagen hours earlier, expecting to arrive at Stedsans in the Woods in southwestern Sweden by midafternoon, with plenty of time for a relaxing afternoon walk around the glassy lake, and maybe a sauna before dinner.
Instead, malevolent Nordic trolls invaded the GPS of my rental car while I sat eating buffet pancakes with lingonberry jam at a truck stop. Or at least that’s how it seemed. Because somehow I ended up following directions that led me not to the rustic yet refined retreat I was seeking, but to a dirt road where a stranger chopping logs in front of a lonely, rundown farmhouse communicated to me that I was exceedingly lost. At which point, it began to pour.
By the time I righted myself and made it to Stedsans, my intended destination, it would have been sundown if there had been any sun to see, and my mood was only slightly north of foul. The air had turned raw, and mud caked my boots as I tromped over the soggy forest floor to one of Stedsans’s simple wooden cabins to drop my bag. I did not feel like being sociable. But at the retreat’s restaurant, even deeper in the woods, Flemming Hansen had a different idea.ADVERTISEMENT
To be honest, it looked like no restaurant I’d ever seen. Surrounded by trees and illuminated only by candles, it seemed like the kind of place where elves might hold a banquet for their forest creature friends. Tarps strung from branches shielded the kitchen from the elements, and all cooking was done over fire. And given the absence of electricity, that bonfire, I soon learned, served not only as stovetop, but as a cocktail bar and after-dinner lounge as well—a gathering point that used nature’s own elements to bring people together. “The whole idea is to create a life that is lived outdoors as much as possible,” Hansen explained.
In 2016 he and his wife, Mette Helbæk, bought an old barn and seven acres of Swedish forest, and set about equipping it for guests. The first year, Hansen built a bathhouse and composting toilets; accommodation was in bedouin tents. He also added a graceful sauna that floats alluringly on the property’s lake. The second season, he began constructing cabins, pristinely simple wooden structures that Helbæk decorates with a firm commitment to sustainability and gobs of Nordic good taste. “Flemming is the one who comes up with the ideas,” she told me later. “I’m the one who figures out what they should look like.”Sign up for the Daily Wander newsletter for expert travel inspiration and tips
Please enter a valid email address.
Read our privacy policy
more from afar