Perched above the Arctic Circle in northern Norway, the Lofoten Islands are one of the great "end-of-the-world archipelagos", known for their towering, serrated mountains, wild seas and lonely white-sand beaches.
My husband and I visited in March, following a health scare, said Sophy Roberts in the FT, and found the trip restorative. That was partly thanks to the islands' vast silences and the "awesome scale" of the landscape – and partly because we stayed at an excellent hotel. Holmen Lofoten is set beside the sea in the village of Sørvågen, where its owner, Ingunn Rasmussen, grew up. She is the daughter of a local fisherman, and the hotel is largely made of refurbished fishermen's cabins. They are "close to perfect" – "simple" but "cosy", with wood burners and soft wool blankets.
Between late August and April, you might see the Northern Lights swooshing past your cabin's big windows. During the day, you can go hiking – we climbed well above the treeline for a picnic beside a frozen lake, guided by Ingunn's brother, Audun, who recalled hunting for hare and ptarmigan there as a child. And when the seas are calm, there are fishing trips to enjoy. We sailed out past the village of Å, at the archipelago's furthest end, into the sea channel known as Moskstraumen. Some guests spot orca there – we didn't, but we did pass close to one of the world's strongest whirlpools, which is said to have inspired Edgar Allen Poe's 1841 short story A Descent into the Maelström.
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Back at Holmen, we ate "delicious" dinners, "delicately put together" by the head chef, Richard Cox, a Briton whose passion is "hyperlocal ingredients", from ceps and lingonberries to cod and lamb. His pantry shelves are crowded with jars of fermented vegetables and flower syrups (including wild camomile, fireweed, and meadowsweet), about which you can learn more on one of the hotel's regular, five-day gastronomic retreats, co-created by the chef Valentine Warner.
A three-night stay costs from £780 per person, b&b (holmenlofoten.no).
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