Marlene, Tommy, Peder and Heidi have positioned their camping chairs in a semi-circle facing the sun, which is now low above the wooded horizon. Over the bay, which forms the innermost part of the fjord, it casts its golden light towards the four people waiting. It will set at 11.31 p.m. today and draw out the short Nordic night, up here, less than a hundred kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. Just a stone's throw from the outer floating dock, a large, yellow-painted pointed buoy is reflected in the smooth water. Its succinct, two-line inscription reads: "N 65°54'07 E 22°39'07". This is where the Baltic Sea ends. Törehamn is its northernmost harbour.
The jetty, a loading pier in the shade of two bulky cement silos, the campsite next to it between birch trees - that's it. The village with its one thousand inhabitants is a few minutes' drive away on the other side of the E4 European motorway, which leads on to Finland. Nobody outside the province of Norrbotten would know Töre if it didn't have its harbour. It was its location that made it a destination - at least on the list of strange places of longing on the Baltic coast.
German hits in the Arctic Circle
Meanwhile, the sausages sizzle on the barbecue. Music is in the air: it comes from the open door of Peder and Heidi's motorhome. Quiet enough not to disturb. But the feather-light optimism of the early sixties is unmistakable: "Lovesickness isn't worth it, my darling!" German Schlager in the north of Sweden, plus a Danish licence plate? While Peder tends the barbecue and the mosquitoes dance in the air to Siw Malmkvist's voice, Heidi solves the mystery: "That's the music of our youth," she laughs. They grew up in the very south of Jutland, close to the border with Schleswig-Holstein. At the weekend, the lights of Flensburg beckoned: "That's where we met."
Long retired, the couple now go on a Nordland tour every summer. "When we were still working, we often went on holiday to the Limfjord," says Peder. "But Denmark was a bit small back then and Scandinavia was very big. Today we finally have time for it." He then distributes the finished sausages onto paper plates with potato salad. The sun still needs a little time.
Even in the harbour on the pleasure boats, it's far from the end of the day: a blonde family of four, including grandparents, dog and bulging picnic basket, are still setting sail, perhaps heading for their weekend home. The young couple scrubbing their utes with a sponge and sudsy water at least want to shine tomorrow. Finally, on the jetty near the pointed buoy, two Finns from Tornio have invited the sailors from the yacht opposite for a sundowner on the flybridge.
Submarines in sight!
The path on the shore continues along the empty loading pier over patched asphalt to the seaward end of the harbour. Silence reigns here, greenery sprouts from cracks in the concrete. Two cabin cruisers on trailers seem forgotten in the tall grass, one leaning wearily to one side. Under the almost cloudless, surreally bright sky, the open course of the Törefjärd disappears into the distance. It could hardly be more peaceful.
But still waters run deep: it wasn't long ago that the Cold War could be felt even here in the far north. Even though both Finland and Sweden were neutral for a long time, there were no illusions in the event of a heated conflict - military control of the Baltic Sea region was simply too strategically important for the Warsaw Pact. Events seemed to prove the Swedes right in their assessment: Time and again, the Soviets put out feelers, above and below water.
Submarines from the Red Banner fleet repeatedly "strayed" into Swedish territorial waters. In the 1980s, one of them was even sighted here in Törefjärden. However, the hunt was unsuccessful. A light-coloured wooden shed near the harbour office is a reminder of this time: Inside it rests the "Spiggen", an eleven-metre-long, twelve-tonne mini-submarine. The black steel "Stichling" was built for the Swedish navy in 1990 to act as an intruder during manoeuvres - exactly the same situation that had taken place here a decade earlier.
The shadows are getting longer
But the modern museum piece is not the only relic of warlike mind games in this wilderness: just a few kilometres to the south, the guns of the former Siknäs Fort still point their barrels across the fjord today. As part of the Kalix defence line, which comprised hundreds of bunkers and thousands of positions in the area, the coastal artillery was intended to protect access to the harbour. Its four twin 15.2 centimetre calibre turrets came from a decommissioned armoured cruiser. They were dug into the forest at around the same time as Peder and Heidi met up for a dance on a completely different fjord when they were young.
The sun has set, but it's not getting noticeably darker. The bright sky of the White Night continues to shine over Törehamn. At least in the harbour, the night's rest has begun. The Finns on their flybridge were the last to leave. Only the four from Denmark are still sitting outside between their motorhomes. In a whisper from earlier: "It was only the Bossa Nova that was to blame ..."
