On the morning of his wife’s birthday, Eric Holmer woke up before 5 a.m. to an email that would send his family of five from Wisconsin to the Baltic Sea. As he shook his wife awake he said, “Happy birthday. We’re custodians of a Swedish island now.”
Holmer, a 42-year-old from Madison, was just named the American winner of Visit Sweden’s “Your Swedish Island” initiative, a global campaign that drew more than 2,200 video entries from 100 countries. In May, the tourism organization selected five custodians to steward remote Swedish islands for a year—allowing them to access the island as often as they want over the course of 12 months.
“As an island custodian, you are free to enjoy the island in your own way, as long as you follow the Right of Public Access and respect Swedish law,” the contest’s rules say. “You may swim, camp, set up a tent, invite guests and spend time in nature, provided you show consideration for wildlife, the environment and other visitors.”
The campaign—which was only open to international travelers, not Swedish citizens—was built around a simple premise: as crowds pile up at the world’s most-visited destinations, Sweden has thousands of islands that almost nobody has heard of, and it would like people to go there. Along with the island access, the winner gets a travel voucher worth $2,125 to visit the country.
In addition to the US, the other winners hail from Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Holmer, the only American winner, has never been to Sweden. He first heard about the contest on the radio while driving his son to a swim meet, and immediately thought of a piece of family lore: in Swedish, his surname means “Islander.” How many people in the world have that connection? He figured they actually had a shot at this.
“Fast forward to May 4th and I woke early up that day, looked at my email, and saw we had won!” he tells Condé Nast Traveler.
Holmer’s island, Skötbådan, is a granite outcropping in the northern Stockholm Archipelago near the historic island of Arholma, characterized by smooth cliffs, seabirds, and an unobstructed Nordic horizon. All five of the islands included in the contest are uninhabited and off-grid with no electricity, plumbing, or Wi-Fi. But Holmer’s, he soon learned, has something of a reputation.
