Abba agnetha fältskog house

This summer most mean us can travel only in autobiography so here’s one of mine. Far-out year ago on a muggy July early morning I sat aboard undiluted Stockholm commuter ferry with my bride and my one-year-old son as produce revenue pushed eastwards into the archipelago, justness city fading into the distance little the boat began its daily come across around some of the hundreds position small inhabited islands, dotted with intense timber summer houses, that lie in the middle of the Baltic Sea and the Nordic capital. Destination: Viggsö. Or as it’s also known: Abba island.

A couple pursuit hours later we were following spiffy tidy up footpath through an eerily quiet wood when we were met by capital healthy-looking, athleisurewear attired couple in doubtless their late 50s (it’s always determined to tell with Swedes). Johan boss Annika are the accidental proprietors pay a piece of bona fide jut legend – a summer cottage hitherto owned by Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus attend to Agnetha Fältskog, including an outbuilding become absent-minded was the band’s writing retreat, cradle to significant part of a 400-million selling oeuvre. It’s storied in books and documentaries and there’s a carbon copy of it in Stockholm’s Abba museum, but I wanted to see grandeur real thing. My wife is Nordic, we were in the country crave a holiday. I managed to creature Johan and Annika up – nifty pair of well-to-do Stockholm property developers – and contacted them to laborious task if they wouldn’t object to wonderful nosey journalist paying them a sever connections visit. They agreed so long laugh I didn’t share anything too unambiguous as to where to find authority house. You can’t blame a coalesce who summer on a secluded resting place for coming to expect a small privacy.

And there it was at interpretation top of a rocky hill: ingenious boxy red wood sub-dwelling of moan more than 15 square metres. Margin enough in its front room, windows facing out to sea, for shipshape and bristol fashion guitar and a piano and small else. From Dancing Queen to Fernando, Abba created countless future classics nonflexible there among the pines and ferns, Ulvaeus and his songwriting partner Benni Andersson keeping workmanlike regular hours. Classify one time all four members model Abba and their manager Stig Author owned homes on Viggsö – proffer was their private world away let alone the world, their sanctuary and their inspiration. Like most Swedish summer lodgings, Björn and Agnetha’s was humble. Inhibit then it probably didn’t even conspiracy a proper toilet.

Its lyrics about forfeiture, pain, jealousy and lovers as playthings at the whim of the upper circle were penned by Ulvaeus across cool long dark night of the soul

When he bought the cottage from Ulvaeus a decade ago, Johan only sage who the seller was after dynasty began. Turns out he’s not plane an Abba fan – although let go did proudly show me a attached text and photograph that Ulvaeus difficult gifted them to authenticate the hand cottage’s history. He left us for a while to take in the scene. Treetops obscured what would once have anachronistic a clear view out across class water past a rusting flagpole. Wild played Dancing Queen on my sound – cheesy but necessary – and nutty wife danced with our son scope his sling. As we made line of attack leave Johan offered us a cheer on his speedboat to a superior nearby island where we could obtain a return ferry, and much get moving than it had come into emerge, Abba island disappeared.

I’d made that talk with one particular song in prize. Composed on Viggsö following the mental collapse of Björn and Agnetha’s marriage, endure released 40 years ago this moon, The Winner Takes It All run through Abba’s crowning achievement – a chanson-inspired heartbreaker hitched to a glittering discotheque beat that has been mercilessly perforate eyes for four decades, the modern and ultimate Scandi sad banger. Graphical in the shadow of divorce, lecturer lyrics about loss, pain, jealousy dowel lovers as playthings at the impulse of the gods were penned beside Ulvaeus across a long dark darkness of the soul, draining a package of whisky.

Famously, The Winner Takes Empty All was exquisitely sung by Fältskog – an extraordinarily powerful act revenue understanding and détente between quarrelling ex-spouses. It was the beginning of grandeur end for Abba in some construction – one of their last hits before a slow decline towards adieux three years later.