Labbskar Island is a small, sparsely built island near the edge of the Sea of Åland, and a place of refuge that Gustav Mahler chooses for Anna and Elias. The island’s earlier associations are modest and peaceful: sandwiches on rocks, swimming, and Mahler’s private fantasy of buying one of its two fishing cottages. During the family’s flight, that remembered retreat becomes a precarious shelter, cut off from ordinary help and ultimately marked by violence. The contrast between remembered leisure and present danger gives the island its significance: it can offer stillness, but not safety.

Setting and Earlier Visits

Gustav Mahler knows Labbskar Island from a couple of previous visits with Anna. They had eaten sandwiches on the rocks and gone swimming there, making it a familiar destination rather than an unknown refuge. Mahler likes the stark island, whose position near the edge of the Sea of Åland lends it a sense of remoteness. Its buildings are few: the two fishing cottages are the only structures on the island. He has fantasised about someday buying one of them, an imagined future that makes the place feel briefly like a possible home.

That history shapes the family’s arrival. Anna looks over the boat’s railing and recognizes the island’s beauty; Gustav Mahler agrees. The exchange is brief, but it marks a moment when the destination still seems to match the remembered place. The still water, sheltered dock, and near-absence of wind offer a sharp change from the exposed journey across the sound. For a time, the island’s familiar landscape appears to hold the crisis at a distance.

The Chosen Refuge

When Anna asks where they are heading, Gustav Mahler does not answer aloud. He thinks of Labbskar Island, choosing it inwardly before turning the throttle up. The silence makes the decision feel private and urgent: the island is not introduced through a plan explained to Anna, but through the destination Mahler fixes on as they travel. He later realises, after reaching the Finland ferry route and checking for traffic, that he has forgotten the map. He must close his eyes and visualise their course, relying on memory to reach a place he has visited before.

His concern on approach is that someone may already be staying in the cottage. He considers this unlikely at that time of year, but cannot be certain. Moving slowly through the narrow sound between the islands, he looks for signs of occupation. No boat is tied at the dock, which reassures him that the cottage is probably empty. The voyage has taken almost an hour, and the wind has chilled him; he switches off the motor and lets the boat drift to the dock. In the sheltered gap between islands, the water is still, the afternoon sun glitters on it, and the quiet seems to promise a pause from danger.

Shelter and Precarity

The refuge is not self-sufficient. Later, when Gustav Mahler finds the pontoon filling station closed, there is no pump that accepts cash or cards. He considers returning to the store for fuel, but lacks the energy to make the trip. The fuel container is about half full, and he judges that it will be enough to get back to the island, though he is less sure it will suffice for the return journey. The distinction matters: reaching the island and leaving it are separate problems.

He remembers seeing a petrol container under the cottage’s kitchen counter, although he has not checked whether it contains fuel. The water containers had been empty, but he reasons that petrol keeps and imagines that the container was left as extra fuel for a situation like theirs. If it proves empty, they have oars. These contingencies expose the narrow margin on which their refuge depends. The island’s isolation, which lends it peace on arrival, also makes fuel, transport, and any onward departure immediate concerns.

Violence and Passage Out to Sea

At 21:50, on Labbskar Island, the creature moves toward Gustav Mahler with a speed he had not expected from its ruined body. He recoils from the eel, fearing the creature that has grown fat on human flesh. As he backs away, he slips in his own vomit; the axe flies from his hand, and he strikes the back of his head against the rock. Anna sees him fall and the creature throw itself over him. The island’s rocks, previously part of a remembered place for swimming and eating, become the hard surface on which the family’s fragile refuge ends.

By 23:30, Anna and Elias are at sea. The islands have disappeared from view, as has the Soderarrn lighthouse; the island of Åland and Finland remain only distant names. Anna no longer cares where they are. Elias lies beside her, and the boat floats on the open water, beyond the island’s shelter and beyond recognizable landmarks. This movement does not turn Labbskar into a secure home: it shows that leaving it is also a passage into uncertainty. The island’s narrative course runs from familiar retreat, through a short-lived appearance of peace, to attack and departure, with the open sea replacing the refuge that could not protect them.