Björkö is the island in the Stockholm archipelago where the narrator’s private romantic disappointment first intersected with the approach of war. During his stay at Brigitte’s aunt’s summer house, a Nazi-marked aircraft crossed the sky: a brief sight that he later identified as his first encounter with the enemy. The island thus marks a transition from sheltered distance to an awareness of the European crisis gathering beyond it.

Setting and Circumstances

The narrator reached Björkö after travelling to Sweden to pursue Brigitte, only to discover that she was married. After his attempted arrangement with her husband failed, Brigitte sent him to her aunt’s summer house on the island. The stay was therefore both a retreat from an unwelcome situation and an exile imposed by the circumstances of Brigitte’s marriage. The small island, set within the Stockholm archipelago, placed him at a remove from the life he had hoped to share with her.

First Encounter with the Enemy

While on Björkö, the narrator saw an aircraft bearing swastika markings cross the sky. The sight was his first direct encounter with the enemy, but it did not immediately undo his confidence in France. He recalled having paid little attention to developments in Europe and described himself as poorly equipped to hate: his upbringing amid his mother’s love, he believed, had made it difficult for him to sustain hatred. He had interpreted France’s silence in the face of Adolf Hitler’s threats as evidence of calm strength and trusted the French Army and its leaders.

That confidence, he later explained, had been nurtured by his mother’s patriotic assurances. He likened them to a protective Maginot Line of certainties and patriotic images, a personal defense against doubt that had preceded the military fortifications on France’s borders. The aircraft over Björkö brought war into view, but the narrator’s understanding of what it portended remained shaped by that earlier faith.

Letters on the Eve of Munich

The island’s separation from France did not keep the crisis out. On the eve of the Munich Crisis, letters from his mother reached him at Björkö. In them she sounded an emphatic call of confidence in France’s eventual victory. Looking back, the narrator saw the certainty of her declaration as an especially revealing contrast with France’s defeat in 1940: her words conveyed patriotic conviction, but also exposed how unprepared the country was for what followed.

Björkö consequently occupies a precise place in the narrator’s recollection. It is at once the setting of a personal exile, the scene of his first sight of the enemy, and the destination to which his mother’s letters carried the confidence he had inherited from her. The island’s distance did not yet amount to political understanding; instead, the remembered aircraft and the letters together preserve the moment when the approaching war began to press against that sheltered certainty.