“My ties with Fårö have several origins. The first was intuitive.

“This is your landscape, Bergman. It corresponds to your internal imaginings of forms, proportions, colours, horizons, sounds, silences, lights and reflections. Security is here. Don’t ask why. Explanations are clumsy rationalizations with hindsight. In, for instance, your profession you look for simplification, proportion, exertion, relaxation, breathing. The Fårö landscape gives you a wealth of all that.

Other reasons: I must find a counterweight to all the theatre. if I were to rant and rave on the shore, a gull, at most, would take off. On the stage, such an exhibition would be disastrous.

Sentimental reasons: I would retreat from the world, read the books I hadn't read, meditate, cleanse my soul. [after a month or two I was hopelessly involved in the islanders problems, something which resulted in the 1969 Fårö Document.)

Further sentimental reasons: during the filming of Persona, Liv and i were overwhelmed by passion. With monumental lack of judgment, I built the house with the idea of a mutual existence on the island. I forgot to ask Liv what she thought.”