Sanna Rönn knows what it takes to look and feel good. She’s helmed one of Sweden’s top modelling agencies, Mikas, for more than 30 years – it’s the agency that discovered supermodels such as Elsa Hosk and Mini Andén. When it came to creating a wellness-focused retreat, it turned out that her approach remained the same. “Good food, being in nature and daily movement,” Sanna tells Broadsheet. “We come from farmers, so our way of life and our traditions are simple.”
It’s these fundamentals that underpin the offering at Sibbjans, a smart new farmstay on the island of Gotland (call it the Montauk of Sweden). Rönn softly launched the hotel last year alongside her husband Pontus Rönn and fellow co-owners Kinna Zeidler and Jonas Nordlander, and its ethos captures the bohemian spirit of the island. “Our circle had been coming here since the early ’90s. It’s beautiful, the light,” says Sanna. “People really do come here to seek solitude, to rest and create.”
But to truly reset, Sanna believes that it all starts with what we are putting into our bodies. The food philosophy at the in-house restaurant mirrors the classic Scandinavian diet. “What we are against is monoculture,” she explains. “Constantly eating the same processed foods is simply not good for us, and farming only one crop all the time drains the land and ruins the soil.”
Menus are built around produce that is local and seasonal, down to a nourishing breakfast porridge made from emmer, an ancient, unprocessed Swedish wheat. “We don’t want to serve things we can’t produce on the farm,” Sanna says. The hotel aims to be 90 per cent self-sufficient, food-wise, and that target is now within reach.
It’s not just the market gardens that are flourishing at Sibbjans, though there are 170 varieties of vegetables and fruits being cultivated here (“The asparagus alone took nearly three years to perfect!” Pontus adds, proudly). On Broadsheet’s visit, the grounds are carpeted in medicinal herbs and healing wildflowers, the skilled work of head gardener Corinne, reinforcing the owners’ passionate belief in the transformative power of being in nature (Sanna cites California’s Apricot Lane Farms and South Africa's Sterrekopje Farm as huge inspirations).
This also extends to the hotel's wellbeing facilities. In place of a hulking piece of Technogym equipment lurking in an outbuilding, there is a beautiful natural swimming pool, alongside an eco-friendly traditional Swedish sauna and treatment rooms. A yoga shala (studio) has just been finished for daily morning vinyasa flow sessions, and there is a fleet of state-of-the-art electric bikes available for guests to trace the island’s many cycling trails and Baltic beaches.
“It all feeds into the idea of allemansrätten, every person's right to roam freely across any land,” Sanna explains. It feels at odds with the industry that she came from. So how did she make the leap from the front row to farmstead?
“We had a family summer home in Sudret [the southern tip of Gotland] for many years, and during Covid I decided to run it as a bed and breakfast,” she explains. “It became so popular that we were always fully booked. The family were like: ‘You can’t rent out our beds. You have to find another place.’” When Sibbjans, which was then a dilapidated horse farm, came up for sale, she and Pontus jumped at the opportunity to buy it with their neighbours Zeidler, a travel journalist, and Nordlander, a tech entrepreneur.
There are mindful nods throughout the 22-room hotel to the owners’ passions. The chic etched glassware lovingly sourced from European antiques markets. The tufted bedroom rugs made by master weavers from Ukraine. The clever Nasa-engineered filtration system in the bedroom showers which cleans water as you bathe.
For Sanna, embarking on a project such as Sibbjans was the reset that she had long been craving. “I loved the fashion shows, and travelling the world to meet these interesting people. But there was an emptiness I felt in the later years. I dedicated a lifetime being an agent and always tending to others’ needs. I wanted to do something for myself, a new chapter where I did something more meaningful with my time.”
