The tiny Arctic island where travellers have found refuge since 1897

For centuries, this tiny Norwegian island sheltered fishermen from violent seas. Now one woman is using tourism to revive it – and offer travellers refuge from modern life.

The day before I travel to Støtt, a tiny Norwegian archipelago just north of the Arctic Circle, an artist tells me a local legend about fishermen caught in the grip of vicious winter storms. "Sometimes, everyone drowned," he says. "But sometimes, an island rose out of the mist, like magic, to save you."

For generations, Støtt was a refuge. Fishing boats blown off course in the Norwegian Sea could shelter here, while a trading post on Innerstøtt, the largest of Støtt's three inhabited islands, supplied fishermen heading north to the rich Arctic cod grounds of Lofoten. 

Today, that trading post is home to Støtt Brygge, a hotel run by Eva Ann Andersen, whose family has owned it since 1897. Andersen believes the island can offer a different kind of refuge now: not from violent seas, but from stress, overwork and modern urban life.

She knows something about that herself. Andersen grew up on Støtt before moving to Oslo in her twenties and building an international corporate career. In 2011, exhausted, she returned to the island to recover – and saw new potential in the place she'd left behind.

The story of islands rising out of the sea occupies my mind as I take the coastal ferry to Støtt, watching the island gradually appear from the rainclouds. To get here, I'd flown into Bodø, where a lone conveyor belt serves the airport and the ferry terminal sports posters asking passengers to report whale sightings. As the city disappears behind me, grey sea and low cloud heavy with drizzle takes over. Every so often, craggy rocks loom out of the mist.

After an hour, Støtt finally appears: low-lying granite, red cabins and tall cod-drying racks rising out of the spray. To the west, there's nothing between here and Greenland but open ocean.

It's hard to imagine now, but Støtt was once one of the busiest stopping points on Norway's northern fishing route. Today just a handful of people live here year-round.

After meeting me at the ferry, Andersen and I walk to the hotel, where passing fishermen and sailors once stopped to resupply. The hotel also encompasses a pair of classic red fishermen's cabins, a restored storehouse and a pale-yellow bakery building. We head upstairs to its small fishing museum, whose black-and-white photographs and weathered nets tell the story of the island's heyday, when fishermen would shelter here from storms, restock their boats and wait for calmer seas.

"Fishermen used to come up to fish for Arctic cod in Lofoten in winter," Andersen said, referencing the string of islands that lie like dark cut-outs on the horizon to the north. "The shop was an important place back then. Fishermen came here to buy fishing equipment, bread, sugar and flour – and to have a drink – before continuing their journeys north."

She points out a black-and-white photo of her grandfather standing in a wooden boat, ankle-deep in large silver fish; elsewhere an old film shows men in small wooden boats hauling in huge catches of herring. Downstairs in the........

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