• World - Europe - Sweden

Rising in lonely majesty from the waters of Kalmar Sound is Blå Jungfrun, a bald rock dome with a high "forehead" of the reddest granite. The isolated island has served as a seafarers' landmark for centuries, and its unusual ecosystem has long attracted students of natural history. Among the earliest recorded visits was that in 1741 of Carl von Linné, the 18th-century botanist who established the modern system of species classification.