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Inside SuperShe Island, the Private Finnish Retreat Where Women Went to Disappear

On a private 8.4-acre island off Finland, a former tech CEO built a paradise of $150,000 beds, paleo flowers and mammal-brain lectures—a stealth-wealth escape for the roughly 2,000 women deemed worthy of joining.

(Editor’s note: This article was originally published on September 7, 2018. SuperShe has since been sold to a private investor.) I’m slumped on a couch in a cabin with the windows blacked out by sheets, somewhere in the middle of the Baltic Sea. For three days, I’ve consumed nothing but vegetables, flowers and fish. That’s a lie. I smuggled in chocolate, which I’ve been eating when no one’s looking. I have not shared my candy with the other women huddled around the darkened room, pupils wide to the glow of a PowerPoint presentation. On the screen, a lion chases a zebra.

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“Leaving the herd can mean instant death in the jaws of a predator,” says the disembodied voice of a presenter over Skype.

The herd of shiny women surrounding me, who include a retired mechanical engineer, a forensic fingerprint scientist and a globe-trotting Viking millennial, nod in unison. They’re here on this tiny island off the coast of Finland to “recalibrate without distractions”—meaning men. The ladies-only retreat of SuperShe Island promises an 8.4-acre Nordic paradise free from predators and temptation (sugar and alcohol are also banned), where women who meet a strict set of membership criteria can reinvent themselves amidst wild blueberries and jagged ocean cliffs. In addition to Michelin-starred chefs and experimental networking, the exhaustive seven-day itinerary features paleo breakfasts, farm-to-table lunches, “ancient practices of Ayurveda,” Finnish sauna, vinyasa yoga, yin yoga, power yoga, kayaking, meditation, massages, facials, shinrin-yoku forest bathing and “conversations with experts.”  

The expert this evening is Loretta Breuning, Ph.D., the founder of something called the Inner Mammal Institute and author of books like I, Mammal: How to Make Peace With the Animal Urge for Social Power. She’s webcammed in from the States to explain how bodily chemicals flow like water in a storm and that what happens to us before the age of 8 determines how we respond to the world. “Happiness comes from brain chemicals we’ve inherited from earlier mammals,” Breuning says, clicking to the next slide of a monkey grasping for berries. “Dopamine creates a feeling of excitement when you expect a reward.”

Listening intently from the center of the room is Kristina Roth, a crystal-eyed former computer scientist who bought the island last year, back when it was still known as Fjardskar. “This also is the reason our friends in New York take cocaine,” Roth interrupts. I don’t know why she watches me while she says this. Maybe she knows about the chocolate.

Roth sold her tech consulting firm in 2016 and launched a blog to help women discover the best version of themselves—or become, as she brands it, SuperShes. The Instagram-ready mix of inspiring profiles, travel guides and recipes for chia seed breakfast pudding proved hugely popular among the Goop-set of wellness-obsessed women with money to spend. Soon, Roth’s blog evolved from photos of healthy-looking food and even healthier-looking women to real-life meet-ups and retreats. SuperShe Island, which officially opened in July, is the physical manifestation of Roth’s vision, a carefully programmed oasis of female empowerment.

For nine months, a barge of male construction workers chugged back and forth to SuperShe through the mostly private archipelago, to lay lines for power and water and gut-renovate the island’s existing log cabins, which had been crumbling since the 70s. That was the last time men were allowed on SuperShe.  

So far, more than 8,500 women have applied for SuperShe membership, and just under 2,000 have been accepted. They’ve all answered yes to the question, “Have you ever wanted to run away to a deserted island, breathe fresh air, swim naked in the sea, and sleep under the stars?” I am among the lucky 120 to have actually made it here.

On arrival, SuperShes are greeted by a network of stone paths that lead from a dock into a canopy of pines with roots that knuckle the shore. With the exception of a free-standing Finnish sauna and some reiki yurts, the island’s main structures consist of four immaculately decorated guest cabins—Fire, Earth, Water and Air—with walls that glide open into wrap-around decks dotted by pod chairs. The bathrooms are wombs of white subway tiles divided by white glitter grout, and the beds are the best that money can buy—Hästens, which are Swedish, and cost up to $150,000. Next to baskets of soap that smell like bright citrus are toilets that incinerate poop. Graffitied walls exclaim, “Yaaaaaas!” or “No Bra? No Problem!” and there are fake silk flowers in real silver vases and actual fur blankets and rugs. On the doorknobs hang sleep masks to block the 19 hours of sunlight, and the pillows are tufted by palm-sized tubs of SuperShe balms that—unlike the cabins, which were made for women by men—are “MADE FOR SUPERSHES BY SUPERSHES.”  

By the window there’s a SuperShe notebook filled with words about sexuality and spirituality and paleovedic diets. Also in the notebook are quotes from Madonna (“I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay“) and Maya Angelou (“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive”) between pages that ask, “How Could I........

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