Its narrative is set in the Stockholm archipelago and starts from notes left by Tranströmer's grandfather, who had been a maritime pilot.

An English translation by Robin Fulton was published that year in the Scottish magazine Lines Review and then as a stand-alone volume by Oasis Books in 1980; the American translation by Samuel Charters was published by Oyez in 1975.

In 1990, a few months before he suffered a stroke which damaged his ability to speak, Tranströmer made a Swedish audio recording of the poem which runs for 24 minutes.

[2] In the poet’s eyes, "the keyword in this long poem is the word or concept of boundary.

"[4] There is a cyclical movement in the poem from the 1884 logbook of his maternal grandfather, Carl Helmer Westerberg (born 1860), in the first section, to a photograph of his orphaned maternal grandmother, Maria Westerberg, in the sixth and final section.