Himmelsberga Museum, Öland

Road Trip 2018, Part 12

The Öland Museum for cultural history is situated in Himmelsberga, an old village where the visitor can experience a genuine historical environment from the 18th and 19th centuries. Apart from the smallholdings with carefully preserved interiors, machinery, tools and equipment, there is also an art museum and other exhibition buildings + a shop and café.

(And yes, of course there is an old windmill as well!)

We had lunch in the café before we left; and also bought some tea – I mean to take with us, to help revive our holiday memories way into the autum… My choice was black tea with blackcurrant flavour. (I doubt the inhabitants of Himmelsberga in the past drank much tea; but they may well have had black currant bushes in their gardens.)

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Windmills at Lerkaka, Öland

Road Trip 2018, Part 11
Back in the 19th century there were about 2000 windmills on Öland. At Lerkaka* on the east side of the island, you can still see a typical row of old wooden mills  alongside the road.



  
Interestingly, across the road you can also see the modern kind of windmills:


There is also an old rune stone here. The text is supposed to read something like this:
“Olof and Gammal and Saxe raised this stone after Unn, their father. Geirvi had the monument made for her husband. Olof took revenge for Unn the Rich at [miomu]; Unn owned half the village here.”
*Lerkaka, by the way – the name of the village – means “slab of clay”! (Perhaps easier to understand on wet day?)



There is also an old workshop here, where the women in the village used to get together to process flax into fibres, and the fibres into yarn etc. July being a busy tourist season, there was a guide from the local history society in place to explain the basics to visitors.

They also had some cards and souvenirs for sale; and I could not resist buying two table place mats:

One showing the windmills in this very spot; and the other a lighthouse.

There is one lighthouse at each end of Öland (north and south, and the distance between them is  around 150 km). (The one on my place mat is from the south.) We didn’t go to neither the north nor the south end of the island on this trip, though, but kept to the middle. From the bridge [A] over to the east coast first – Lerkaka is at [B] on the map below. Then up a bit and crossing back over to Borgholm on the west coast: and from there back down along the west side to Färjestaden. Not very long driving distances; but plenty more to see yet, before the end of the day!

Gråborg, Öland

Road Trip 2018, Part 10

The entrance to Gråborg, the ruins of the largest of 15 ancient strongholds on Öland. (The name can be translated The Grey Castle.) These strongholds were built between AD 300-700. Some were also restored and used in the Middle Ages. (See further info on the signs below - click on images to enlarge.)

Aerial photo from Wikipedia

The wall around the fort was around 4 meters high. The area is elliptical in shape, ~  210 x 160 meters.

Me on the inside of the gateway.

This was on the outside of the great wall, I think. There are lots of these kinds of stepladders next to gates on the island, as there are also sometimes cows or sheep grazing in the fields. (I feel very insecure climbing those steps when there is nothing to hold on to at the top, though! This one I did not try.)

Close to the stronghold there is also this 12th century ruin known as St Knut’s Chapel; supporting the theory that the stronghold was also in use in the Middle Ages.

St Knut or Canute IV (c. 1042 – 10 July 1086), later known as Canute the Holy, was a Danish king living in the 11th century; sanctified after his death.

The car park was on the other side of that barn you see in the background. When we got back there, we were met by this car which wasn’t there when we arrived:

Just struck me as rather a stark contrast to the old rural landscape around us…

This & That

Still trying to catch up with myself, but…

Image borrowed from whereever on the Internet.
(If the rightful owner objects, I’ll return it and apologize.)

Time of course keeps ticking on as always, ignoring my desire to stop it for a bit while I continue sorting out my holiday photos...

Only just over two weeks now until Election Day in Sweden (September 9th)... Including national, regional and municipal elections. Whether you turn on the TV, the radio or the computer, or go for a walk into town, there seems to be political debate going on in every corner. At the moment, I think I’m even more tired of all the media analysing than with the ‘actual politics’!

There have been other goings-on as well, though.
For example, this uplifting piece of street art:

On the same day that I took the photos above (Monday the 13th), there was also something else happening down by the river…

This, however, turned out to be neither about Art nor Politics, but Sports! - to do with an Action Run event the following weekend… (How exactly they made use of this contraption I cannot tell you, though, as I wasn’t there to see it.)

On Wednesday last week, a friend and I went to an evening concert in one of the churches in the city centre. Not the one at the top of the Piano Stairs, but the other big one. Earlier in the summer I also visted that church in the daytime on a weekday, when it was empty:

The church reflected in the windows of the Cultural Centre nearby.

 

  

At the concert last week, the same church was full to the brim:

The main attraction was a nationally well-known Swedish singer-songwriter (Göran Fristorp), performing together with a local choir and orchestra. It was a lovely summer concert – even if a little long to sit still on a wooden church bench from the beginning of the previous century… (We arrived half an hour in advance – and good thing we did, or we wouldn’t have been able to get seats at all – and the concert itself lasted about 1 h 45 min…) (Luckily the next day I was free to do Absolutely Nothing…)

On Tuesday this week, another old friend (who lives elsewhere) called quite unexpectedly and said she happened to be in Borås in connection with her job and could I come into town and meet her after six? I’m not the most spontaneously flexible person in the world, but I managed… So we had a catch-up chat over cup and bite of something in a café down by the river. It was quite a nice evening so we were able to sit at a table outdoors, overlooking the river (ground floor of the big building in the background of the photo with the guy preparing the Action-thingy).