Road Trip 2025 (5) - Sturefors Castle

Monday, 11 August - Part 1
Sturefors Castle (near Linköping)

From Linköping we drove south-east to Västervik on the east coast (see map at the bottom of the page); but we also made a couple of stops on the way down there. 

Not far from Linköping, and just a minor detour from the main road, there is an old castle that I wanted to visit: Sturefors. The castle itself is private and not open to the public, but part of the surrounding park (with a view of the castle) is. And the reason that I wanted to see it is that back in the 1920s, my paternal grandmother's older half-sister Gerda (born 1881) worked there for a while, as lady's maid to a Countess Bielke. The castle is still owned by the same family, Bielke (an ancient noble family). 

Back in 2022, I wrote a post about this in my family history blog Greetings from the Past. Sturefors seems have been Gerda's last place of employment before she became lady's maid to Estelle Bernadotte (born Manville; an American young woman from Pleasantville, New York) who married the Swedish count Folke Bernadotte in 1928. I have since got it confirmed from a reliable source that Gerda was kind of "headhunted" for the latter position in the autumn of 1928, before their wedding (which took place in Pleasantville). (Folke was related to the Swedish royal family; became a well-known diplomat towards the end of WWII and after; and was sadly assasinated in Jerusalem 1948. But Gerda remained with Estelle for the rest of her life; and lived to be nearly 92.)

In the 1920s, Gerda sent this postcard of Sturefors castle to her step-mother Selma (my paternal great-grandmother):

(original postdard, yellowed with age)

(edited back to b&w by me)

 ... and I was curious to see for myself how it compares to 2022!

Alas my impression was that the present-day family is probably struggling to keep the estate going at all - or at least keeping the park with the huge mirror pond free from weeds does not seem to have been their first priority of late... The maintenance of the park also seems to have deteriorated quite a bit even since the photos in the Wikipedia articles were taken! So it takes quite a bit of imagination now to try to envisage what it all looked like when my great-aunt was living and working there, a hundred years ago. (I'm still glad we took the trouble to find it, though.)

The castle itself still looks rather impressive - but alas, the public is not allowed any closer than that yellow sign.

 

Turning around, and looking in the other direction: 

 

Walking back towards the car park, and some other buildings belonging to the estate:

 

 
Even this "cultural heritage" sign looks rather old and tired by now...

 

 

 

  

 

Linking to Sepia Saturday 789 

 

Road Trip 2025 (4) - Linköping: Garden Park, Cathedral and Castle

In Linköping, we stayed two nights at Hotel Ekoxen ("The Stag Beetle"), situated right by a big park in the central parts of the city. The park goes by the Swedish name of Trädgårdsföreningen (= The Garden Society); as the park was created by such a society formed back in 1859. Here, I've chosen to call it the Garden Park. 

This is the hotel. Its layout inside is somewhat confusing, as it consists of two buildings joined together by a portal across the street. To get to our rooms, we had to first take one lift (or the stairs) up one floor, walk through that middle part across the street, and then take another lift. My room actually overlooked the hotel entrance!

The entrance to the Garden Park was literally just round the corner of the main building, though, so perfect for us to just go for a  first short "introductory" evening walk there after we had installed ourselves in our rooms. 

Sunday, 10 August

The next morning after breakfast we went out again to explore the park a bit further; and now walked up to the highest point of the park (which is also the 2nd highest view over the city). There is an observation tower up there, known as the Belvedere. Looking up the name afterwards, I learned that this is Italian, and means "beautiful view". It was built in 1881. 

We happened to run into a foreign tourist up there, asking us for the way to the city centre. Being tourists ourselves, all we could do was really to point out the direction for her - towards the tower of the cathedral (which we know since a previous visit to be pretty much in the centre). Not of much help to the girl, as she deemed it to be too far away for her - but as thanks, she offered to take a photo of the two of us by the tower (using my phone):

On our way down from the hill, we noticed some dead tree trunks that had been carved into wooden sculptures. (Later, we came across the info somewhere that quite a few trees in the park had died of elm tree disease.)

 

These buildings from the 1740s were moved to the park in 1913.

Someone commented yesterday on my post from "Linköping Old Town" that the colour red seems to be very popular for old buildings here. As you'll be seeing plenty more examples of that in my photos from this trip, I'll repeat my answer to that remark here:

Red wooden houses are very common in Sweden, and this is related to a special kind of paint produced from byproducts of copper mining - Falun Red, named after the town with the copper mine where they developed it. It's been used since the 16th century, and has a special quality of also impregnating wood to better preserve it in our cold climate. At first it was mostly used by wealthy people as it was expensive, but in the 19th century, with industrial production etc, it became more common and increasingly popular. And it's still much used.

At noon, we met our aunt and uncle (our mum's sister and her husband) for lunch at the Garden Park Café. I had suggested that as I know they often go there, and it's on "the right side of town" for them (and with us staying at the hotel so close, it was of course very convenient for us as well). They're 89 and 88 now, so it was not to be taken for granted that our plan to meet up on a specific day would work out - but luckily, it did. :) And the garden café itself turned out well worth a visit, too. It has an exotic outdoors atmosphere even though it's indoors; and the food was good as well. 

Later in the afternoon, my brother and I walked into the city centre, which also wasn't  very far from our hotel. Last time we were in Linköping, three years ago, we visited the Cathedral, and also had a good look inside. (If you like, you can see my photos from 2022 here.) This time it was not open, and a large part of the outside was clad in scaffolding, so obviously there were some major repairs going on. I only managed to get two photos from the outside (leaving out the scaffolding), and they do not really give justice to the whole impressive building: 

 

Linköping Cathedral is one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in Scandinavia. It is situated opposite Linköping Castle, on a site that has been in use as a church since the 11th century. The oldest parts of the present building date back to the 13th century. (Wikipedia)

As we could not go into the cathedral, we continued to the Castle, where we managed a quick tour of the Castle & Cathedral Museum before they too closed for the day.  

 The Castle courtyard. (Difficult to get a good photo with the sun right behind it...)

 

▲ Old liturgical vestments on display in the museum.▼

Model of the Cathedral back in 1300. 
A lot of scaffolding on it back then, too! ;-)

The sign beside this lion said we were allowed to pet it, but not ride on it!

 

(There is a lion in Linköping's city arms.) 

Road Trip 2025 (3) - Linköping Old Town

Saturday 9 August - Part 3
Linköping, Old Town

Having turned back from Löfstad castle, we managed to find our way into Linköping, and even to the Old Town museum area. The shops and workshops etc were closed by the time we arrived, but (after having spent quite a long time just figuring out the parking app!) we wandered around there for a while just looking at the old buildings.

▲Two types of old phone booths▼

 

There are no working phone booths left in Sweden - you may still see some, but you won't find a working phone within them. 

The sign on the building in the background in the first photo - Wärdshus - means "Inn". 

Bank Office

 
"Welcome to take photos of yourselves and your children sitting on this carriage." 
(Neither I nor my brother felt like climbing up on it, though!)

 
This sign outside a café in the Old Town feels like an anachronism as it announces that they now only accept cash free payment.

The sign also says that you can't use their tables for eating food that you brought yourself. Not sure if the same rule applies to the one below! (photo snapped elsewhere)

Paintwork Museum

 

 

"Puppet Theatre"

Ropemaker's Workshop

Shoe Shop

Hand-made jewellery?

 

"The Soapmaker"

 

Buildings belonging to an old "Folkets Park", with ticket booth in the foreground. 
These are parks for fêtes and fairs, dancing and concerts etc.