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. 

 

 

Inspired Sunday

Ramnakyrkan, Ramnaparken, Borås, Sweden

Picking up where I left off in my Thursday post A Visit to the Past.

Like all the other buildings in our Museum Park, the wooden church too has been moved here from its original place, a village around 10 km south of Borås. The central parts of the church date back to 1690. As with many old churches it went through some changes over the centuries, even before it was moved here (1912). During the first 20+ years here it was only used as museum, exhibiting objects collected from various other old churches as well. In 1930 the building was again sacralized to be used as church, for special occasions like weddings and christenings.

I've been inside on several occasions before, but of course that did not stop me from going in again to snap some more photos, when I had the chance. (The guide had by then returned to other duties, so I was in there alone.)

The church's double function as church and museum shows in that it houses an unusual amount of old altar pieces and sculptures and other objects. And also not just one but two old pulpits at the front.

Inside the porch.
Old keys etc on the wall,
and a collecting box.

 

 

 

 

 

The bell tower comes from some other countryside church; and the actual bell from yet another one. (The book that I have about the buildings in the park does not mention the gate, but that too probably comes from somewhere different.)

Looking up from the computer in my study, on the wall right above my monitor hangs this picture:

It's a water colour painted some time in the past by my maternal grandfather. Undated, but my guess is from the 1930s or 40s. (It's one my mother kept after he died, and I in turn inherited it from her.)

 

 

 

A Visit to the Past

On Tuesday I decided to make use of another fine 'late summer' day for a visit to our open air museum park with old buildings reminding of the history of this area (not just Borås city, but also the surrounding countryside). With the covid situation, it's been at least two years since I was there last, I think.

Since my 2nd covid jab (end of June), I'm feeling a little bolder about using the bus again. I took the same bus as on Monday (the one that continues out to the big lake), but only a few stops this time. That saves me the most boring part of the walk (and with the most traffic).

I had checked the museum's opening hours online, and had got the impression that they were still offering some guided tours this week. But it turned out they did not, as the main tourist season is considered over (schools open again since 1-2 weeks). However, the member of staff who I asked about it (a young girl in her twenties or so) said that if there was any building I wanted to have a closer look at she'd be happy to open up and give me a little info anyway. As she added that she really had nothing special to do at the moment anyway, I took her up on her offer. So I ended up having a guided tour anyway - not of the whole park, but of some of the buildings. We also had quite an interesting chat about history and what life was like back then - long before our own times. (My contribution was some bits and pieces from my own family history research + a book I read back in spring, the diary of a man who was contemporary with my grandfather's grandfather.)

The buildings in the museum park were all collected from different places and moved to this park at the beginning of the previous century.

 

 

This is an old farm house which served as a kind of centre for "cottage industry" in the past; a business form that was quite common around here before they started building factories.  Rich farmers and others who had a bit of capital bought and provided the material; while poorer people living in small cottages did the weaving and sewing etc in their own homes. ("Working from home" is far from a new idea!) And then peddlers went around from house to house (and town markets etc), selling the finished products. 

 

The kitchen inside the farmhouse.

Tile stove in the big dining/living room

The cottages where most people lived were a lot simpler than the big farm houses, though.

In this type of cottage the main living space was the low part in the middle. The lofts on the parts to the sides were used for storage + sometimes people slept up there in summer. These cottages, including the keyhole entrances were common in provinces south or south-west of here.

Inside the cottage above

 

The doorway of this one is so low that I refrained from trying to crawl in for a closer look... (Not feeling all that flexible any more - if I ever was!) I just took a photo looking in:

 

This used to be a parish hall. (We did not go into this one either.)

In the museum's main building (above) they had a summer exhibition which included some old paintings of peddlers from the past. 

This used to be an inn. The ground floor here is still used as a café. 

I sat down for a while and had a cup of tea and a piece of home-made pie with vanilla sauce before walking back home. 

View from the café towards the church. The church was open too, and yes, I also went inside. But I think I'll save those photos for another post. :)