Gotland, the Island of Sheeps

The transfer trip from Tours to Visby had its moments. Tours to the outskirts of Paris was a doddle through the French countryside in fine weather and moderate traffic. Drivers in France, in comparison to NZ are very courteous, they don’t occupy the road like they own it, everyone moves back to the right when they have completed a manoeuvre and trucks rarely get out of the two right hand lanes. Consequently there are no tailgaters, no dawdlers holding up the rest of the traffic, slow traffic doesn’t speed up at overtaking lanes to keep their “god given” place in the queue, people always keep to the right and things work very smoothly. Just read “left” not “right” for a Kiwi perspective in the above and you’ll get what I’m saying.

However, while we were skirting around the southern suburbs of Paris, life became much more tense. Traffic was very heavy, and there were frequent cloverleaf interchanges so there was frequent positioning required to ensure we stayed on track. Maps.me was the route provider and Ann the interpreter. She did a sterling job and we duly arrived safe and sound at Charles de Gaulle, Terminal 2 Rental Car return. Several resolutions were made along the way including a navigator’s visit to Spec Savers on return to assist in reading the small print. My decision to leave TomTom at home in retrospect wasn’t the best one, but we originally weren’t planning on much in the way of rental cars this time. My mistake was exposed well and truly by the French railway union and its three months of rolling strikes to ensure they keep their members' privileges. SNCF apparently have something like 38 billion pounds of debt, so obviously some changes are required to get to a sustainable operation.

For the rest of the journey, Air France was good, airport shuttles eventually turned up at Arlanda to get us to our overnight hotel. A quick NZD $33 hamburger and chips for late dinner and then bed. Up early for the 6 40 am shuttle back to the airport, for the last leg.

It’s a short hop to Visby, just 35 minutes in an SAS ATR 72 600. We had great views on the way across the Stockholm Archipelago which we will be back to in a few days, and more beautiful clear blue skies.

Bus 61 bought us into Visby Centrum and Maps.me guided us down through the old town to our hotel. Far too early to check in but we were able to drop our bags and the helpful receptionist offered to txt when the room was ready.

Visby is an old town, previously home to Stone Age (2000 to 1100 BC) then Bronze Age (1100 to 400 BC) hunting and then farming folk after the last Ice Age ended. It was also part of the Viking age from about 700 AD, contested by Denmark and Sweden over centuries, part of the Hanseatic League, abandoned to pirates for another century or so and then reclaimed by the Swedes after the Treaty of Bromsebro in 1645. It was an important location on the trading routes between Europe and Russia. So we should be able to put that all into perspective over the next four days!

The island is a relatively flat piece of uplifted sandstone and limestone formed by deposits laid down in the Silurian Age, around 300-400 million years ago. Then the island's location was a bit further south, consequently quite a bit warmer, maybe even tropical! Some of the creatures present then look similar to ones that are around today in different formats, mussels, molluscs and shell-carrying invertebrates.

Nowadays the location is a bit further north. The northern part of the island has relatively thin soils with patchy scrub and Nordic pines but there are some areas with good looking pastures, grazing and a little bit of cropping. There are a few cattle, some sheep and plenty of horses. Further south on the island there are some quite large farms, many with very large two storey barns that are probably feed storage areas in the upper storey and homes for stock over winter in the lower level.

When we arrived we did a harbour visit and a town recce after we dropped our bags at the hotel. Wharves and harbours are always interesting to view. 

The island is well serviced by ferries, and the Coast Guard is well represented by a couple of small rescue vessels and a very large ship. 

The Swedes have the US model for Coast Guard, and the service is a part of the military, as opposed to the UK (and NZ) model which is focussed on safety and rescue at sea, and of course consists mainly volunteers.

The old city is surrounded by a wall about 3.4 km long; much of the stonework and remnants of the many fortified towers are still intact. The parapets and internal wooden support structures have long gone but what remains gives a good impression of what used to be here. 

Outside the sea wall were docks and a little harbour and the land wall provided buttresses against any land-based threats. Construction wasn’t completed all at once, the initial fortification did grow in height, length and strength over the centuries. We completed the very well interpretively signed walk around the perimeter after lunch on day one as our part of our introduction to the town’s history. Our hotel is located at the end of what was the old city wharves, however the sea is now a few hundred metres away; the land level has lifted over the centuries and the harbour is no longer where it used to be.

Visby was part of the Hanseatic League that controlled trade around the Baltic region, and that worked fine until the league insisted that trade would be restricted just to Visby town, and the country folk were excluded from the ability to trade. They had to bring everything to town for sale; the league then extracted taxes as the materials came through the city gates. Nice to have a monopoly!

The Danes attacked the place and then took a very light-handed control on the area, which meant that it was effectively controlled by pirates for much of that time. The Treaty of Bromsebro sorted all that and the island was returned to Sweden.

There were large numbers of churches, more per head of population than anywhere else in Sweden, but they went to rack and ruin after the reformation when the Catholic Church was ousted and replaced by Lutherans, and then a separation of Church and State in more recent times delivered the Swedish Church. Consequently the town has many church ruins, most have intact walls and some remnant roof support structures. Like everything else in these relatively old societies, buildings change usage over time. One old church is now a regular music venue.

Around the walls of the city, some of what had been defensive structures were turned over time into things like a grain mill, grain storage areas, a munitions store and a prison. In many places houses use the old wall as part of their structure.

The town streets are narrow as you would expect, and during the summer (mid-June to mid-August) cars are excluded from the old town totally.

Dinner on our first night was a little café Osterdahls Brygga down by the wharf. We didn’t book, but the owner commented that a couple of blokes who had booked hadn’t turned up so he gave us their table. When they did subsequently turn up, he didn’t worry too much, just served them their meals in the pre-drinks bar! There were only about six tables and our host did everything, Maitre d', wine waiter, table waiter, cook and dishwasher as well. The meal was terrific and he was a great host. Recommended to all.

The Visby museum is very good and captures the whole history very well. We spent most of our second morning there. It delivers the history with interesting stories as well as the artefacts. Displays start with ancient gravestones complete with distinctive markings which it does attempt to interpret but admits it is difficult to determine what their purpose was and what the symbols mean. A refreshingly honest approach to interpreting the past! 

The displays then take you through the geology, including the Silurian age when the sediments that now define the island’s geography were formed. On then to the medieval trading, the Viking period and the last thousand years of development, conquest and geopolitics.  It’s a very well-structured series of displays. Some of the Viking age stashes of hidden silver and jewellery, accidentally discovered by farmers and children playing are quite breath-taking. Coins from all over the Mediterranean show how wide the trade, and travel,  was at this time. Sadly the photo does not really do the splendour justice!

For the rest of the day we did more town visits; the still working cathedral, and all the other non-working ruins got a good once over.

There aren’t many people around, but there is lots of activity and R&M going on in eating houses, bars and the like, obviously getting ready for the influx which starts about mid-June (all the summer timetable things kick in about then). There was a cruise ship in town the other day, and it was easy to see how congested the town will become in the summer peak. 

The rest of the day disappeared into the holiday type things, working out where I had to go to pick up the rental car. Europcar again, Avis quotes have been significantly more expensive so they aren’t getting a look in at the moment. One of the other hassles is cash, I couldn’t get Swedish Crowns from ANZ in Auckland for this trip, so we arrived without any local cash. The challenge is to try and sort some off the cash card. The ATM closed my transaction down after refusing to give me my requested 5000 crowns, then 4000, then 3000 crowns. When I was game to try again it did give me 2000 crowns (about NZD $330). Our meal at the restaurant on the first night was 1300 crowns so you can see why I started trying to extract an amount likely to take me past more than one meal and a bit more!! 5000 crowns is a bit over NZD$800.

This is quite a different society to NZ. If you want to buy wine or spirits, or even full strength beer, you need to go to a SystemBolaget, the Government owned and controlled liquor store chain. At the supermarket you can buy low alcohol beers (zero to 3.5%) and that’s it. We haven’t managed to achieve a visit to a Bolaget as yet. We arrived too late for its 7 00 pm closing the first time, and we turned up at 5 00 pm the second time to rectify this error, but failed again as it was Saturday and it had actually closed at 3 00 pm! Then it isn’t open on Sunday at all! Bit of a laugh really, and we are both drying out quite well.

When the sun comes out in Sweden, out comes the game of Kubb. It’s a court game with a little bit of the French boules, and a bit of English skittles. There were three groups playing the day we arrived, young and old and several mixed groups of late teens. They play slightly differently to the way Nelson family NZ has developed so I was keen to understand the rules. The variation is that between each team’s throw at the remaining baseline Kubbs, they must again knock down the opposition’s Kubbs that they have succeeded in taking out. But it is a bit easier to do this. They are thrown into the opposition half from the baseline, and then are stood up (by the opposition) and the throwing team can advance to the line that the king sits, or to the nearest of their own Kubbs thrown by the opposition into their half. I’ve made a couple of sets from recycled kauri and will probably make a few more as I’m sure you will all be inspired by this description and have a desire to play. It is very good family fun.

In every Swedish town we've been in there is also lots of high density housing, usually not super high rise, but very large concentrations of apartment buildings in one place. The surrounds are always very neat and tidy, something we could aspire to in NZ.

Our first day with the rental car was a coastal trip to the Northern part of Gotland and across to Faro island by the free car ferry. Our car is a very nice Volkswagen GTE station wagon Hybrid, very quiet and comfortable. I’m pretty used to the other side of the road now and probably have more difficulty when I get back to NZ each time because I stop having to think carefully about left and right. The hardest thing to do right consistently here is to head towards the driver’s door rather than the passenger’s door. It’s also the weirdest thing sitting in that RH seat with no steering wheel in sight.

We had a number of targets for our northern trip after Ann’s research and the input of the very helpful lady at the tourist office. Our first stop was a little coastal harbour and fishing village Sjalso which also has an excellent bakery. It was a lovely sunny day and there were lots of locals stripped down to varying degrees and placed behind trees or bushes just out of the breeze. They haven’t seen the sun for a long time and are almost mesmerised by the warmth. There were just a few boats, quite different sorts of hulls and vessels to match the conditions in this relatively calm and peaceful Baltic. Although I have no doubt that, like the sea anywhere, it can get very rough at times.

It was then on up the coast and we took the alternative scenic route along the clifftops to Lickershamm, a slightly larger small fishing village. The harbours are small, as are the boats.

More interesting boat styles and our first Rauk. Rauks are bits of limestone or sandstone, sculpted by the wind and the weather into a variety of shapes and are a bit of a feature of Gotland.

This one was named Jungfrun - the Maiden, and is about 12m tall. Its story is that in the 11^th Century, Likajr the Wise brought home a captive boy who fell in love with his daughter. Dad was a bit miffed and put her on the top of Jungfrun and said to the boy, you can marry her only if you can get her down from the top of the rauk. So the keen young man set out to do this, but when he was about half way down, and carrying Ollegard, the daughter on his back, the father shot him through the head with an arrow and both fell into the sea and perished. Not your “happily ever after” type tale, and one might think Likajr the Wise could be renamed Likajr the Treacherous Bastard. However we recovered ourselves and moved on hopefully to better stories.

                          

We drove on to Farosund and caught the car ferry to Faro Island. This is the real island of sheeps. The breed was lucky to survive after numbers dropped in the depression between WWI and WWII. They weren’t as plentiful as you may expect from the reputation but we did at last find some near enough to the road for a photo, and also their nearby shelter.

Our first stop on Faro was Gamle Hamm, a rocky bay with a very impressive bunch of rauks, one like a sheep and one like a coffee pot. The sheep one is about 8m tall. 

The tides, or lack of tides intrigues me a bit here. From the pebble benching on the beach water levels are obviously much higher from time to time than they are right now and I need to understand more about it. This is the middle of the Baltic, which probably has minimal tides, but it needs a bit of study.

We continued on then to the lighthouse at the tip of the island for a look, and then back to the ferry to get onto the mainland again.   Everywhere the lilac is in bloom and the sides of the roads are white, and varying shades of lilac. Just beautiful.

We then took a look at a couple more small fishing harbours and more rauk formations. The peninsular of St Olofsholm was one nice diversion, a place of some religious significance, reputedly where Olof first landed bringing Christianity to Gotland, so in the past a place of pilgrimage. But it was also a quarry for limestone and a cement works for a long time. There was also a disused windmill and a WWII bunker. Apparently the lighthouse also by here was used as a watch tower in WWII as well. The landscape at this end of the island is a little bleak and the soils look a bit thin and boggy in a lot of places.  So day spent, we headed back across the island to Visby.

Day two of car hire took us on a tour of the southern end of the island. It’s about 160 km long and maybe 50km wide so it’s a pretty big chunk of territory.

The first stop here was a stone ship grave, not Viking, although the shape is certainly Viking-like. The graves are from the late Bronze Age and people were cremated, packaged up and popped into the grave in an urn. They can be from 6m to 46m long. Death was obviously the start of a journey to somewhere else, and interesting that this view was held even in the Bronze Age.

The south has low coastlines, blessed with lots of wind turbines and rocky beaches.  Hard to find a cup of coffee at this time of year, but interesting viewing all the same. More rauks including this one called Hoburgsgubben, or the Hoburg old man. Someone had graffitied it though which seemed like a real shame. 

The drive out to the southernmost point was through stone fields with lots of trees in bloom. All the fences are made of stone, an effective use of what they have in plenty. 

We also visited the church with the tallest spire in Gotland, reputedly used as a navigation point for sailors.

Lots of quite large farms in the South, and very good crops and pastureland with again huge wintering-in barns for cattle. Gotland is famous for its miniature horses called Russ. Spotted a couple, really stocky creatures. 

We tried and failed to find more small harbours, but had a lovely day visiting various coastal areas. At one we had a long chat with a local who had worked in the forestry industry and was interested in our German rental car. This island exports woodchips to Sweden to fill their mills.

So I returned the rental car this afternoon and we’ll be flying back to Stockholm about midday tomorrow to start the last legs of the tour.  We’ve had a lovely visit to an intriguing and interesting place with a long history. It’s interesting to see all this in a relatively small space but covering a long length of time in comparison to NZ’s history with people.

 A couple of lovely sunset shots. The sunrise here currently is 3 59 am and it sets at  9 25 pm and summer hasn't yet started. We've woken up to beautiful clear blue skies and generally gone to bed in daylight. Doesn't really fit with NZ latitude biorythyms!