A World Heritage Site comprised of a little red houses.
I’d detoured to Luleå on the advice of a Swedish lady in the hostel in Jokkmokk. I was looking forward to seeing a city not many foreign tourists (or Swedish ones for that matter) get to and also visiting the World Heritage church village, Gammelstad.
I ended up having a very frustrating weekend and leaving without a particularly good impression. However, the village was interesting and all those little red houses did look very pretty, so I’m still glad I made the effort and went to see it.
I wrote about my time in Luleå here and about my visit to Gammelstad here. I’ve now put together a Flickr album with the pictures I took in Gammelstad.
To access the Flickr album click on the image below.
Why a church village?
Sunday services used to be the only time people from farms spread far and wide could get together to catch up on news and socialise. Because the farms were spread so far and wide over often inhospitable terrain, it wasn’t that easy to get to church and back in the one day. The solution in the north of Sweden was to build a small house near the church that could be used for an overnight stay. As everyone had the same idea, whole villages of little red houses sprang up around remote churches. Gammelstad near Luleå is the largest and best preserved example and thus is now a World Heritage Site.
The best preserved church village in northern Sweden is a World Heritage Site and a very busy wedding venue. Tourists are not particularly welcome.
I hadn’t planned to go to Luleå, but when an older Swedish lady in the hostel in Jokkmokk told me I must go there so I could visit Gammelstad and then the hostel owner said the same thing, I changed my plans.
I hadn’t had the best of starts in Luleå and so far wasn’t impressed. After a few trials and tribulations I finally got on the bus that would take me to Gammelstad.
The bus driver put me off at the main stop near the church in Gammelstad and showed me where to wait to get the bus back.
As I was near the church, I thought that should be the first place I visited. Unfortunately a wedding was just about to start so, rather than crash the wedding, I wandered over to the tourist office and museum.
Gammelstad is the best preserved and largest of the unique church villages found in northern Sweden. So much so, that it is now a World Heritage Site.
Church villages grew up because parishes were spread far over inhospitable terrain, making it difficult for church-goers to pop in for a quick visit. Instead, people built small houses around the church and would stay overnight when they came for Sunday services. The villages not only provided a place a to sleep, but a sense of community for neighbours who lived too far apart to socialise during the week.
Four hundred and twenty four tiny red houses are packed in tightly around the church. The wooden sides are painted with ‘Falu red’, a paint that originated as a by-product from all the copper mines in the northern parts of Sweden. It was found that mixing copper with paint protected the wood from the elements and people would make their own paint, mixing up the ingredients on the stove.
Window frames were (and still are) painted white making for a very striking look.
The houses in Gammelstad were used as intended up until the 1950s. Now most of them are privately owned by people in Luleå who use them as weekend getaway cottages. They are under contract to keep them in a good sense of repair and to not change the look of them.
One cottage is open to visitors and has been kept as it would have been.
I wandered in and out of the maze-like gaps between the houses and then took off over the fields to check out some of the barns and other farm buildings that form part of the site. Various brides were leaning up against the buildings with their new husbands having their photos taken.
It would have been nice to sit in a little cafe and have a coffee, but the cafe was closed. Saturday afternoon at a World Heritage Site, why on earth had I expected it to be open? Silly me.
This was advertising a shop that wasn’t open
The larger pub/restaurant was in full swing with the wedding party. I didn’t know if they would’ve served me or not, but didn’t particularly feel like going in and sitting amongst all the wedding guests anyway.
Going back to the 15th century stone church, there was yet another wedding in progress. I sat outside and waited for it to finish, watching another wedding party arrive as I waited. It all seemed a bit like a factory production line. Feed them in one end and out the other.
As the bride and groom exited the church, I dodged the confetti and slipped in behind them. The church was beautiful, but some kind of manager guy was not happy with me being there.
I pointed out that I’d come an awful long way and it’s not as though I could just pop back another time. I also pointed out that there was no wedding in progress and I’d been considerate and patient enough to wait until it was between weddings to have a look around. And I pointed out that surely anyone choosing to get married at a World Heritage Site on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of August is going to expect a few tourists to be around. And the people setting up for the next wedding didn’t seem bothered by me at all. But still, I felt like I was being thrown out. I snapped a few photos and left feeling rather frustrated that I hadn’t been able to have a proper look round.
I’d pretty much exhausted the ‘things to do’ in Gammelstad by this time and a bus was due so I headed back to the bus stop and back to Luleå.
I just liked this arty use of old sewing machine table
Was Gammelstad worth my lengthy diversion to Luleå? I seemed to spend most of my time there feeling very frustrated (the only time and place I’ve ever felt like this in Sweden), but the church village was interesting and I’m glad I’ve seen it. I’ll probably never go there again so I don’t regret taking a few days out of my trip down the middle of the Sweden to head to the coast to see it whilst I had the chance.
A young English woman was staying in my dorm in Jokkmokk. She was travelling with her Swedish mother who was staying in the same hostel, but had opted for a private room. As you do, I chatted to my room-mate and then later, in the kitchen, was introduced to Mum.
Mum had spent most of her adult life in England, returning to Sweden only for holidays and to visit family. On this trip, she and her daughter had been at a wedding and then decided to tag on some travelling time.
“Go to Luleå,” Mum said. “From there you can make a day-trip to Gammelstad, the old church village.”
“Church village?” My RE teacher ears perked up.
“Yes, in the old days when people would come together for church, many of them would have to travel from their farms miles away. They built tiny houses to stay in and these weekend communities built up around the church. Gammelstad is the biggest and best preserved of these church villages in Sweden.”
“And Luleå itself is a really nice city,” added her daughter.
I’d planned to head south by train the following morning, but after hearing this AND having the hostel owner also tell me how wonderful Luleå was, I changed my mind and decided to take a late-afternoon bus to Luleå instead.
I visited the tourist office in Jokkmokk to get help with sorting out accommodation. It wasn’t easy. The universities were starting back and all accommodation was filling up with students who tend to stay in hostels and guesthouses until they can find somewhere more permanent.
Eventually, the lady in the tourist office found me a bed in a hostel a couple of kilometres walk from the train and bus station.
She looked at me apologetically, “The only problem is that you’ll have to share a room with five young, male Swedish students.”
Hm, five young, male Swedish students? And that’s a problem because …?
Actually, I could see why it might be a problem, but it was only for two nights and I really had no other choice if I wanted to go to the wonderful city of Luleå and the amazing church village of Gammelstad.
It was evening by the time I arrived in Luleå. I hoisted my pack and looked around the bus station for a clue as to which way I needed to walk. I had a map, I just needed to orientate it.
Street names would have been helpful. A ‘this way into town’ sign would have been useful. Even a bus station map with a ‘you are here’ dot would have assisted me to hold my map the right way up. Did any of these exist? No.
Eventually I found the train station and with my back to it, was able to orientate my map. I set off walking in the direction of the city centre. The hostel was on the far side. I now knew I was going in the right direction, but had no way of knowing which street I was on. I wanted to be sure, so I didn’t walk right past the hostel on a parallel street.
The streets were quite busy with young people heading out for Friday night. I tried to stop a few to ask if they could tell me exactly where I was. The first couple of times, people just looked terrified, put their heads down and scurried past. When I did get anyone to stop, they would shrug and tell me they were newly-arrived students and they didn’t have a clue where they were either.
How could this be so difficult? I’d just spent the best part of a month walking several hundred kilometres in the Arctic wilderness and not got lost once. Finding my way round a city should be easy-peasy.
Eventually, I found a street sign, located myself on the map, made a slight adjustment and got to my hostel.
It was on a busy road leading out of town in an area that was starting to look quite industrial. I rang the bell at street level and the stooped manager came down in the lift to let me in. He complained about his chronic back pain that was causing him to walk doubled over as we went upstairs so he could check me in.
The hostel was a bit grubby and definitely in need of a bit of loving refurbishment, but it was good enough for a couple of nights. Clothes strewn around the dorm floor were the only evidence of my five young, male, Swedish student room-mates. Of course, it being Friday night and Freshers’ Week they were out on the town. In fact, apart from one young guy watching TV in the common room, I had the whole hostel to myself for the evening.
Next morning, the beds in my dorm were filled with zonked out young men. I got myself ready and studied the big map on the hostel wall to check where the tourist office was.
It wasn’t far, so I headed there first. I walked round in circles several times before I accepted that the tourist office was not where the map claimed it would be.
Back in the town centre, I found a street map that showed the tourist office was now located at the train station. I walked all the way down to the station, only to find it pretty much deserted and definitely no tourist office. I finally found it in the middle of town, in the same building as the library, theatre and art gallery. It was closed.
Saturday. Lots of new people in town. The tourist office was closed.
All I wanted was to know how to get to Gammelstad. I asked the lady in the box office and she thought the buses might go from the end of the street. Only thought, mind you.
Checking out the bus timetable, I decided she was probably right. As I was studying the timetable and trying to figure things out, I must have looked a lot more knowledgeable than I felt because people asked me for help.
“We’re students,” they told me, “we’ve just arrived and don’t know where anywhere is.” Then again, maybe they were just desperate.
The bus eventually arrived. Yes, it was the right one. Could I go to Gammelstad? No. Why? Because the buses in Luleå don’t accept cash. I could’ve paid with my debit card, but by the time I’d paid all the bank charges I’d incur for using my card outside of the UK, that would have been one very expensive bus journey.
I needed to find a newsagent that sold bus tickets and buy my tickets from there. Once I’d done this and had my bus tickets I realised I had to wait an hour for another bus. Rather than hanging around the bus stop, I took myself off to the art gallery.
It was surprisingly interesting AND it was free. At last, I’d found something positive about Luleå.
These faceless portraits drew me to them, but creeped me out at the same time
Does this remind you of the Queen?Who needs a cutlery drawer, when you can display your spoons like this?
Finally, I made it onto a bus and headed for Gammelstad. So much for my early start, it was now the afternoon. Gammelstad had better be worth it!
Luleå is a city in the far north of Sweden on the Baltic coast. Its large port means of lot of Swedish steel is shipped through here. It’s also an important hub for the technology industry. Even Facebook has located its first data hub outside of the US here. They apparently chose Luleå for its cheap electricity, political stability and cool climate (less money needs to be spent on keeping the systems cool). The large, popular technology university sees an influx of new young people every August. The student population of Luleå is around 13,500. As the entire population is only 47,000 this explains why so many of the people I saw seemed to be young students.
I didn’t particularly like Luleå, mainly because I found it frustrating. And probably because it was the first big place I’d been to after my time in the Arctic wilderness and the small empty town of Jokkmokk. It did have a bit of a buzz about it though, and I imagine if you’re young and involved in the student scene it would be a great place to study and live for a few years.
