Norrland Sweden : Part 15 - Day 9 : Döda Fallet and Hälsingegård

Day 9 of Norrland Drive

Here is a summary of what is spent on Day 9. 

23/6 Day 9 : Overnight in Döda Fallet in Ragunda -- Döda Fallet -- UNESCO Hälsingegård in Hälsingland -- Reach Stockholm by 10.15pm

Must-Incur Costs

(1) Petrol in Ragunda (last filled in Skelleftea) - SEK327.44 / 21.18 liter / SEK15.46 per liter

Optional Costs
(1) Lunch - Pizza (Norrlands Special) and Coca Cola in Bräcke - SEK110

The Story

230618 Morning: We woke up to a beautiful cooling morning in Döda Fallet's carpark. It is pronounced as 'der-da fah-let'. It means 'The Dead Waterfall'. I thought I had enough of waterfalls and rivers in this trip but this is really different. Like I wrote previously, there is always something different about each waterfall that makes them unique in its own. 

The waterfall used to have water and now it's dead, which explains its name - The Dead Fall.

Döda fallet (The dead fall) is a former whitewater rapid in of the river Indalsälven in Ragunda Municipality in the eastern part of the province of Jämtland in Sweden. Glacial debris had blocked the course of the Indalsälven at Döda fallet for thousands of years, creating a reservoir of glacial meltwater 25 km (16 mi) in length known as Lake Ragundasjön. The river water flowed over this dam of debris in a high waterfall known as Gedungsen or Storforsen (The great whitewater rapid). The lake and falls were destroyed in 1796 after a flood rerouted the river through a small canal constructed to bypass the falls, emptying the entire lake within hours. Storforsen, dried, is now called Döda fallet (the Dead Fall). At a rock barrier in the bottom of the former Ragundasjön a new waterfall was formed, Hammarfallet in Hammarstrand, now turned into a hydroelectric power station. Source from Wikipedia.

Here, you can see holes through rocks made by rocks hitting against each other (and circling inside) from the force of water creating a hole through the rock. It is an amazing force of nature! In the below photo, you can see a rock resting in a hole that it was going to form.

In the below photo, there is a small cave where mining was carried out previously. However, there was poor iron content in the rocks that establishing a mine is doomed for failure, as written on the Signboard. 

That is a complete hole! Awesome, huh!

Lunch stop was pizza. Prof Sweet Tooth approves this pizza. I found it very cheesy. Each pizza is entitled to a cup of coffee and I took a cup which was a bad idea because I stayed awake almost the entire night. I could not sleep properly when I was back in Stockholm and I was awake early the next day and I expended my energy doing laundry.

The last place of interest in our trip is a UNESCO area - Hälsingegård. I told Prof Sweet Tooth that I have seen all the UNESCO places in Sweden, after visiting the Church Town in Luleå. I googled to confirm it, and it turns out that there were 15 spots in Sweden! I was extremely surprised by that fact. I was reading to him the UNESCO list, and an hour later, I found myself in a UNESCO spot. He said that it was on the way and decided to detour. How nice! He knows of my obsession with UNESCO. Unfortunately, the place was closed and I just had a walk around the farmhouses.

Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland. Seven timber houses are located in the east of Sweden, representing the zenith of a regional timber building tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages. They reflect the prosperity of independent farmers who in the 19th century used their wealth to build substantial new homes with elaborately decorated ancillary houses or suites of rooms reserved for festivities. A particularly distinctive feature of the farmhouses is the provision of either a separate house, a Herrstuga, or rooms in the main house, set aside for festivities, special occasions or assemblies, and hardly used for the rest of the year. These rooms were usually the most highly decorated in the farmstead. Decoration consists of canvas or textile paintings affixed to the walls, or paintings directly onto the wooden ceilings or walls, some supplied in the 19th century by itinerant painters from neighbouring Dalarna, and known as Dalecarlian paintings. Source from Unesco.

There are guided tours provided that costs SEK200 / RM100 for slightly over an hour. Thursdays to Sundays at 11am. You may want to check the price and timing the next year if there has been a change. You can check in the Bommars website too.

The drive goes on further south towards Stockholm and we reached home at 10.15pm. That was the end of my summer trip. A detailed map of our trip, and a summary of the cost and points of interest will be in the next post.