My Heart Soars: Småland Sweden: Part 2 - Day 2: Fyren Erik, Trollskogen, Lerkaka, Seby, Eketorp, Fyren Jan

Day 2 of Småland Drive

16/7 Day 2 : Byrums Rauka, Öland -- Fyren Långe Erik (pronounced as long-eh) -- Trollskogen Naturreservat -- Lerkaka -- UNESCO Sjömark (pronounced as huay-mark) at Seby Läge -- Eketorp -- Fyren Långe Jan -- Degerhamn -- Kalmar Slott -- Overnight at Karlskrona

Must-Incur Costs

None

Optional Costs

(1) Lunch (2 wraps) from ICA Sandvik - SEK69.90
(2) Food from ICA Jämjön - SEK86.90
(3) McDonalds - SEK32

The Story

16072019: It was a beautiful morning when I woke up to the view of the waters at Byrums Rauka. It is not a sea. It is a huge lake called Östersjön (pronounced as ers-ter-hwen). Byrum rauka (Limestone Tower Rauka) is a limestone area which has huge formations of limestones. Here is a brief introduction of this place from Visit Oland.

For 490 million years ago was the land mass that Öland belongs to at the height of the southern tropic, in a tropical climate. Lime Sludge began deposited in large coral reefs in warm, shallow seas. For a long time the coral reefs was pressed together under high pressure and the limestone of Öland was formed. Researchers believe that it took 1000 years of lime precipitation to form a millimeter of todays limestone. The thickness of the limestone layers on Öland generally amounts to 40 meters, which means that it took 40 million years to form the limestone bedrock on Öland.

Due to the different contents of the clay minerals, the hardness of the limestone varies. Rauks at Byrum were formed when softer limestone eroded away by wave impact and left behind stone statues (Rauks) of harder limestone. The area at Byrum is rich in fossils. Fossils are dead prehistoric animals that has sunk to the ocean floors and been embedded in sediment. The sediments have been compressed during a long time into a rock, in which the animal forms is preserved. At Byrum occurs fossils of the Trilobite genus Asaphus occurs so plentiful that it lent its name to one of the layers of the limestone.

Of course, I had lots of photos taken at this place, posing with different limestone.

The drive goes on to pay a visit to the island's northern lighthouse called Långe Erik. It has a brother named Långe Jan at the southern part of the island. We walked around the island. It has a nice nature path around the island.

Långe Erik ("Tall Erik"), official name Ölands norra udde, is a Swedish lighthouse built in 1845 and located on a little island, Stora Grundet (in Böda socken, Borgholm Municipality), in Grankullaviken bay at the north point of Öland, the second largest island in Sweden. The island is connected to Öland by a small bridge built in 1965. The lighthouse is whitewashed, 32 meters high. Source from Wikipedia.

Next attraction - Trollskogen naturreservat. Trollskogen means the enchanted forest. There is a nature centre at the parking lot where we stopped by to use the washroom. The nature reserve has lots of pine trees with contorted shapes due to the strong wind from the beach. It really looks like an enchanted forest with these weirdly-shaped trees.

We took the west trail which is 4.5km long. It is marked by the pink colour.

This is the story of the shipwreck from Wikipedia.

The Swiks (or Swix) was a three-masted schooner from Åland that sank in the Baltic Sea, off the island of Öland, Sweden, on 21 December 1926. The ship, with a crew of seven, was sailing from Flensburg, Germany to her homeport, Mariehamn, with only ballast on board. A snowstorm forced the ship to try to round north of Öland, to seek shelter in Kalmar, but the rounding attempt failed and the ship got stuck in the sand dunes below the water (Änggärdsudden) near the beach of Trollskogen. The crew abandoned ship and got to land in a lifeboat, walking through the forest of Trollskogen before reaching Grankullavik, where they were cared for a week. One crew member had gotten blood poisoning from a rusty nail and was cared for in hospital. The wreck of the Swiks lay off the beach until a winter storm in the 1950s threw her up on the beach, where she broke in two.

Next place - Old mill and flax sauna in Lerkaka. We went inside one of the mills and into the flax sauna which is now a museum (since 1957). It is called linbastan in Swedish. Lin = flax. Bastan = The sauna.

Flax sauna, also linen sauna is a sauna facility for linen preparation where the linen should be able to dry during the autumn when the sun is no longer sufficient for the linen to dry outside. In southern Sweden, these saunas are mainly intended for drying flax, in the rest of Sweden they are also usually used for drying malt, washing, bathing and sometimes also for smoking meat. In design terms, a linen sauna is rarely different from a sauna for other uses. Source from Wikipedia.

I am not knowledgeable in agriculture, so I googled on flax seeds. I have heard of flax oil but I did not know that the same flax plant can be used to make fabric, from its stalk.

Harvesting the fibre usually takes place after the lower portion of the stalk has turned yellow but before the fruit is fully mature. The fibre is obtained by subjecting the stalks to a series of operations, including retting (the use of moisture and microorganisms to dissolve the tissues surrounding the fibres), drying, crushing, and beating. Source from Britannica.

This sauna was built in the 17th century and was in operations until 1922. It was stated on a laminated piece of paper in the sauna (museum now).

The drive along the coast of the island continues to a UNESCO area - the south of the island at a specific place named Sjömark. Here are the reasons from UNESCO.

Southern Öland is a living agrarian landscape where villages, arable lands, coastal lands and alvar plains make up this World Heritage property. The villages are almost entirely located along Västra Landborgen, and there are a large number of archaeological sites from the prehistoric period. The present agricultural landscape and the community of southern Öland have a unique cultural tradition which still exists in land use, land division, place names, settlement and biological diversity as far back as the Iron Age. The Öland farmers, in their various everyday lives, are a necessary part (sine qua non) of the history and future of this landscape. Today, the islanders farm land which has been ploughed for generations and put livestock out to pasture on land which has been grazed for millennia – a unique situation.

I met an elderly couple who kayaked from north of the island and it took them 7 days with 3 days of rest to reach to the south. Very admirable!

Next place - Eketorps Borg (a fort). It was closed when we arrived but we could still walk inside the fort. There was a lady staff who was preparing to lock all the doors in the fort. I managed to go inside one room before she locked it.

Eketorp is an Iron Age fort in southeastern Öland, Sweden, which was extensively reconstructed and enlarged in the Middle Ages. Throughout the ages the fortification has served a variety of somewhat differing uses: from defensive ringfort, to medieval safe haven and thence a cavalry garrison. In the 20th century it was further reconstructed to become a heavily visited tourist site and a location for re-enactment of medieval battles. Eketorp is the only one of the 19 known prehistoric fortifications on Öland that has been completely excavated, yielding a total of over 24,000 individual artifacts. Source from Wikipedia.

Next up - time to meet Brother Jan, the firehouse located at the south of the island.

Långe Jan ("Tall John") is a Swedish lighthouse located at the south cape of Öland in the Baltic Sea, Sweden's second largest island. It is one of Sweden's most famous lighthouses along with Kullen, Vinga and Landsort, and also the tallest lighthouse in Sweden. The lighthouse was built in 1785, probably by Russian prisoners of war. The tower was built of stone from an old chapel. Originally the light was an open fire, and the tower was unpainted. It was painted white in 1845, and the same year the tower's lantern was installed, to house a colza oil lamp. A couple of years later a black band was added to the tower. The lighthouse remains in use and is remote-controlled by the Swedish Maritime Administration in Norrköping. Source from Wikipedia.