August 7 Lulea (Day 315)
A glorious blue-sky day begged for us to go outside and explore, so we did. We caught the local bus and rode out to the outskirts of Lulea to the small village of Karlsvik. We hopped off the bus when we spotted a train museum!
The grassy yard full of old engines and rail cars seemed like a museum, but we couldn’t find any visitor center or entrance, so we just wandered around amongst the old cars.
Most of the engines have snowplows on the front!
Next to the railyard is this bright, imposing building. Later I learned it is the old Karlsvik school, converted into condominiums. It looks like a hotel!
Across the road from the old school in a quiet, well maintained forest is this monument and a reader board describing this spot at the end of WWII. The translation reads “In memory of 24,339 Soviet soldiers and civilians who died in 1945 after being freed from German captivity in Norway…”. At the end of WWII this site is where freed Soviets, who had been imprisoned by the Nazis in Norway during the war, were brought on their journey back to the Soviet Union. The 24,339 Soviet citizens referred to in the monument had died in the Nazi prison camps and forced labor camps in Norway.
Sweden was one of 14 countries that remained officially neutral during WWII, and was not invaded by Germany. “How Neutral Countries in WWII Weren’t So Neutral” delves into this history.
Karlsvik in its heyday before WWII was an industrial village and closely linked with the iron and steel industry . It is now a quiet, quaint suburb of Lulea. We caught the next bus returning to Lulea and hopped off near a hiking and bird watching area.
We found the trailhead and entered the woods on an overgrown path. The path crossed an open area thick with tall grasses growing over and obscuring the boardwalk we were on before we entered the woods again. That’s when the mosquitoes found us and drove us right back out of the woods and off the trail!
We made it to the bus stop and continued our adventure back in downtown Lulea!
At the waterfront we saw this old crane, all shined up and pretty. In the background across the water is the peninsula where the steel mill and industrial area was moved to.