Going a little further afield today, we caught a bus to travel the 10km (about 6 miles) to Gammelstad Church Town, which harkens back a thousand years! At that time the area consisted of a group of islands where the sea level was about 32 feet higher than it is today! As the Viking Age ended in about the year 1050 and Vikings became Christianized a parish was established in this northern reach of what was to become Sweden. By the 1300’s this area was part of a border dispute with Russia so the Swedish state set about securing the area by settlement and establishing churches. A large stone church was built in the 1400’s and by 1621 the town known as Lulea was founded, sustained by fishing and fur trading. By the mid 1600’s geologic uplift over time had rendered the harbor too shallow to continue trade by watercraft and the town had to be moved nearer the coast, the present location of Lulea. But the large stone church stayed put! Because of the scattered nature of the population, farmers living and tending fields far from the marketplace in town, and the duty imposed on the population to attend church regularly, most citizens built small cottages closer to the church where they could stay overnight or during church festivals. When the town was moved, and the Church stayed, so did the cottages and the tradition of coming to church and staying for brief periods of time in your cottage. Thus the “Church Town” came into being. There were originally 71 Swedish Church Towns scattered around the country. Gammelstad is the largest and best preserved of the 16 remaining.

The Nederlulea church is believed to have been finished in 1492!

While the exterior looks rather plain, it has a very rich interior and furnishings!

The pulpit dates from the early 1700’s.

The much more modest cottages radiate out on grassy or paved lanes from the central church. There are 404 cottages remaining in the church town and all are required to be painted in red and white only. There are many regulations regarding their use and maintenance, although they are no longer required to be owned exclusively by parishoners.

The interior of this cottage is on display and outfitted circa 1800’s. Most cottage owners would leave their finer “going-to-church” clothes at the cottage and actually welcomed the holidays and social aspect of their imposed ‘church-going’, being a break from the toils of farming!

Cottage owners built their own cottages and a clue to a farmers prosperity could be gleaned from the state of his cottage! Most beds, built in cupboards, were small due to the cramped nature of the cottage and people generally slept in a seated position in the bed!

Cottage building began around the 1600’s when the obligation to attend church was introduced. Obviously there was no sewage system then, and even now the cottages have no running water or plumbing. Back in the day there were outhouses and now there are public bathrooms and shower houses.

An outhouse staple of the 1600’s until toilet paper was invented – the butt stick!

Let’s get that image out of our minds!

Ahhhh, Beer!

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.

We have an early morning bus to catch today on our convoluted bus and train journey across the border from Finland into Sweden at the top of the Gulf of Bothnia. The bus left from the Rovaniemi train station and traveled south to the town of Kemi, Finland where we waited for another bus that took us across the border.

At the Kemi bus station we found a small pizza parlor and ordered a pizza during our hour-long layover. It was delicious! A special ‘northern’ pizza with reindeer meat and mushrooms!

A quick half hour ride and we reached the bus station in Haparanda, Sweden! Right next to the northernmost IKEA store! A Swedish icon, and no we didn’t go inside to browse, or even to get some Swedish meatballs (my Mom loved them!).

Looking across the river, back towards Tornio, Finland. The bus station is next to the Torne river, the border between Finland and Sweden.

We waited at the station for a city bus that would take us across the small town of Haparanda to the train station.

And quite an impressive train station it is! Finished in 1917, and visited by Vladimir Lenin on his way back to Russia to spearhead the Russian revolution, it is the largest train station in all of Sweden. However, it was rarely used for passenger service! In fact passenger service between Finland and Sweden was completely closed from 1992 to 2021! Renovation is ongoing on this beautiful building.

Only 3 trains a week leave from this station, we were early for our train and had the whole station to ourselves, but were eventually joined by about a dozen more passengers for our trip to Lulea, Sweden.

The Swedish landscape seems rather flat here, traveling west along the broken coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. Wooded with many lakes and marshes, we kept a lookout for moose but never saw any.

Reflections of sightseeing through the train window!

We reached Lulea at about 4:30pm and found the local bus line for the 10 minute ride towards our Airbnb, with a short walk to the door!

The front looks like it could be an ice cream shop! The interior is very roomy and comfortable.

The weather report promised a beautiful day today so we went out and rented ‘city’ bikes for a tour around town.

Crossing the Kemijoki river on the Jätkänkynttilä silta, or the “Lumberjack’s Candle Bridge”.

For 100 years from about 1860 to 1960 a major economic staple of the area was the logging industry. Trees were cut out in the wilderness then floated down the river to Rovaniemi where they were milled. This bridge pays homage to the lumberjacks of the era, and their ‘candles’, logs that were partially split, stood on end and lit to provide a warming or cooking fire, and this is reflected in the bridge’s twin columns topped with fluorescent lights that resemble a lumberjack’s candle.

We finally found a bike path along the river, past the Arktikum Museum, which was closed today.

And the views along the river were gorgeous!

We also found some free public hygiene washing sites along the river! Not for personal hygiene, but household hygiene, these are Rug Washing Units! The Finnish take household cleanliness very seriously!

The sites have tubs with large flat shelves where rugs can be laundered and scrubbed. Also provided are the biggest hand cranked wringers I’ve ever seen, to wring the rugs out! Lots of wooden racks are provided to air dry the rugs.

Remember the rack I pointed out behind our Airbnb, that we’ve seen behind almost every apartment building. It turns out that they are part of this rug cleaning phenomenon. They are “Rug Beating Racks”. Rugs are regularly hung up on them and beaten to shake out the dust and dirt. This is especially useful in winter when the rugs can’t be washed, and dust mites will die when the rugs are hung out in the sub-zero temperatures! Most Finnish homes have tile or wood floors, there is virtually no wall to wall carpeting anywhere!

We ventured to the Arctic Circle today! We have been to the Arctic Circle in Canada, and above it, twice, both times on the Dempster Highway in the Yukon that crosses into the Northwest Territory. It is a 450 mile trip on a gravel road into the wilderness, across the tundra, with several ferry crossings over wild glacial rivers! Only a few indigenous villages are along the road with limited services. Comparing that to our trip today is comparing a wilderness safari to a walk in the park! Santa Claus Village (the official site where you can ‘cross’ the Arctic Circle) is practically a suburb of Rovaniemi. This part of the Arctic Circle is definitely NOT the tundra! We caught a comfortable tour bus at the train station and rode for about 20 minutes on a paved road through wooded suburban neighborhoods to the complex of buildings and large paved courtyard that constitutes Santa Claus’ Hometown!

The red towers across the pavilion mark the ‘official Arctic Circle crossing’!

Across!

At the edge of the plaza is the Roosevelt Cottage, built in 1950 for a visit by Eleanor Roosevelt, Chairman of the UN Commission on Human Rights. Rovaniemi had been virtually destroyed by German occupation during WWII and Roosevelt was instrumental in getting aid distributed to devastated communities such as Rovaniemi. At the time it was the only structure at the Arctic Circle crossing and it became a tourist destination over the years.

At the Village Post Office you can mail postcards from the Arctic Circle, and even letters from Santa Claus, to be delivered at Christmas!

The northern latitudes of Finland, Sweden and Norway, as well as Arctic areas of Russia are also known as Lapland, the home of the Sami people. Walking around the ‘Village’, we came upon some cultural architecture, buildings synonymous with the Sami culture, the indigenous people of the Scandinavian/Russian Arctic. A short Youtube video about the Sami is Here. The Sami were nomadic hunter-gatherers who herded wild reindeer who now live more modern lives. Their connection with the land, reindeer herding and arctic lifestyle are still very important parts of their lives and they have organized to fight for their rights as indigenous people, having experienced the same discrimination, forced assimilation and loss of territory as other indigenous peoples around the world.

Mosquito shelters were built mainly for the semi-wild reindeer that the Sami herd.

This shelter had a smokey fire burning, there were several others around the Village, perhaps to ward off the mosquitos!

The reindeer herders cabins would be built along the routes which the Sami used.

The tipi (which the Sami name ‘tapi’) is a temporary shelter used while they were on the move. Most Sami have always lived in more permanent housing. Food cache buildings were built on stilts or tree trunks to protect and store food.

We caught the bus back into town and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon and then an evening stroll around the lake.