Well, I figured that I might as well take a small photographic excursion around the localities here following yesterday's showoff of the area around the house. I've also made these photographs in color as well so SneerRolts doesn't think I'm dabbling in some necromantic ritual to make beer from human flesh. :P The photographs are presented in the chronological order of visit, I shall do my best to describe the areas in as big a detail I possibly can. All of these things are basically at the most 4km from the house. By the way, it goes against my photographical ethics to manipulate actual photographs. What you see, is what I've seen. I haven't done much post-processing either since these are just for documentarian purposes. There are also a lot of other local history around here that are just too abundant and modern for some of my tastes. I know a lot of it though due to having been a freelance photographer for the society that dabbles in local history.
I should add that I probably sound quite insane in certain sections of this, you'll have to take it with a kilo of salt and beer.
We shall begin with one of many limestone quarries that have been filled with water about 1.5km away from the house. The name for the suburb is Hällabrottet, which derives from the older name Hällabråten which literally translates into "the stone quarry". My mother recall when they used dynamite in the 60's to extract the limestone as it usually shook the dinner table even though this was 2.5km away and relatively small charges. My grandfather used to hunt rabbits and smaller game in general when these quarries were not filled. You just stood outside the quarry and let the dog drive the game to the spot you could get out of it and just blasted away so to speak. One can find certain fossils from sea life from the triassic period in quarries like this. I have a few with parts of otoceras but I've yet to find a trilobite. The local library has a large collection of fossils like this but I couldn't find a picture online showing it.
Following the trail about 500m further leads us to a Hällkista. A kind of neolithic family grave made out of stone slabs. This was excavated and basically destroyed by us modern fools in the 60's. Since they didn't find any weapons or anything else (which seems to be the only thing we care about...) they didn't bother doing anything else. In my opinion, it's a good sign of modern idiocy and disrespect.
Going out on the road again we come to another limestone quarry about 3.5km away from the house, which even has the name Lugnet ("the calm place"). One used to be able to catch crayfish here but eventually the plague made them extinct in these waters. I tend to take a dip or two here during summertime since this is one of the lesser popular quarries people take a swim in. And I'm not one for crowds.
Going across the road we now come to the remnants of several limestone furnaces backed by mounds of waste from oil shale. In the second image you can clearly see what the mounds look like in detail. In the next "section" I shall explain why there are a lot of waste from shale around here.
Our trip now brings us to Kvarntorpshögen which is around 5-6km away from the house. To put it quite basic, it's a 150m high garbage dump. During the second world war the oil export to Sweden was basically nonexistent so the government got the bright idea to extract the oil from shale. But what to do with all the ash that's left over? Simple, just pile it up like a monument of modern intelligence! The pile is now a relatively popular attraction for tourists (god(s) know why...) and also has a 400-step staircase of doom with an almost 45° elevation that is popular for local people that do a lot of running. Certainly isn't all that nice on my pelvic tilt and chronic shin splints I can assure you... My legs were quite shaky from going down the stairs as it's almost impossible not to become tense in the muscles on the way down, so operating the clutch on the car was a bit iffy...
The pile is now home to, in my opinion, just completely worthless "art" like these two shown below.
Since the pile/hill is built up from pure shale ash, it's still acting like an enormous furnace and at certain places you can still see the pungent sulphuric smoke rising from within. These areas are forbidden to tread upon for obvious reasons but you can feel it through the soles of your footwear that it emits a lot of heat. I should add that the pile alone contains about 0.03‰ of uranium from alum shale as well.
I'll finish off this section with the views to the north and south from the pile.
Going out into the suburbs again, we now come to the two oldest houses in the locality. The leftmost was built in 1830 and the rightmost was built in 1774 and is made completely out of limestone and sealed with some masonic material whose term in English I don't know about. It is now the HQ of the society of local history and in their care.
The trip is soon coming to its end, and so brings us to the final place which happens to be the most mystical of them all. It is also the only local place I know where juniper and lingonberries grow abundant wildly. For this, some background music is almost a necessity.
This place is known as Lekebacken. On this hill there is a stone circle dating from the early iron age. Aside from this, there are also at least 2 dozen burial mounds on the hill alone. Now, for some lesson in Scandinavian mythology, there are nine stones standing. What does that tell us? Well, for one thing, Odin spent nine days hanging upside down to learn the magic of the runes. I have spent a few nights out here in the cold, and I assure you it is a very magical place indeed, even if some people might not think so. I have noticed through the years that the flowers seem to grow faster inside the circle. Might just be my imagination but who knows... Below you can see all the small burial mounds and the stone circle.
Just a pile of rocks someone put by a large birch tree for no particular reason? Think again, this is not a place for the living.
Historians have neglected this, but out in the crop fields there is a small "island" of trees and there always has been since at least the 17th century when the fields were virtually unchanged. At least from my study of local maps from that era. It's a local myth that one can see ghosts there at night but who knows, I haven't slept there. Yet... It also has at least two burial mounds as well.
And to top it all off we have a small view from the hill. Some thousands of years ago this was all covered in water but the hill still stood clear below water level.
Well. That's it for now.