Welcome to Bjärka-Säby Local Heritage Centre.
The centre was founded on the initiative of the estate owner Oscar Ekman. During
the first half of the 1920s he arranged for these very old buildings to be
relocated from different farms and crofts around the estate to the site of
the heritage centre. The purpose of this was to show the public what a
farm would have looked like during the first half of the 19th
century. The
project became a success, and this was mostly due to the careful direction
of Sigurd Erixon, who was the curator of the Nordic Museum at the time. Nowadays
the centre is cared for by the Wist Local Heritage Society. This
organisation was founded in 1976 with the purpose of the repair,
restoration and general maintenance of this unusual relic of Swedish rural
life.
1, 2,3. You are now at Sandgården
This
dwelling was moved here from Sand, a farmstead under the estate of Stavsäter
near the north end of the lake Rängen. The
building has a tiled roof and red-coloured walls which appeared in farms
at the beginning of the 19th century. Before that the walls
were uncoloured and the houses were roofed with living turf. The
windows have been enlarged in recent years. The small windows of the attic
facing onto the courtyard have earlier been seated downstairs, and were
the only windows of the house.
To the left you can see "Undantagsstugan", a house intended to house the older generation when the younger took over the responsibility of running the farmstead. Read more below.
To the right you see a building containing a shed and a farmhand's quarters. Read more below.
Undantagsstugan
(a cottage intended to house the older generation) of Sandgården was
moved here from Stora Fallemo. This kind of cottage was used to house the
older generation when the younger took over the responsibility of running
the farmstead. At times this particular cottage was used for this purpose.
The
house is soundly built out of logs with extended corners and has a tiled
roof. Besides the dwelling room there is a kitchen and a small attic. The
biggest room has mortar-coated walls with ornate spatter and a panelled
ceiling. Stora
Fallemo, from where this cottage is collected, is located 1 km to the
southwest of Bjärka-Säby. 3. Shed and farmhand’s quarters This
Cottage was moved here from Stora Tolemålen. It is composed of a shed and
the living quarters for the farmhand. The
farm hand’s accommodation consists of a small beautiful room with mortar
coated walls ornamented with colourful stencil patterns. Outside the room
there is a hall. From
the shed
there’s a
flight of stairs up to the granary attic, where there are partitions for
the
storage of different kinds of grain. In
the pantry you can find many items where the food was stored. For example
you can see a “cheese holder” made of wood where the cheese was
moulded. Through hollowing sturdy tree-trunks a so-called “stånnor”
was made. In these for example meal and grain were stored.
4. Food cellar
5.
Woodshed
(also in the background of the smithy picture)
Close
to the cellar there is a wooden
shed. This was used for the storage of firewood among other things. This was a rather primitive construction
consisting of a normal roof, saddleback, placed directly on the ground.
One of the walls is built of a traditionally bound wooden fence whilst the
other is a plank construction. This building originated from
Berglundstorpet.
6. The Smithy
As
early as the Middle Ages it was decreed that the smithy should be built
isolated from the rest of the buildings because of the risk of fire. This
beautiful house built of logs and roofed with turf was relocated from Gräshorva,
which is situated by the road between Vässentorp and Skog. Besides
“smefyrn” with its forge, there are old tools
that were needed for
household requirements when forging. The bellows were operated by hand
with
a lever.
7, 8. Stable with sheds for carriages, tools and woodwork
This
row of cattle houses consists of a stable from Häradssveden which is
situated in the forest near the lake Kolbottensjön. Here
is also a shed for carriages, a tool shed and a shed for carpentry coming
from Stora Långnäs. There
is a full set of tools here for woodwork and the making of clogs among
other things. The
roofs are thatched with straw
from rye, which was the custom of the time.
The straw has Vist Local Heritage Society partly reaped and threshed with
flails like in the old days, and partly bought from Skåne.
In the foreground you can see the fresh water well.
9, 10. Threshing barn and cow house from Sadelmakartorp
Just opposite the stable and the tool shed (and perpendicular to the pig sty), this cattle shed with a threshing barn is situated. It was moved here from the Sadelmakartorp croft. The
cattle shed is narrow and the only light comes from a small aperture with
a sliding shutter. To keep the warmth there is also a ceiling. Adjacent to
the shed is a store room for cattle fodder. The threshing barn is of the usual kind from this district, with a narrow room in the middle where the threshing was done. For threshing flails were used, consisting of two sticks connected with eel skin or leather straps. Here
you can also see old pitchforks and spades together with a very primitive
tool, “ryst-tjuga”. This was used for turning the threshed straw.
11. Pigsty
The pigsty
was obtained from Mumsmålen. The
house contains two rooms, of which one is older. The younger addition is
the one in which logs are not joined into a “cross corner”; instead a
corner called “salmon corner” is used.
12. Hay barn from the Röken croft
A
bit outside the cattle shed this hay barn is situated. It’s built
of thin logs and the roof is covered with reeds.
Cottage and shed, n:o 13,14 Cow house, threshing machine, n:o 15, 16,17
This
cottage with shed and cow shed shows us how crofters and farmers lived
during the 18th and 19th centuries. The dwelling is
built with logs with cross-corners and is seven layers of logs high –
making it a seven-layer
cottage. It contains a landing, a dwelling-room with a fireplace, and a small unheated room without a fireplace. The house does not have a ceiling. The so called Sandstugan (n:o 1) further on at the heritage centre is luxurious in comparison.
Vist
Local Heritage Society has been
forced to paint houses red and cover
roofs with tiles. In the 19th century most crofts were
unpainted and they were roofed with turf. Löten
was originally seated in the forest between Torpa and Gunnarsbo. There are
only small remains of this dwelling.
When
digging for a new fertilizer container at Styvinge in July 1999 the water
pipes were found. In
the woods at Klockarängen there’s a spring.
A pipe runs from this spring
to Styvinge cattle house. It was
first run around 120 years ago. The
distance is 800 metres. The pipes are made of bored pine-trunks,
each 8 metres
tall with a diameter of 30-40 centimetres. They are sharpened
on one and
pushed into the other. The ditch was probably dug with wooden-spades. The
pipes are bored by hand and are still in very good condition. They were
put new into the dug ditch. Afterwards all joints and trunks were covered
with blue clay. Why
was this done? Because that in the hay loft above the cattle house was a
big wooden basin, and the spring is situated about 10 metres above it,
which is
why
the basin could be filled by self pressure. The water
level is adjusted
with a wooden
plug in the pipe. For
the construction 100 trees,
each
8 metres tall were used, and everything was
handmade. It’s a masterpiece of building construction, which
should be preserved and handed down to posterity. The pipes
that were dug
are now stored and
on display at the Bjärka-Säby Local Heritage Centre. |