Gotland's Oldest Votive Ship

I took a break from blogging and am trying to get back to doing it on a regular basis.

The picture shows the oldest votive ship on Gotland. You can find it in the small church in the parish of Västergarn, 30 minutes south of Visby. The ship was given to the church in 1637 by the local harbour bailiff Marcus Schröder.

During that time the island of Gotland was under Danish rule but the church was under the diocese of Linköping in Sweden. Marcus Schröder is believed to have come to Gotland as a skipper, shipping German refugees from Eckenförde. The thirty year war between catholics and protestans was in full bloom in Europe.

The votive ship is a full-rigged ship with square-sails on all three masts. The type of ship is known as a frigate. This one has 48 canons which makes it a naval ship

There are golden inscriptions on the ship in German:
Starboard: Gott Zur Ehr, der Jugend zur Lehr, Der Kirchen zum Zihrrat
God to honour, Youth to learn, the Church as an ornament.

Port: Marckes Schröder dieses Schip verehret hat. 1637
Marckes Schröder has donated this ship. 1637

Marcus Schröder became an important man on Gotland. He was its first lime squire and also a member of parliament. He perished during a voyage between Lübeck and Visby in 1661.

Source: Kyrkfönstret, Klinte pastorats kyrkoblad 2014 Nr 2.


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Tombstone Tuesday - Selma Rosenberg, a sad story

At Vänge cemetary on Gotland is this tombstone placed. The girl, Selma, has written the poem on her stone herself.

What is all the thinking, 

what is it?

What is all the searching 

in the human soul?

It is a child's game 

with sea shells in the sand

and what we find

is a foam by the beach

But deep and enigmatical

flows still

infront of us the sea

that is the truth!

Selma was born on the main land, not far from Stockholm. As a child she developed a heart condition. Her father died after battleing cancer for a year and a half when she was 13. Her mother was then left with 6 children and hardly any money to feed the family. This led to the mother's placement in a mental institution.

She started writing poetry at an early age and was very talented. So talented that she was offered a job, which she turned down. Instead she worked with clothes and embroidering. Her health was poor and her siblings tried to find a way to help her. She longed to visit her friend at Etelhem on Gotland, auntie Kökeritz and recieved an invitation.

June 4, 1901, Selma arrieved in Visby. None of her siblings could afford to go with her so she travelled on her own. She stayd the first night wiht some friends outside the town and the next day she was supposed to take the train down to Etelhem. She did not have the patiance to wait so she started walking. She came as far as Vänge on the evening of the fifth. She writes there in her diary about how tired she is and how ill she feels.

On the morning of the sixth her body is found on the estate of Backér. She had laid her scarf out on the ground to rest a bit but never woke up.


Source:
http://www.guteinfo.com/?id=2497

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The Runestone at Viklau Church, Gotland

On the wall of the entrance to the graveyard at Viklau on Gotland is a funeral slabb with runes. The text reads: "Botvid, the heir of Peter". What makes these runes special is the fact that they are mirrored.




Sources:
http://kmb.raa.se/cocoon/bild/show-image.html?id=16001000328204
Thorgunn Snaedal, antiquarian and runologist.

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Society Saturday - Gotlandståget

During my trip to Gotland I stayed with a relative who had rented an old, small, railroad station, Tule. It used to only be tha cottage of the level crossing attandant but has resently been upgraded to station. The first railroad on Gotland was built in 1878 when the line Visby-Hemse was built. In 1898 the railroad between Klintehamn and Roma was finished and it is along that line that Thule station is situated. The line was built to make it easier for the farmers to transport their sugar beats to the sugar mill in Roma. The railroads on Gotland were discontinued in the early 1960's and all the rails were taken away.

In 1978 had a small portion of the railroads been restored and could be taken into use. During the beginning of the 21st century further tracks have been put down and this year you could travel by train a distance that takes 10 minutes. More tracks are being added and next year you should be able to travel all the way from Dalhem to Roma. The society that runs the railroad and is working to restore it has recieved money from the EU and you can also fund the project by buying a railroad tie. You will not be able to take it with you but your name will be on a board by one of the stations.

There is one steam locomotive but when the weather is too dry, like it is this summer, they use diesel locomotives instead. There are several wagons from different time periods that you can choose to ride in. The train stops at different stations and the train conductor tells the history of the railroad.

All trips start and end at Hesselby station in Dalhem. There is a café and a railroad station. You can also buy souvenirs.

Tule Station

Diesel locomotive with wagons.

Insiede the youngest of the wagons.

With the renting of the station came the free rent for two trollies so we hopped on the trolleys and peddled 30 minutes up hill to Tule where we had fika (Swedish word for having coffe, tea, something to drink, cookies and/or cake) and then we peddled our way back. For SEK 100 you rent the trolly for 90 minutes. It is not very steep up hill so not even I had problems with peddling.

Trolly in Dalhem.

Dalhem station

The big building is the railroad musuem.

Source:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotlands_j%C3%A4rnv%C3%A4g
http://www.gotlandstaget.se/

Photos: By Lena Svensson

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Scensational archeological find on Gotland

At diggings in Levide on Gotland the archeologists have made a scensational find. http://www.helagotland.se/noje/default.aspx?articleid=9859960  It is a pendant in the shape of Odin's head with an arch above his head. Nothing like it has ever been found on Gotland before but there has been one just like it found at the Russian Viking city Staraya Ladoga. Assosiate professor in cultural geography, Dan Carlsson, says that it is a really cool finding they have made.

Picture:

Is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

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Surname Saturday - Winter from Gotland

My great grandmother Jenny's maiden name was Winter. Growing up I always thought that it was a soldier's name like Hjelte (hero) or Björn (Bear). Grandfather also claimed that there were vallonians on the Winter side of the family. Naturally, I wanted to find out if this was true when I started my genealogy research many years later.

Jenny was born in 1891 in the province of Södermanland, just south of Stockholm. She was the eighth child out of twelve, nineth counting her oldest half brother. Her father was Johan Winter and I knew that he worked as an overseer on a famous estate in Södermanland but I had no idea that he was from Gotland. When I find Johan's birth in the church records it turns out that he was born outside of wedlock but his mother, Hedvig Elisabeth Westberg, moves in with Johan Henrik Winter soon after her son is born. Hedvig Elisabeth and Johan Henrik never marry but their four children all get the surname Winter and so does Hedvig Elisabeth's oldest son.

The Winters on Gotland can trace their roots back to the beginning of the 17th century. Back then there were three men with the surname Winter and two of them are believed to be brothers, Jöns and Mickel Jönsson Winter. Mickel was some sort of craftsman with the title master and Jöns kept records of what the poor people earned from a piece of land next to one of the churches. The third man, Mads or Mauritz, was a tax collector.

But where does the name come from? My theory is that it is German in origin. At the end of the 12th and first half of the 13th century there was a huge number of immigrants in Visby, mostly merchants from Germany. It was they who took the initative to build the ring wall that is still standing around the town of Visby. Of course there were other immigrants to the island as well, especially from Denmark when the island was Danish from 1361 to 1679, but there are several other German immigrants with the name Winter to Sweden later through history. There are no evidence that Winter would be a Vallonian name since they never came to the island, not in any great numbers at least.


Sources: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:199413/FULLTEXT01.pdf