South Sweden Tour - Day 8

South Sweden Tour - Day 8
Today we explored the surroundings a bit. Our journey took us to Störlinge, where 7 mills stand in a long row.
The most common type of mill on Öland is the so-called stump mill with a rotating millhouse, also known as a pole mill. These are the mills that can also be seen in Störlinge. This type of mill is the typical Öland mill, of which there are still several hundred examples on the island.
Since agriculture was (and still is, alongside tourism) the most important source of income on Öland, many of the island's inhabitants were farmers. In addition, the flat landscape of the island and its proximity to the open Baltic Sea greatly favored the operation of windmills. The number of mills on Öland increased to 2000. Each farm had a mill to meet its own needs. However, as windmills lost significance throughout the 20th century, many of them fell into ruin and were dismantled. Nowadays, only about 400 remain and adorn the landscape of the Baltic island.
After visiting the Störlinge mills from the outside and inside, we made our way to the church of Gärdslösa.
The church and cemetery of Gärdslösa lie west of the road between Bredsätra and Långlöt, north of the villages of Norra and Södra Gärdslösa. The church is situated on the grounds of a castle, and to the north is the Störlinge Södra Kvarnbacke, a burial field with raised stones and stone settings.
As the discovered runestones attest, a wooden church must have already stood at this site in the 11th century. At some point in the second half of the 12th century, however, the wooden church was replaced by a stone church.
The church also features various old wall paintings, which we could not visit since the church was closed.
We continued with our white horse (our scooter) to the Öland Museum Himmelsberga.
Himmelsberga is a two-row village, meaning that barns stand on both sides of the small village road, while the residential houses are located further in the surrounding farms. The farms display houses and environments from the 1700s and 1800s with furniture and tools that were part of rural life on Öland.
The historical farms showcase fully furnished interiors and provide an insight into a once Öland row village.
For example, there is a bog-roofed, one-and-a-half-storey double house in half-timbered construction from the late 18th century, predominantly made of oak wood. The double house was the predominant dwelling type on Öland until the mid-19th century. It consists of an entrance hall and a chamber in the middle, along with a living room with an integrated kitchen in the southern gable. The attic space only features simple beam rooms used as storage rooms.
Actually, we wanted to visit the castle ruin Borgholm afterwards, but that didn't work out because there was so much to see in Himmelsberga that we spent too long there.
In the evening, we had a beautiful sunset, although it was not yet dark afterwards. In June, it stays light at night in South Sweden because the days are very long. The summer solstice, also called Midsummer, falls between June 20 and June 26, and during this time it hardly gets dark. In Borgholm on Öland, it gets slightly darker around midnight, but it is not truly dark.