In 1995 Visby was added to the UNESCO world heritage list, specifically for the well-preserved town wall.
Gotland is the island, Visby is the city.
23 500 is the Visby population.
57 500 is the Gotland population.
Gotland is a very exclusive area. Average price of a house is $50 000 inland or $1 million by the sea or close to Visby.
In 2006, it was decided that the military was not necessary anymore.
The movie about "Pippielongstockings" was filmed in Gotland. The house that they used has been transformed into an amusement park.
The daughter of King Oscar the First had bad health. Her doctor said that she should move to Gotland. She lived in a wooden castle. She was not married and did not have any children, but had a love for them. She started an orphanage and built a school for the children who lived there. When she died, she asked for her castle to become the YMCA. Today, it is used as a hostel.
The Swedish call Visby "limestone Hawaii" because of all the beaches and limestone sand.
The town is dotted with solid concrete sheep. These are traffic stoppers and the ram's name is Harold and ewe's name is Hilda. Harold, the (real) sheep used to be the king's mascot in the 1980s. He (the sheep) has been replaced over the years, but has always been named Harold.
The oldest building in Visby is the gunpowder room (this is the large tower shown in the pictures). It was built in 1100 and is 100 years older than the churches. Visby did not exist when this tower was built. It used to stand alone and be surrounded by water. The entrance to the tower was five yards up from the ground so you needed a ladder to enter it.
A convent is a place where monks and nuns live, but leave the convent to help people in the town, while a monastery is a place where monks and nuns live and remain. So, they do not leave the monastery.
In order to get to the Swedish island of Visby we had to get off the ship and on to a brightly-coloured Tender boat because the harbour is too shallow for the cruiseliner. This was such a fun experience in itself, sailing across the ocean while sitting on the open upper deck of this boat. Gotland reminded me of a wild unkept Morgan Bay paradise. We started our tour at a viewpoint that looked over a 48 metre cliff. During medieval times this was a place where the Vikings brought their elderly and pushed them over the side to help them reach the afterlife, what they used to call Valhalla.
After that we were shown the area where Visby's old harbour used to be during the 1200s. Today it has been transformed into a park because the harbour was too shallow for big boats. Directly behind this park is the town wall that the people said was built for protection from the sea and pirates. This wall was actually built so that the town could charge tax for their trade. This began in 1161 when an association called Hansa league from Germany started trading in the centre of Visby. The wall was first built 5 yards high, but was then extended to 11 yards. Of the many towers that were built in between this wall, 27 still exist today and all have various names: gate tower, ground tower, saddle tower etc. The main gate used to be closed at 9pm very night. There is a story that a maid was punished by for letting someone through the gate after hours by being locked in a tower for the rest of her life...this may be just a story. Because of the huge amount of trade, Visby has many houses that used to be merchant houses. The only houses on Main Street were merchant houses and they all used the pulley-system to store their goods. Bricks were a huge expense at this time, so all of the homes are built out of limestone, but a few bricks are built into this limestone at the front of the house as this used to be a sign of wealth. The pictures that you see of the brown burnt house shows a different way of building houses during this time. These houses are described as Lego houses as they do not use nails, but instead layer large pieces of wood that lean against sill frame poles. The structure was then covered in hemp and dipped in tar. The sun would boil the tar which is why it has a bubbly texture.
A few streets down is the Visby Botanical Garden. 200 years ago, 10 well educated young men decided to start a school for young poor boys. They also started a bank that still exists today, and bought land to start the Visby Botanical Garden so people could learn about trees and flowers and allow people to have a plot to grow vegetables. A large apple tree stood in this area before the botanical garden existed. Over the years it has become a bit tired and is now lying on the ground. Because this tree is so sentimental to Visby, the gardenkeeper took a piece from the tree and planted its baby behind it to prepare for when it dies. Visby is called the town of roses and ruins specifically for the amount of roses in this garden and the ones growing against walls. Different kinds of roses bloom from June to November. After the garden we looked at a few of the town's old churches. St George church used to be used by only those who had leprosy. The St Mary church is the only church that is fully intact in Visby, due to the others being burned in fires in 1525. This was out of protest because all the churches used to have the money and power. It is assumed that this church was untouched because it was a German church and was used for storage. However, the stain glass windows had to be restored in 1979, so they decided to redo them with modern designs.
We came across a piece of the town wall that was being worked on. In 2012 the outer shell of 70 square metres of the wall collapsed because in 1970, the town of Visby decided to put concrete on top of the wall to preserve it. But this wall was originally and cleverly built with limestone instead of concrete, because concrete cannot breathe. In an area that had been worked on, the concrete exploded in the cold which caused the outer shell to fall down. What's worse is that this concrete-process has been completed on other areas of the wall so the people wonder if they should remove it now or just wait for it to explode too...
After an amazing day in Visby (one of my favourite tours) we were treated to tiger prawns for dinner. As most South Africans will agree, this is a real treat for us because seafood is so darn expensive in our country. The only downside was that we ate so much to fill the seafood void. My older sister, Nicole described how we all felt quite aptly saying she felt like a "little tiger prawn piglet"...it was funny at the time. The after-dinner show was a ton of fun. The Zoots came to perform, a 1960s cover band that had an odd quirkiness (awkwardness) about them, but they had us on our feet by the end of the show.
The best part about today was visiting the St Mary church where a boat made out of piled rocks had been laid on the floor for people to place their prayer requests inside. Everyone was welcome to write out a prayer and on 18 September the prayers will be burned and (I'd like to think) sent to heaven. This was so refreshing since it was the first sign of active worship that I had seen throughout this trip. We each wrote down our prayers and placed them in the boat with a smidgen of pride. I love showing others my love for God :)
No comments:
Post a Comment