New crew this week to get back to Nynäshamn, Sweden, with Gérard, an old friend sailor, who wants the type of "heavy sailing" that his family is reluctant too... Plans are set to sail through Gotska Sandön or even Gotland, but in fact, the excess of wind will make us revise them, as it would not be safe to anchor in Gotska Sandön with 30 knots of northerly winds.
The new itinerary finally sees us going from Mariehamn to Lido's, then to Sandhamn (not Svenska Högarna as expected because of strong northerly winds), then Utö, before Nynäshamn.
Sandham - Lökholmen
The winds were find during the day, but forecasted to reach 30 to 35 knots during the night, and therefore not suitable for anchoring in Svenska Högarna. We decide to seek shelter in Sandhamn for the night...
But of course, every single sailor out there had the same idea and we end-up in a big traffic jam trying to attract the attention of the Sandhamn marina small support boat who works with a long waiting list.
As the wind builds-up, it becomes uneasy to move around and we decide to go to Lökholmen (59.292452, 18.9288) on the other side of the sound.
The place is well protected, but the entrance to Lökholmen is quite shallow and narrow. As you can see, the nautical charts are not that helpful to guide you through. There is a green buoy in the middle of the channel getting in, but it is very unclear which side is safe... In doubt, we pass it as close as possible...
We end-up being the largest boat in the place, mooring bow to the shore with a stern anchor. The 20 kilo Bruce back anchor does the job very nicely, holding several boats pressing on us under strong side wind.
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| Lökholmen guest pier in Sandhamn. |
There is a shuttle every hour for the main Sandhamn island.
Utö - Kyrkviken
We depart quite late the following day as the wind does not get down, making the departure a bit rock'n roll because of side winds. But with good speed and a bit of support from neighbours, we extract ourselves untouched.
As expected, with so few boats out of shelter, we find both sides of the Utö marina full, with additional boats on anchor in the narrow shallow channel. We run away with significant side winds and hit relatively badly a rock on the way out of Utö, but without apparent damage to the boat. We then check the two SXK buoys in Utö-Kyrkviken, which are already occupied...
In despair, we get deeper in the cove much to check if we can find a place to anchor. And we discover a brand new small guest pier, with a nice berth for us, along side, with electricity (20€).
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| The new guest pier in Utö is located on the 2 mark. |
With strong winds continuing and bad weather, we stay for two nights on this nice pier. After a long bike ride looking (unsuccessfully) for mushrooms we come across a large great grey owl on a post. Fascinating animal watching us from a short distance.
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| Great grey owl, Eurasian, on watch on a sign post |
A quick Wikipedia investigation indicates that this is one of the largest looking owl, with a wing span reaching up to 1.5 metres. Interestingly, their eyes are larger than human eyes and are not round but cylindrical! Which means they can not turn them in their orbits but have to move their head to look around. It flies away suddenly without a noise!
The church on Utö includes an interesting full-rigged votive ship.
Nynäshamn
We finally leave Utö Kyrkviken new marina to go to Nynäshamn through the Ryss-sundet, a very narrow picturesque passage between Rånö and Utö.
Ryss-sundet
The Ryss-sundet is the sound that the Russian used while invading Sweden in the early XVIII century. It remains today a 10 metre-wide dredged channel to get between Rånö and Utö. With Belisama being 4.3 metres wide and the boom on back wind adding another one to two metres, forget about passing across another boat while getting through the Ryss-Sundet.
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| Gérard on the helm through the Ryss-Sundet, and obviously enjoying it! |
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| Quite impressive to get with strong back wind (7 knots speed) through the sound, basically with no brakes. |
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| The crew for this week between Mariehamn to Nynäshamn... |
In Nynäshamn, Gérard took the pendeltåg to Arlanda to take his flight back to Germany. Kaja came then on Friday for the weekend on board. We decided not to sail, but to use the bikes to explore the surroundings of Nynäshamn, and in particular the medieval churches of Sorunda and Ösmo, as this was the lat weekend lof the season, they were open to the public.
Sorunda church
Sorunda church is among the best preserved medieval church in Sweden.
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| Sorunda church |
Most of the paintings in the church were made between 1898 and 1901 while few are dating back the mid 1500s'. There is no older medieval paintings in the church, even tough the inspiration seems similar to the churches decorated by Albertus Pictor.
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| The Sorunda church vault |
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| The Sorunda nobility coats of arms. These were used for procession for burial of members of the nobility. |
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| Scenes of the Gospel in Sorunda church. |
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| A side chapel in the Sorunda church. |
The painting of the wheel of fortune dates from 1549. Inscriptions are from the first translation of the bible in Swedish.
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| The wheel of fortune in Sorunda church. |
The Virgin shrine was made in Lubeck in the 1480s'. On the side are St Catherine, Margaret, Barbara and Dorothy.
The triptych was made in Lübeck in the 1490S.'
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| Angels on the vault, with an air of Art Nouveau, Mucha style. |
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| Apostles |
Ösmo church
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| The belfry of the Ösmo church. |
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| The painted vault in Ösmo church |
Cain is always represented by Albertus Pictor with a pointy beard and a conic hat. Cain is the farmer, raising crop and Abel the pastoralist, breeding stock. No surprise that the two did not go along well. The opposition between pastoralists and farmers have resulted in numerous conflicts, in the US, at the time of the colonisation or in Southern Soudan in the recent years.
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| Cain presenting his sacrifice to God |
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| Abel presenting his sacrifice to god |
The wheel of fortune, representing the four ages of life. This is a recurrent theme in Pictor's paintings.
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| The wheel of fortune |
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| Esaü hunting for his father Isaac |
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| Jonas expelled by the whale. |
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| Scouts bringing back grapes from the Holy Land |
Pictor always represents Moses with horns as in the drawing below. This is considered to be due to a misinterpretation when translating from Hebrew to Latin, where the same word means "having horns" or "being radiant".
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| Hebrews in the desert feeding on the manna falling from the sky. |
The four pictures below are most interesting. The do not represent a scene from the bible, but illustrate an old legend in Scandinavian countries. The legend is about an old woman who pactises with the devil to steel milk from her neighbours by using a magic "milk-hare" that milks the cows in the vicinity and spits the milk out when back to the old woman farm.
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| The devil and the old woman |
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| The milk-hare milking a cow assisted by a devil. |
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| Two milk-hares bringing back milk while the old woman churns butter with the assistance of a devil |
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| A milk-hare spitting out milk while the old woman and the devil shape the butter |
This would just look like a funny old Scandinavian legend. However, it illustrates well the beliefs that could have contributed to the witch hunt that culminated in 1675, two centuries after these paintings, in the Torsåker trials and the beheading and burning of 71 witches (65 women and 6 men). Milking the cows was a duty of women. And whenever there was a problem with milking the cows, witchcraft from the neighbours would be suspected first!
Lucky you! in Norway all the churches and chapels are closed!what marvellous treasures!
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