The Town That rose from the Sea: uplift and changing landscape

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Science and the rising l and

The Town That Rose from the Sea

uplift and changing landscape

Editor: Lars Elenius

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Science and the rising l and Science and the rising l and

The Town That Rose from the Sea

uplift and changing landscape

Editor: Lars Elenius

Authors: Lars Elenius and Thomas Öberg

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Project: More in-depth communication of the World Heritage Site Gammelstad Church Town.

The book is part of a thematic study of Gammelstad Church Town as a World Heritage Site and has been commissioned by museum director Ann Lindblom Berg, the open-air museum Hägnan &

Gammelstad Visitor Centre, and the Culture & Recreation Department, Luleå Municipality.

Project leader and art editor: Lars Elenius.

Authors: Lars Elenius and Thomas Öberg (the section in Chapt. 4 about the flora and fauna of Gammelstadsviken)

Translator: Paul Fischer, ELEX.

Cover photograph: For information about the cover photograph and other photographs and illustrations, see back cover.

Graphic form and production: Luleå Grafiska tryckeri, Luleå, 2020.

Printing: Luleå Grafiska tryckeri, Luleå 2020.

Project owner: Luleå Municipality.

Publisher: Gammelstad Visitor Centre.

Funding: The County Administrative Board in Norrbotten County, Luleå Municipality, Region Norrbotten, and the Swedish National Heritage Board.

www.visitgammelstad.se

ISBN: 978-91-519-0900-4

LARS ELENIUS b. 1952 is Professor Emeritus of History at Luleå University of Technology. His research includes areas such as ethnicity, minority policy, nationalism, cultural heritage and regional change in northern Europe. At the beginning of the 21st century he led a transnational project to write a history book and an encyclopaedia on the Barents Region.

THOMAS ÖBERG, b. 1947 holds an MPhil in Biology and Geology, etc. Former exhibition director at Ájtte, The Swedish Mountain and Sámi Museum, and for many years nature reporter with Sveriges Radio. Among other things he has written a book about the general natural and cultural heritage of Luleå Municipality, and produced and designed information material about Gammelstadsviken.

Introduction

There is something really fascinating about rising land. Postglacial rebound has been going on since we were knee-high, year after year, uplifting the land by a centimetre every year. A centimetre does not sound much, but by the time you are fifty, it adds up to half a metre. You see evident changes in your childhood landscape. That shallow bay with seaweed has become a fen. The marsh has become forest- land. Grass and bushes have moved some way forward, and the shoreline has retreated.

In the 18th century, it was thought that the reduction in water at the coastline was because the water from the biblical Flood was still receding.

The Bible tells of Noah, who built the ark, and of the enormous Deluge that drowned all living things in its way all over the world. There was no questi- oning it. Carl von Linnaeus, soon to be a prominent scientist, also believed that the shoreline shoaling was due to the receding waters of the Delu- ge. He imagined that Paradise had once been an island surrounded by water. Likewise, the site of Gammel- stad Church was once an island. The- re is a thought process embedded in Christianity based on water receding and land rising. However, as long as the Word of the Bible set the limits to

what one might think, it was not possible to come further. The notion of an inland ice cap lying for thousands of years over Scandinavia was so radical it can be compared to Darwin’s theo- ries of evolution.

Generation after generation living on the coasts of the Gulf of Bothnia have lived with land uplift as a natural part of the changing landscape. With new archaeological discoveries we are now also coming to realise how long people have lived with this uplift. In 2009, when archaeologists from Norr- botten Museum found a 10,700-year- old hearth containing the remains of animal bones in Aareavaara in the upper Torne River Valley, it changed our view of the ice melt. Year rings in the clay in surrounding lakes showed that the people at that fire were right on the rim of the inland ice at the time.

Pollen analysis showed that tundra vegetation was already established. Lin- ked to other finds in northern Scan- dinavia, it was determined that they hunted wild reindeer. So a hunter population lived at the rim of the inland ice and on the shore of the gigantic freshwater sea called Ancylus Lake.

The land has risen year after year, having been compressed by the ice. The seawater has slowly retreated to today’s water level. In Norrbotten we

have been adapting to the rising land, generation by generation, for over 10,000 years.

In this publication we describe the changed view of science with regard to this issue, and how postglacial rebound impacted the Church Town in Gammelstad. The parish church was placed centrally in the lower Luleå region, but by 1621, when the Chur- ch Town was given its town charter, the inner bay was already too shallow.

Thirty years later, the town had to be relocated. Today, the shallow Gam- melstadsviken bay has been transformed into a nature reserve. The farmers’ former waterside meadows have become a Natura 2000 area. Biologist Thomas Öberg is the author of Chap- ter 4, which deals with this. His ex- pertise has been invaluable in com- pleting the story of how postglacial rebound has affected Gammelstad.

Archaeologist Olof Östberg has explained the significance of the discovery in Aareavaara.

The publication on postglacial rebound is part of a project managed by the open-air museum Hägnan and Gammelstad Visitor Centre. To everyone who has contributed to the work – a big thank you!

Lars Elenius

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The most recent inland ice covered the whole of Scandinavia and northern Europe. As it slowly receded, tundra vegetation began to grow at the ice rim. Plants, animals and people almost immediately repopulated the landscape.

CHAPTER 1

Science and the rising land

The town of Luleå was built on a new site, because in the 17th century the harbour at the parish church became too shallow. Scientists believed that the shoaling was because the water of the biblical Flood was still receding.

Not in their wildest dreams could anyone have imagined that a 2 -3 km layer of ice had been lying on Northern Europe. Or that the land was now

rising after having been compressed for thousands of years.

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Geologist Gerhard de Geer’s map published in 1896 was a triumph for those searching to prove that the current-day postglacial rebound was due to an earlier ice age. A mere century previously, the general perception was that postglacial rebound was due to the ongoing withdrawal of water from the biblical Flood.

The glaciers we have today are not remnants of the inland ice, but of more recent date. Now they are fast melting in the mountains due to global warming. The average glacier terminus is retreating at 10–20 metres per year. The speed of the process can be compared to the quick and total melt of inland ice 9,000 years ago. The picture shows the Sálajiekŋa Glacier on the border between Sweden and Norway.

The waves washed away all the fine material as the mountain rose out of the sea. What remained were large shingle fields with rounded boulders. The finer material collected in low-lying areas, inlets or lakes. The picture is of Snöberget in the Råne River Valley.

The Church Town and postglacial rebound

In a millennial perspective, in our part of the world there are two major processes in climate geography which we need to bear in mind. One is the advance of the inland ice cap and its later retreat from present-day southern Germany to northern Scan- dinavia. During the melt, the land-

scape was radically re-shaped. The estuary of the Lule River consisted of several mighty subglacial streams of varying sizes, which beneath the melting ice transported gravel, rocks and sludge that were deposited at the mouths of the subglacial streams.

This deglaciation revealed a tundra landscape which was gradually shifted towards the central ice area. The land

was affected by both the movement of the inland ice and the enormous pressure from an ice cover that was two to three km thick. For 75,000 years its frozen mass covered the rocks and stones. Much of the Earth’s water was bound up in inland ice. During deglaciation the sea level rose radically. At the highest level, the sea was lapping on shores about 190 km inland from today’s coastline.

The other major process is postglacial rebound, which is a consequen- ce of the gradual melt of the ice. What are today farmed and industrialised regions on the coast were under metres of water. When the first simple wooden chapel was built at the mouth of the Lule River, most recently when the congregation was built in the earlier 14th century, the water level was six metres higher than today. As the lakes and inlets grew shallower, the coasts and banks became overgrown.

This brought far-reaching consequences to the new town of Luleå which was founded in 1621 at the site of the parish church. Our main topic is the effects of the ice age and postglacial rebound upon the Church Town in Gammelstad. It has had a profound effect on the landscape in Luleå parish and affected people’s everyday lives.

The land rises

We have been living in the geologi-

cal period known as the Quaternary Period for 2.6 million years. In that time we have had perhaps a score of climate changes that have led to gla- ciation. About 25,000 years ago, the most recent inland ice cap was at its most extensive and was about 3 km thick. The whole of Scandinavia and much of northern Europe were covered by glacier ice, as was northern Russia and North America. The centre of the ice in northern Europe, where it was at its thickest, was out in the Bothnian Sea. The centre gradually shifted into the high fells of Jokk- mokk. Here the last remnants of inland ice disappeared about 8,500 years ago. The meltwater radically reshaped the landscape. During the warm peri-

od that followed, the tree line in the Swedish mountains was a couple of hundred metres higher than today, and no glaciers remained in the Swedish mountains.

When the ice had disappeared, the Earth’s surface was still considerably depressed. The level of the Baltic Sea was 220 m above today’s level in the Luleå region. Much of present-day Norrbotten County lay on the seabed. The sea coast at its highest was at the pre-

sent-day community of Vuollerim and all that could be seen of Luleå Muni- cipality above the water level were three mountains in the form of islands.

They were Snöberget, Storkrokber- get and Östra Mosterberget, all in the northern part of the municipality.

Everything else was covered by water.

The land began to rise as the downward pressure decreased. Post- glacial rebound was initially about ten times faster than today, at ten metres per century. This gradually slowed down. Through global warming, sea levels are rising, so today the actual postglacial rebound along the coast

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of northern Sweden is more in the region of 4‒5 mm per year. The “Höga Kusten” (high coast) area in Väster- norrland County has had the most ex- treme postglacial rebound in Sweden.

At Skuleberget mountain, the highest coastline is 286 m above today’s sea level. Postglacial rebound is most no- ticeable as a shifting shoreline. In the past century, Luleå Archipelago has annually grown in area by 225 hecta- res.

God’s plan for mankind

The botanist Carl von Linnaeus was among those who in the 18th century believed that the reason for the increasing elevation of the land one could notice at the coast was that the water level in the sea was falling. He must undoubtedly have been aware of the shoaling when as a young man he visited Luleå and Gammelstad in the summer of 1732. He had funding from the Royal Swedish Society of Scien- ces to map the flora of Lapland, and

that summer he made his famous journey into the Swedish mountains. On the journey he saw with his own eyes traces in nature that we know today came from the ice age, but he did not know that there had been an ice age. Therefore, he could not interpret the different signs he saw because he was observing nature from a completely different perspective.

The signs were clearest in the pro- vince of Hälsing- land, where he discovered violet-coloured clay containing remains of Mytilus edulis (the Blue Mussel) and Limecola balthica (the Baltic Clam).

He wrote in his diary: “methinks all the dales and fens have been sea and that the highest mountains have been rocks”.¹ Scientist that he was, he realised that the sea must formerly have covered the landscape, but he sought the cause in biblical narratives, not in science. He believed he was looking at traces of the Great Flood.

Like most of his contemporaries, Linnaeus was convinced that nature was God’s plan for mankind. Ten years after his Lapland journey he held a famous speech at his doctoral award ceremony in Uppsala. In the meantime he had built an international career and had lived in both England and the Netherlands. He published his standard work Systema Naturae, which in a new way systemi- sed the relationships between plants and animals. In his speech he described how he imagined Paradise, based on a small island surrounded by enormous masses of water. God had created this in six days: the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve and all the

plants and creatures. The- re were originally two of each species, which then spread across the Earth.

This was how it was after the Great Flood, when Noah released the animals from the Ark.²

To Linnaeus, the view of Paradise and the theory of the receding water were linked. It was the Fall of Man that caused God to flood the whole world, and it was the retreat of the water following the Great Flood that meant that places like Gammelstad had a harbour that became too shallow. At the same time, it must be emphasi- sed that Linnaeus did not interpret the Bible liter- ally. He realised that the world could not be 6,000 years old as believers in

biblical infallibility asserted. It was not in line with the geological observations he made in nature. He realised that the formation of different rock strata must have taken vastly longer. So the short-term Great Flood was not sufficient explanation. He presen- ted, for example, an imaginative theory that all new land and all mounta-

ins that have come into being after the Isle of Paradise were the result of mo- tionless Sargassum seaweed that had mouldered, but had also calmed the water so that mud had time to depo- sit on the seabed and form limesto- ne with embedded fish, muscles and shellfish. He tried to expand biblical tradition to fit in better with observa-

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Carl von Linnaeus was one of the scientists who in the 18th century tried to resolve the mystery of constantly rising land. He was convinced that the rising land was the result of the biblical Great Flood slowly receding.

In the vault paintings from 1617 in mediaeval Knista Church south of Örebro, the Great Flood is dramatically depicted in a Swedish version. Artist unknown.

The current rate of postglacial rebound is estimated at between 6–8 millimetres per year in northern Sweden. With an accelerating rise in the sea level, uplift is continuing to slow down.

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tions in nature, but he did not dare to break with it.³

Measuring the sea level

By the mid-18th century, an overwhel- ming body of evidence had been collected both nationally and internatio- nally indicating that sea levels were steadily falling. The astronomer An- ders Celsius was the most active of the Swedish scientists in trying to find evidence that continuous reduction of

water was occurring in the Atlantic, the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia.

He published his results in the form of an article and a doctoral award speech in 1743, the same year as Linnaeus in his doctoral award speech touched upon the same subject in many ways.

In that way they were academic rivals in presenting new facts on the topic.

Unlike Linnaeus however, Anders Celsius had actively carried out me- asurements with the focus on water reduction. The coast of northern Sweden played an important role in his research on water reduction. As early as 1725, he had collected information from the coastal population of Hälsingland and Medelpad provinces about the falling sea level. In the year before Linnaeus’s Lapland journey, he had engraved a water level mark on a boulder at Lövgrunden near Gävle to monitor the continued process.

In his doctoral award paper, he put forward as evidence for his water reduction theory the fact that it had been necessary to move towns such as Hudiksvall, Piteå and Luleå closer to the sea. Celsius also had a more scientific explanation than Linnaeus for water reduction. He surmised that the quantity of water on Earth was decreasing due to evaporation and consumption by plants “for the formation of soil”. There he referred to Sir Isaac Newton, in that the dry part of

the Earth is constantly growing at the expense of the wet part. If the comets did not release a little of their moistu- re as they passed close to us, the Earth would dry out completely. He calcula- ted that at the present rate of water reduction, the Baltic Sea would be completely dried up in 3‒4,000 years.⁴ Sulidälbmá glaciers give insight In the early 19th century, Swedish scientists began to take an interest in the geological aspects of the Swedish mountain range. There they could study on the spot the minerals from a wide-ranging developmental history perspective, nature’s own panorama.

They could study glaciers in their de- velopment, which was the closest one could come to the great ice age. The central gateway was the Lule River Valley, starting from Luleå and Gam- melstad. The river valley came to be such a trafficked route that the geologists began to complain that the cost of boat rides and bearers was skyrock- eting.

The first person to give voice to the mind-boggling notion that Sweden had been completely covered by an inland ice cap was the botanist and natural scientist Göran Wahlenberg.

On a visit to Sulidälbmá in summer 1806, for the first time he could see glaciers, which he carefully studied.

He had previously been to Germany

The geologist Göran Wahlenberg made a scientific journey to Sulidälbmá in 1806, where he studied glaciers. He asserted that Sweden had once been completely covered by snow; this heralded the discovery of the ice age. Watercolour washed drawing by Wahlenberg himself.

In 1743, Anders Celsius published a paper for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences concerning the reduction of water in the Baltic Sea and off Sweden’s west coast.

Through earlier observations he came to the conclusion that the sea level was falling by

about 120 cm per century. and seen large boulders that geologists

had traced to Scandinavia, principally Sweden. In central Sweden he saw the many sandy ridges. That gave him an indication of the enormous force that must have been active for a long time.

He called the force behind it a “pri- maeval power”; he did not identify it with God, but with something else.

And so he formulated a quite in- novative idea: Sweden had probably been through constant winter, and been snow-covered, for a very long time. He believed, like Sweden- borg and Celsius before him, that it

was due to comets releasing water, but in Sweden in the form of snow. Fol- lowing that, the sun had melted the snow masses into a huge flood that had moved the boulders to the Ger- man plains.⁵ One might say he upheld the Great Flood as his catastrophe theory, but that it was the Sun rather than God that had caused the catastrophe. It was the first time the idea of a long-term ice age in Sweden was formulated.

The intensified international research to solve the mystery of the mo- oted ice age engaged geologists, astro-

nomers, palaeontologists, zoologists, phytogeographers and archaeologists.

At the beginning of the 19th century, scientists began to free themsel- ves from the compulsion to base hy- potheses on the Bible. The definitive breakthrough came at the end of the 1830s when the Swiss zoologist and palaeontologist Louis Agassiz asserted that only a north European icecap could have caused the polished bedrock with its furrows, the grinding of boulders and their placing on top of the sand, as well as the retained ang- ular shape of erratic boulders.⁶ Here,

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Dumpokjauratj 7 600 f.Kr

Gammelstad

Kangos 7 600 f.Kr.

Løkvika 9400 f.Kr.

Helvetinhaudanpuro 8400 f.Kr.

Saarenoja 8600 f.Kr.

Ontela 8100 f.Kr.

Kirkolahti 8550 f.Kr.

Rahakangas 8900 f.Kr.

Malmio 8100 f.Kr.

Sujala 8500 f.Kr.

Aareavaara 8 700 f.Kr.

Renben Älgben

Isens tillbakadragande Ancylussjön med sötvatten

Myllyjärämä 7400 f.Kr.

The map shows the possible extent of the inland ice cap in 8700 BC when hunters were resting at Aareavaara right at the ice rim. The year figures show the mean value of an estimated time interval, not an exact dating. We see a northerly pattern of reindeer hunters in the north and moose hunters in the south. The hearth at Dumpokjauratj is more recent by 1,000 years. That is how far the ice rim had retreated by then. This shows that the melt was extremely fast.

In various places in northern Scandinavia, there are systems of trap- ping pits, often dug in sandy ground, like here in Lemmenjoki National Park in northern Finland.

The wild reindeer seem to have followed the retreating ice at the same rate as tundra plants became established. People followed the reindeer and collectively hunted them.

the biblical Creation narrative was completely abandoned. The descrip- tion of ice as a transformational force was completely new and revolutio- nary.

Archaeology changes the melting process

About 18,000 years ago, melting ac- celerated due to a marked climate change. The ice quickly shrank as re-

gards both thickness and area.⁷ Just over 10,000 years ago there was an ice wall perhaps 30 m high at present-day Boden. The sea reached right up to the ice wall, something like today’s Svalbard or Greenland. It was a mighty glacier, which now and then calved, releasing icebergs that floated out into the sea. There were seals, bird colonies and an abundance of fish, which also gave people the possibility to live there.

It has long been known that the ice melted relatively quickly southwards from northern Norway and the Kola Peninsula, and in towards northernmost Norrbotten. The picture given in the latest edition of the Swedish Na- tional Atlas is that the northernmost ice rim lay at Pajala in 8100 BC. At that moment, the southernmost part of the remaining ice lay just south of Östersund.⁸ However, three archaeological finds have shown that the melt in the north was considerably faster than previously thought. In all three cases it is a question of man-made hearths that have been found. Preser- ved hearths mean that people were on solid ground, not ice. One of the hearths was found in Dumpokjauratj in the Arjeplog mountains, and was investigated in 2000‒2002. The two others lay in the upper Torne Ri- ver Valley. One is in Kangos and was found in 2004, and the other lay at

Aareavaara mountain and was discovered in 2009.

C-14 dating of Dumpokjauratj and Kangos has shown the former to be from around 7600 BC, while Aarea- vaara is from 8700–8600 BC, that is, a thousand years earlier than the other two.⁹ In Aareavaara it could be ascer- tained that the remains in the hearths were from mammals of a size between beaver and reindeer. No fish or seal bones were found. The archaeologists’

interpretation of this is that the reindeer drew people to the ice rim in a tundra landscape, which already had vegetation that attracted land-based animals.¹⁰ The reindeer is a herd-li-

ving species, which can lead to a good yield for hunters. Therefore it is pro- bable that the hunters at the hearth were following wild reindeer, which in turn were adapting to the retreating inland ice.

The results have been verified by three researchers from the Geology Department at Lund University on behalf of Norrbotten Museum. Their purpose has been to date the actual ice melt and the formation of the highest coastline. It has also been to make a general reconstruction of the vegetation and environment around the dwelling site. The sediment sequence and occurrence of pollen in two ne-

arby lakes were investigated. The first sedimentation was measured to have been in 8700 BC, which is considered to correspond to the time of the final melt of inland ice in the area. It means the ice melted away 600 years earlier in the north than was thought just ten years ago. The hunter population that sat at the campfire must have been in the immediate neighbourhood of the melting ice rim, and right on the shore of Ancylus Lake. Ancylus Lake was a freshwater sea that reached right up to the foot of Aareavaara mountain where the dwelling site lay. The whole of the coastal area around Gammel- stad then lay under water.

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The region rises from the sea The region rises from the sea

CHAPTER 2

The region rises from the sea

In the early seventh century the water level was just over 13 m higher than today at the place where the Church Town in Gammelstad stands

today. At that time we must imagine the place as an extremely small island without any structures. The little island lay in the middle of the strait that connected the Lule River with a sea inlet further east, which

would later be given the name Gammelstadsviken (Gammelstad Bay).

On the barren skerry there was neither a church nor a chapel.

On Olaus Magnus’s map Carta Marina from 1539, there is a descrip- tion of the abundant fishing in the northernmost part of the Gulf of Bothnia, which was called Norrbotten. The fishing was among other things for salmon and pike and there was seal hunting. Olaus writes in his pithy manner that reindeer pull sleighs which at the front are as pointed as old shoes. On the west side, the parish church in Luleå is marked with an L in the parish that was formed just 200 years earlier.

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Gammelstad

Boden

Luleå

Sunderbyn

Hertsön Brändön Smedsbyn

Gäddvik

Ersnäs Alvik

AntnäsMåttsund Luleälv

en

Tidigare utlopp mot Smedsbyn Sund i dåtidens skärgård Nutida vägar

Nutida järnvägar Vattennivån 450 e.Kr.

Gammelstad

The changed course of the Lule River The melt and the process of the ice age have in a very real way affected the settlement of the Lule River and in particular the establishment of the church site at Gammelstad. The melt itself was extremely fast and happe- ned over just 5,500 years: it had more or less finished by 6500 BC. The se- asons changed exactly like now, which meant that the ice grew somewhat in the cold months, while it melted even more during the warm months.

When subglacial streams de-wate- red the melting inland ice, they emptied into the sea whose shores initially lay far out in the Gulf of Bothnia. The ice released subglaci-

al streams both above the ice and below it. This brought with it stones, mud and sand, and formed ridges and enormous deltas under the water. When the ice became thinner and receded, the land increasingly rose, but at the same time the sea level rose due to all the meltwater.

The two moors Kallaxheden and Gäddviksheden are part of an enor-

mous sand field formed by subglacial streams transporting and sorting boulders, gravel and sand during the successive melts. Since the sea level from the meltwater rose far quicker than the land rose, the sand deposits from subglacial streams ended up on the seabed. There they were levelled out by currents and wave movements and swelled with further sand from the melting ice, which continued to pump out sediment into the sea.

A snapshot just over 2,000 years ago, when our calendar begins, would have shown the lower part of the Lule River as the innermost reach of a deep sea bay. The Lule River did not have

the

same distinct rivermouth as today.

From Persön and across Smedsbyn the sea bay reached as far up as Bo- den, where the Lule River had one of its outflows. Somewhere far out, a small rocky skerry jutted up in an archipelago where today’s solid mainland was divided into Greater Porsön, Lesser Porsön and Svartön as separa- te islands. The little rocky skerry was the place where Gammelstad church would eventually be built.

The theory of the river breakthrough at Gäddvik

Also the present-day Nordantillhe- den moor on the north side of today’s Lule River estuary was a large sandy island. Between the south shore of the island and the mainland, at today’s Gäddviksströmmen, there was a wide sound that opened onto the sea.

The Lule River simply did not exist at Gammelstad or Gäddvik. Instead

there was a large sea bay.

The Lule River emptied

into the sea higher up in the river valley.

This invites the interes- ting question how the mouth of the ri- For a long time, the melting ice emptied out into the sea at present-day Luleå. There, the

subglacial stream sediment was deposited under the water. The steep ridges were later worked by waves and currents into a rounder shape.

ver was formed at today’s steep sandy riverbanks at Gäddvik. These steep riverbanks have been eroded, often in sandy or nutrient-poor soil. On the northern side of the river today we see Gäddviksheden moor with its 15 m high sandy riverbanks, and Granden island in the middle of the river. On the south side lie rocks and towards the south-east, Gäddviksheden continues in the sandy moor Kallaxhe- den. The narrow, deep outflow of the Lule River at the sandbanks gives the impression that the river has cut its way down, creating a new outflow at the sea instead of the outflow at Sun- derbyn. Some believe that a sand field

at one time closed off the river there and that some time in the early Midd- le Ages the river broke through in a more or less cataclysmic way.

In the sixth century, the Lule Ri- ver still had several outflows into the sea. One led from Boden eastwards towards Smedsbyn. Another led fur-

ther downstream through a sound that ran south-east via Sävast and Sunderbyn to today’s Gammelstads- viken. The archipelago began above Gammelstad. According to cultural geographer Gerd Enequist, sometime in the seventh century, the upper link to the sea at Smedsbyn firth began An early outflow of the Lule River from Boden towards Smedsbyn firth was closed in AD 450. The lower part of the river was then part of an inner archipelago. The present church site was jutting up out of the water as a small island. Note the sea inlet at Gäddvik.

Geographer Gerd Enequist surmised that the Lule River in the seventh century stood on the rim of a sandbank at Gäddvik that closed off the present-day outflow of the river. But it could equally well have been an existing sea strait that narrowed as the land rose.

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Sweden (SGU). According to SGU, the shoaling from Boden towards Smedsbyn firth occurred between the beginning of the Christian calendar and the fifth century. At the beginning of our time reckoning there was a wide sound at Gädd- vik. There was no wall of sand stop- ping the water flow. The sand fields, of which the riverbanks at Gädd- viksströmmen form part, had been created far earlier by subglacial streams from the melting inland ice, but no river breakthrough was needed. The large, contiguous sand moors at Kallax, Bergnäset and Gäddvik lay on the seabed at the time the sea reached all the way up to Vuollerim. Because of postglacial rebound, they slowly rose up above the water level. The sound at Gädd- vik became narrower and narrower until it reached its current shape, but the outflow was never closed.

We must consider that in the seventh century, Gäddviksströmmen was part of the open sea; it was not a river. The sand deposits visible at the riverbanks on the north side lay under the sea. The rivers that created them were subglacial streams, which for thousands of years had emptied both above and below the ice, but the sand fields too became reshaped later by currents and waves in the covering sea.

Naturally, one can consider the al- ternative interpretation that there was never a sound at Gäddvik. This is ba-

sed on sand moors at Gäddvik and Bergnäset contiguously rising out of the sea and forming a sandbank that closed off the possibility of an outflow there. There, as Enequist supposed, the river would possibly have had a small outflow all the time which was then deepe- ned when the entire flow of the Lule River began to pass through it. What contradicts this possibility is that the river for a period would in that case have to have its main outflow between Sun- derbyn and Gammelstad, which should have left traces in nature of the river’s course. There are no such traces. It seems on the con- trary that the low-lying terrain was covered by a shallow sound which inevitably silted up.¹⁶ In that case, the main course of the river, just like today, passed by the sandy riverbanks at Gäddvik.

So there is every indication that it is uplift that has slowly transformed a former sound in a sea inlet to the final outflow of the Lule River, not a cataclysmic breakthrough of the river through a sandbank.

Village locations and names The landscape created after the ice age determined how the population settled. Norrbotten On Kallaxheden moor you can see kilometre-long sea dunes that were formed when they lay

open to the effects of the wind at the sea coast. They were formed in stages, centuries apart, but today look like prehistoric sea waves, covered by pine moors rich in lichen. Today’s sand dunes on the shore were formed as before by waves and wind. The above shoreline image shows Skvalpen in Luleå Archipelago.

to be cut off by postglacial rebound.

That share of the river’s water instead flowed south in the same direction as the river today, through the sound to Gammelstadsviken.¹² It is probably that sound that has given Sunderbyn its name (Sund = Sound).¹³ According to Enequist, the link between Gam- melstadsviken and Sunderbyn was probably open until the 15th century, that is, the time when the earlier wooden church in the parish was replaced by today’s stone church.¹⁴

Enequist bases this on a surmised sandbank blocking the river’s outflow at Gäddvik. On the Bergnäset side lay a rocky hill that made the water, which was pressing forward, eventually find its way through the sandbank.

In the seventh century, the water level in the river at Gäddvik lay precise- ly at the upper edge of the sandbank and by that time had begun to cut its way through the wall of sand that stood in its way. The river dug its way through the 15 m high sandbanks on the north side. Enequist does not describe it as a sudden disaster. Instead, it is described as the slow erosion of the sandbank, increasing in speed as the sound between the Lule River and Gammelstadsviken was closed off by postglacial rebound.¹⁵

This interpretation is not in line with present-day maps of coastline levels from the Geological Survey of

Many coastal villages have been named after their waterside locations. This applies for example to Gäddvik, Kallax (from the Finnish ‘Kalalahti’, meaning Fish Bay), Måttsund, Antnäs, Alvik and Ersnäs. Note the sea bay which at the time separated Antnäs and Ersnäs. Map probably from 1643–49 (National Archive).

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consists of natural geographic areas that follow the terrain from sea to mountain. The main demarcation line is the highest coastline (HCL). Abo- ve it, there was never any sea and these soils consist of moraine which has not been worked by the sea, and also to a large extent of mires organic by nature. Below HCL, the ground was occasionally washed by a sea of melted ice water. The subglacial streams transported, sorted and deposited fine-grained sediment in lakes and rivers, and were spread on the sea bed.

In the river valleys, river and sea sediment consisting of sandy, tilly, and above all clayey soils have also been successively transported down by the water flow so that more or less low-lying terraces suitable for cultivation have been created. The cultivation terraces are more profiled higher up in the valleys, often with steep edges in the form of sandbanks. When agricul- ture was introduced, the coastal plains were widely settled. The upper reaches have been characterised by sparser settlements where the farmsteads have stood in line along the river. Both natural geographic and cultural historical differences can be seen between the different river valleys. The Lule River Valley became characterised at an early stage by its abundant fishing, which was probably significant for the localisation of farming settle-

ments. Another factor of significance to the coastal localisation is the greater number of hours of sunshine.¹⁷

Inez Egerbladh showed how the first villages lay fairly sparsely spread out along the coast and the large river valleys. Within the villages, the farmsteads occurred in big or small groups. Even though in relation to postglacial rebound they lie above the ten metre level, and therefore theore- tically can have been established before the ninth century, the name forms and location of the settlements con- tradict such early establishment. At the time, the coastal region by the Lule River had the unmistakable character of an archipelago environment, with large and small islands that eventually merged with the mainland. Egerbladh is of the opinion that many of the villages lay on or near to what at the time were islands, yet have not been named after islands. Settle- ments started in historical times on islands often bear the name of the islands.¹⁸ Egerbladh’s conclusion is that the coastal settlements at the Lule Ri- ver therefore must have been formed at a later stage, after the islands were named.

It is typical for Scandinavian settlements in the northern parts of Nor- way, Sweden and Finland that the early communities were often in coastal areas. In Norrbotten, one can see that

it is strikingly common for the larger communities in the coastal area to have names suggesting closeness to the sea.¹⁹ One clear example is Måtts- und, where the first element possibly refers to the Finnish first name Mat- ti and the second element quite clearly refers to the sea sound or strait that lay between the village and Öberget on the other side of the sound.²⁰ Un- til the 14th century the sound still ex- isted that gave its name to the village.

After that, postglacial rebound closed off the sound, although wetlands remained there until the beginning of the 20th century.²¹ So the village must have been given its name before the sound was closed. The names of surrounding villages in relation to postglacial rebound can give a clue as to when the name was given. In the 10th century the site of Antnäs (näs = promontory) was still a distinct promontory in a sea inlet. This applies also to Ersnäs before shoaling eventually linked the two villages and closed the former sea inlet. Rutvik (vik

= bay) was also a distinct sea inlet at the same time.²² The village of Måtts- und is among the oldest villages in the parish, and probably got its name at the same time as Antnäs and Ersnäs.

Its naming therefore seems proba- ble during the late Viking age or early Middle Ages.

Sunderbyn too is named after a

Stora Köpmanhällan on Porsön overlooks Gammelstadsviken and what was Köpmanssundet.

In the early Middle Ages it was in a strategically important position. There are many indications that there was an early trading site here.

In the 16th century Olaus Magnus descri- bes how in the past, trade in the north was often in the form of bartering between peoples who spoke different languages.

sound – the sound that ran between the village and the parish church.²³ The now shoaled sound today has its lowest elevation at six metres above sea level. With the land rising at a rate of 0.9 cm per year, the shoaling of the sound must have completely finished no later than the mid-14th century, which indicates that the village must have been established and given its name far earlier. If we reck- on with a water depth of one metre in the sound, it should have been given

its name no later than the first half of the 13th century, since there was then a water-filled sound between the Lule River and Gammelstadsviken.²⁴

At the beginning of the 14th century there were permanent structures in the larger villages. The first settlements must therefore date back a number of generations earlier.²⁵ If we count fifty years per generation, and four generations back in time, it ta- kes us to the beginning of the 12th century. The place names in relation to postglacial rebound, together with the established settlements of the 14th century, indicate the first Swedish settlements in pre-Christian times some time near the end of the Viking age or early Middle Ages, that is to say around AD 1000–1300.

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brought prosperity. The Birkarlar were farmers who traded with Sámi, and needed neither church nor town for their trade. Instead, they sought out the Sámi at agreed times in the winter, just as the Sámi visited the traders to do business. In the Lule River Valley, such seasonal trading took place in the village of Heden, today called Bo- den, and further upstream in the village of Harads.

There is ample evidence of an early coastal trading site just 3 km east of Gammelstad church. There we find Köpmanholmen peninsula as the last outpost before Gammelstadsviken. In the 19th century, Gammelstadsviken was still at sea level, and was still a sea bay. It was not until some way into the 20th century that the bay became a lake one metre above sea level. To- day, water flows extremely slowly out from the former bay Gammelstadsvi- ken, through the sound of Sellingsun- det towards Björsbyfjärden firth and on towards the sea. Sellingsundet is a fairly recent name. It was named after the surveyor Theodor Selling, who lived on the mountain in the 19th century. The firth that lay at Björsbyn was previously called Köpmanssundet (Trader’s Sound).²⁶

The name Köpmanholmen indicates that it was surrounded by water when it got its name (holme = island). On the west side there are two exposed

areas of bedrock, Lilla and Stora (Small and Large) Köpmanhällan. The large rock jutted out of the sea, like a skerry, in the fifth century in a 3 km broad sound with smaller skerries and islands, and to the south lay the island of Por- sön. By the ninth century, the little skerry had grown into an island 150 m long and 100 m wide and it is rea- sonable to assume it was not given its island name until then. Until the 17th century, ships could moor

at Stora Köpmanhällan on their way to the Church Town. There they could transship their goods or seek shelter from bad weather. According to earlier verbal information, up until the 1950s there was an iron ring attached to the rock to allow mooring, but it is said to have been blasted away by so- mebody. As late as the mid-1960s there was a haymaking mire called Ham- na (cf. hamn = harbour) on the north side of Porsön.²⁷

It is truly difficult to imagine trading ships ly-

ing in a row alongsi- de the rock, but in those days the wa-

ter reached several metres higher and today’s reed border was ab- sent. Köpmanhol- men ceased being an island in the late 17th century, but

has nevertheless kept its name. This was probably the oldest trade route with a protected approach for boats from the open sea through the inlets Hindersöfjär- den or Björköfjär- den. The southerly approach to Köpmanholmen passed through Gråsjälfjärden where Luleå town is today and on through Skur- holmsfjärden, Björskatafjärden and into Björsbyfjärden. The two sea lanes mentioned above are marked on the map from 1671. In 1600, when the Na- tional Archaeologist Johannes Bureus visited Luleå parish church he no- ted that the site of the church and the Church Town was called Berget (The Mountain) by the farmers.²⁸

TorneåMot

FinlandMot

Gammelstad

Sunderbyn

Gäddvik

Luleä lven

Luleå

Rutvik

Björsbyn Holm-

ön Stor-

Porsön

Lill- Porsön Köpman-

holmen Reveln Skutön

Bälinge

StockholmMot

Vattenleder för båt Vattennivån 950 e.Kr.

In AD 950 both Köpmanholmen and Gammelstad had protected trading locations according to maps from The Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU).

The many islands that are today joined to the mainland must have been given their island names while they were still surrounded by water.

When, in 1600, the director-general of the Central Board of National Antiquities Johannes Bureus visited Luleå Parish he reported that all the farmers had cabins at a place they called Berget (The Mountain).

There, two to five farmers shared each cot- tage. What he was describing was today’s Gammelstad Church Town.

Pre-Christian trade at the seaway The different waterways to the church site have been described earlier. In winter too, the frozen waters offered ideal roads. There was no forest for-

ming an obstacle. The farmers’ sleighs and the reindeer-sleighs which were used by both the permanent population and the Sámi glided smoothly across the snow. It was these routes

comprising bays, sea inlets and the river that were the travel itineraries of traders on the coast. The goods were then transported aboard cutters down to Stockholm and other towns, and

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The c onsequences to the Church Town The c onsequences to the Church Town

CHAPTER 3

The consequences to the Church Town

Already when Luleå town was founded in 1621, the problems for shipping were evident. The Lule River was not navigable by large ships upstream due to the currents at Gäddvik. The approach at Gammelstadsviken had become too shallow. In less than thirty years it became necessary to move the town closer to the sea. At the same time,

the cultivable land increased as the land rose. Drainage ditches were dug. What had been open water became farmland.

On the contemporary photo of the church and the Church Town you can clearly see Hamngatan Street at the top, leading to Gammelstadsviken. On the left, just behind the picture, you see the rectory which gained new farmland when the coastline rose. Today, the waterside fields are becoming overgrown.

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were no protests against placing the new town in the actual Church Town on Berget. Rural traders and Birkar- lar already had church cottages at the church like everyone else.³¹ They saw it as practical to have the new town placed in the Church Town.

New land through postglacial rebound

The building land was dry and good where the church was built. Farmers chose to place the first church at a place that did not take up their valua- ble arable land, at the same time as it was easy to access. Some land there was also allocated for the first priest to grow produce as wished. Here too we see the impact of postglacial rebound.

The land on Stadsön belonging to the glebe estate, near Sunderbyn and around Gammelstadsviken, was not suitable for farming until between the 13th and 15th centuries, by which time postglacial rebound had lifted it 6–8 metres above the earlier sea level.

The placing of the church with nearby rectory was not possible as regards sustenance until postglacial rebound had created enough arable land for the priest.

The people of Sunderbyn had their traditional route to the church across the meadows of the glebe estate. At the winter assizes of 1730 the surveyor of bridges ordered them to impro-

ve the road so that it offered a suitable route to church. They explained in their defence that it was so boggy and waterlogged that it was not possible to repair the road.³² In book- keeping from 1694 it is stated how a driver with horse had been paid 9 da- ler in copper coins for work with “the causeway”. It was about 70 m long and in those days it connected Ön (the island) with Berget, where the church stood. Albert Nordberg’s interpretation is that it led over the waterlogged areas north of the today´s railway, although it is unclear exactly where.³³ It

was likely on the highest area, which is today completely built-up with a re- tail park and industries.

On a map from 1686 we see too that the glebe, as the priest’s estate was called, had many water meadows and fences around Gammelstadsvi- ken, as well as further west nearer the low-lying area that formed the border with Ön. It was land that had risen out of the sea, but was still waterlogged. North-west of the rectory lay for example the meadow Skiftesviken, which was on the border with Sun- derbyn. That a meadow should be cal- Luleå town is placed

in the Church Town

In 1621, when King Gustav II Adolf decided that a town by the name of Luleå was to be founded, it was an open question where the new town should be placed. The choice was between the parish church with its traditional Church Town on Berget and a new place that was called “Luhla sund”, which has been identified as the sound that lay where Lulsund Canal lies. Nowadays it is easy to believe that the name of the sound has links to Lu-

leå town, but this is not the case. The name “Luhla sund” in the early 17th century referred to the sound that then linked the parish church on Ber- get with the estuary of the Lule River via today’s Björkskatafjärden, Lulsund Canal and Skurholmsfjärden. Today, the route for boats is overgrown and a dam constructed at Lulsund Canal counters postglacial rebound to keep the water level in Björkskatafjärden at a certain level. There was then a navigable firth here that allowed boat traf- fic all the way to Gammelstad.²⁹

In those days the present-day town peninsula was used as summer pastures by the priest in Gammelstad. At the beginning of the 13th century, that peninsula still had the character of a true island. A contemporary sour- ce tells that there was sufficient water towards the mainland for a small boat to just about pass, and it was still called Bodön. An expedition led by Privy Counsellor Filip von Scheding travelled in summer 1620 to northern Sweden to investigate the most suitable locations for towns. Having re- connoitred around the Lule River and spoken to farmers in the villages, it was proposed that the town should be established at the parish church on Berget. A town plan was drawn up by the accompanying Dr Olof Bu- reus, who was the brother of the well- known cartographer Anders Bureus.³⁰

To rural traders and their Birkar- lar colleagues in the villages, the choice was not a difficult one. Their trading was not based on having market stalls in town, instead they themsel- ves visited markets in the region and in the Lappmark areas. They would use their position as burghers in the newly founded town for church atten- dance and social intercourse, visits to parish councils and court sessions and similar functions. They planned to continuing living in their homesteads out in the villages. Therefore, there Fredrik Henderick van Hove’s coloured engraving from 1680 depicts how the Sámi are paying

tax to two officials who have the tax register open on the table. Before the state took over, it was appointed farmers on the coast who had the privilege of levying taxes from the Sámi and trading with them.

The tradition of market meetings between coast dwellers and inland Sámi has continued in the form of Jokkmokk Market. It is unclear when the photograph was taken.

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The map from 1686 shows above all the glebe estate, where many names bear witness to waterlogged areas. The long causeway ending with the jetty at Gammelstadsviken shows how difficult it had become to use the bay as a transport route.

led “viken” (the bay) shows how fresh in people’s memory it was that a bay, previously a sound, had covered the area with water. In the south-west lay Storblötåkern (Great Wetfield) and in the north-east Blötgählen or Blötgär- det (Wetfield) and Blöthan (The Wet).

One curious name is Bromellanäng- en (Meadow between Bridges) which lay between the harbour and the inner reaches of Gammelstadsviken. The meadow was named after two bridges. The first was the jetty at the har-

bour which led from the waterlogged area out into the water and was called Sockenbron (The Parish Bridge). The other referred to a causeway that ran between the church and the rectory across a wet hollow.³⁴

The harbour that disappeared As early as the Viking age, trade routes crisscrossed the Gulf of Bothnia.

Transportation was possible using relatively light, shallow-draught boats.

The placing of Luleå town on Berget

was decided in view of the traditional trade in skins, leather, fish and but- ter that the Birkarlar and rural traders had pursued. Prerequisite for effective trade were the shallow-draught boats, but the shallow water quickly became problematic for shipping.

The trading ship of the Middle Ages was the Cog. This was a kind of ship with a round hull and without a keel, which sat deeper in the water than a Viking ship. It could be over 20 m long and was wide and deep to ac-

commodate a cargo. A cog could carry up to 80 tons plus a crew of 5‒15. It had a single mast with a square sail.

From the mid-17th century, cargos increased in weight when the empha- sis was increasingly on hand-hewn planks, beams and tar. Bigger ships were needed now to carry the heavier goods.³⁵ With the increasing shoaling of seaways into Luleå, the cog became problematic. It drew too much water to sail into Gammelstadsviken.

In the increasingly shallow Gam- melstadsviken, as previously mentioned, it was necessary to use a long jetty, which was called Sockenbron or the Parish Bridge, to reach sufficient- ly deep water. The Parish Bridge can also be seen on the drawing from 1695 by Gustav Läw, which shows Gam- melstad and what was then the harbour. On the picture, the jetty seems to lie right next to the Church Town

on the east side, which was not the case in reality. Also on an earlier planning map from 1648 one can see the long walking route from the end of Hamn- gatan Street down to the water. Halfway, the road became a long jetty down to a score of boathouses on the shore. This is what it looked like the year before Luleå town was moved from the old parish church to its present-day location.

There is evidence of how low-lying it was at the harbour, since in autumn 1737 it was reported that high water had destroyed the Parish Brid-

ge, which had extended 389 metres out into the water. When the county overseer Lars Wallman asked the opinion of the local population to repai- ring the bridge, none of the villages were willing to do the work. The bay had become so shallow that it was not possible to get there by boat in dry summers. The cost would be too great, and in addition there were public roads to use.³⁶ The refusal to repair the Parish Bridge was probably the last straw for the former harbour.

Today there are no traces of the old harbour at Gammelstad. It had to be relocated closer to the water as the land rose. Ultimately, it was complete- Many bridges linked together the former coast road in

the Luleå region, as the bridge across Altersundet at Persön shows. The photograph was taken in 1911.

On this drawing of Gammelstad from 1695 by Gustav Läw, the shoaling of the old harbour is clearly shown. Clumps of reeds have sprung up at the shoreline. The jetty was called the Parish Bridge and was maintained by the villages that used it. An autumn flood destroyed it in 1737 and no one was willing to bear the cost of repairs.

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cult to use these pastures since they were so far away. For the same reason, it was difficult to fetch firewood from there. The allocated land on and surrounding Stadsön island was in many places sterile and unsuitable for farming. They were burghers in name and had their privileges, which included twelve years’ tax exemption upon setting up as a burgher, but in reality they were farmers and rural traders just as before. It was certainly a favou- rable situation for those who owned homesteads, but for the other burghers the situation was untenable.

Postglacial rebound laid a stifling hand over shipping, since the harbour was too shallow for large cargo ships.

Transhipment had to take place 10 km

from town, probably near present-day Luleå town. For much of summer, most of the townspeople were out fishing for salmon and herring. The land allocation from the glebe estate was too meagre and the farmers of the parish saw to their own interests in the forests and on the land. The burghers even complained that there was a shortage of drinking water for everyday needs. It became increasingly ap- parent that the town’s location at the parish church was unsuitable.

Gradually, in the 1640s, a faction arose led by the mayor, Johan Måns- son. In a letter to the Chancellor he li- sted the above inconveniences, explai- ning that their forefathers had chosen the place at the parish church through

pure lack of knowledge.

They had not foreseen the unsuitable location from the point of

view of shipping or the problems of sharing the small land allocation with the priest. The mayor asked to be able to “transport” his town to another

“more convenient” place.³⁸ And so in- deed it was decided by royal decree in December 1648. The following year, the town and harbour were moved to their present location. Following that, the site of the Church Town was given the name Gammelstad (Old Town).

On Erik Dahlberg’s etching of the harbour in the new Luleå we see an example of the large cutters that were now used. It was impossible for them to sail into Gammelstadsviken.

In Dahlberg’s etching of the harbour in Gam- melstad, the boathouses and boats are small.

The harbour had lost its earlier importance.

The boathouse in Gäddvik, drawn in 1924, reflects a long tradition.

The boathouse was used to store fishing gear, and also, temporarily, the catch.

The townspeople were away fishing for much of summer. When the town of Luleå lay in Gammelstad, they complained about the long distance out to the islands of Germandön and Sandön, where they had been given their own land for grazing livestock. On the picture, a herring fishermen at Hindersön in 1910.

ly abandoned. But to this day, Hamn- gatan (Harbour Street) leads past Hägnan and down to today’s overgrown bay. We can imagine the live- ly trade on the shore of the bay in the Middle Ages. Trading ships moored at the quay, bringing goods from the south. They returned south carrying skins, furs and salted fish from the Sámi and settlers in inland areas.

The decision to move the town The burghers were slow to move into their new town. In a register from 1623 it is written that 39 burghers had moved into the town, which is hardly the true number: it was much lower.

In the livestock registers of 1626‒1638

for example, they numbered only 6‒13. The farmers too were worried about the ongoing situation. In 1640, in a complaint to Parliament, the rural people described the burghers of Luleå as poor. In all, the burghers owned only two cutters and the farmers were worried that they would not ma- nage to provide the region with necessary goods from outside.³⁷ Within the Church Town itself, there was originally no possibility to pursue industries that gave a livelihood. The burghers moved into an empty Chur- ch Town where only the priest lived, in the nearby rectory. This meant that the burgher quarters too came to be a sporadically populated area.

Many of the burghers in the town still had homesteads in their home villages. They had been given the islands of Germandön and Sandön to graze their livestock, but it was diffi-

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Transformation of the l andscape Transformation of the l andscape

The coast continues to shoal due to postglacial rebound following the ice age. This has transformed nature around Gammelstad from an archipelago

environment a few hundred years ago to a lake environment today. There are attempts to prevent the inner firths from becoming overgrown with the help of dams. At the same time, the new characteristics of the fen-like Gammelstadsviken are coming into focus. This sea bay became a bird lake.

Thirty years ago, no one would have believed that the endangered White- Tailed Eagle would nest there in the 21st century.

CHAPTER 4

Transformation of the landscape

Gammelstadsviken today is a completely dried-up lake, de- signated a nature reserve and a Natura 2000 area. The dark brown strip in the upper part of the picture is the causeway for the E4 road which runs right across the bay. Gammelstad Church Town with the white church steeple can be glimpsed, upper left.

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Transformation of the l andscape Transformation of the l andscape

the lake is full of bulrushes spreading explosively and crowding out the Common Reed and Water Horsetail along the shores. Earlier, they formed a sparse belt of reeds in the lake where families of ducks and coots could quickly disappear and find shelter.

The bulrush has different characteristics. It advances out onto the lake like a quagmire of floating roots and also fills areas of open water which were once interspersed in the reed belt. For ducks and other aquatic birds, the belt of bulrushes forms an almost impe- netrable wall against the water. Per- haps that is one reason why the Coot and the Pochard have practically disappeared from the lake.

Several plant species have decreased

considerably in the lake. This could be due among other things to the lake bottom becoming muddier and less firm. It is becoming more difficult for

plants to take root. Hornwort, White Water-lily, Sallow and Flowering Rush seem to have disappeared completely. In most places, Water Horsetail and the Common Reed have been crow- ded out by the Bulrush.

Use of the landscape

Gammelstadsviken has always been bordered by farmland. The farmers made hay of sedge and horsetail on the water meadows in order to have winter fodder for their cows, hor- ses and sheep. They also broke new ground in the waterside forest, above all to grow hay for fodder. Some fields were ploughed and drained. They can be seen here and there along the hiking trails that skirt the lake. Today species such as Meadowsweet, Stin- ging Nettle, Raspberry, Melancholy The sea bay that became a lake

Carl von Linnaeus passed by Gam- melstad at the beginning of the 18th century. The population of Väster- botten and Norrbotten counties has grown fifteenfold since then, from just over 34,000 to over 520,000. Ground

has been broken, forests logged, rivers have been dammed up, mining operations have spread, and roads, railways and communities have been

built. Between the 16th century and the mid-19th century, we speak of the “little ice age”, a cold period when the mean temperature was about 1°

C below today’s. In the second half of the 19th century and the entire 20th century it has generally become war- mer, which has meant that several species of both plants and animals have spread northwards. Other factors are consequences of human impact through changed land use, fishing or hunting, and global environmen- tal impact. Some species from Lin- naeus’s time are no longer present.

Others which today we see as quite natural were not present at all in the 18th century. Linnaeus never saw a Black Headed Gull. And definitely not a mink.³⁹

The shores of Gammelstadsviken were clearly of maritime character when the bay was still a sea inlet. Spe- cies growing on the shore there may have included Lyme Grass, Sea Pea and Sea Buckthorn bushes. In the 19th and 20th centuries, when the bay was gradually closed off from the sea, it began to become overgrown and the character of the vegetation changed completely. Grey Alder and Wil- low bushes formed a shoreline thicket below the spruce forest. The Common Reed, Water Horsetail and different species of sedge formed a shoreline fen. Today, the lake is 4 km long, 1 km

wide and less than four metres deep, often only one metre. The areas of open water today are fairly small compared to what it was like in the past.

West of the E4, one can no longer speak of a lake; it is more like an extensive fen.

Changed hardiness zones

During its initial transition from sea to lake, Gammelstadsviken gained a wealth of aquatic plants as it became shallower. Closest to the forests, a broad belt of Common Reed and Wa- ter Horsetail formed. Outside the reed belt, nymphaeids thrived. The little Duckweed thrived too as it floated free on the surface. Another floating species was Ivy-Leaved Duckweed, although it grew down in the water.

Beneath the surface there were several long-shoot plant species. On the bottom there also grew short-shoot plants such as Quillwort and Ar- rowhead.

Postglacial rebound has meant all hardiness zones have gradually moved down on newly formed land. Pe- ople have introduced new plant species to Norrbotten. This has been done through haymaking, sowing or bal- last dumping. People have also actively spread plants to new areas to culti- vate them. In the inventory of 1920 for example, there were just a few indivi- dual bulrush plants in the lake. Today In the 1730s, when Carl von Linnaeus visited

Gammelstad, Gammelstadsviken was already so shallow that in dry summers it was not possible to use it for transport. Changed climate factors have meant that some of today’s flora and fauna would have been unrecognisable to him.

Some forests around Gammelstadsviken are pristine in character. But many are affected by past fo- restry and haymaking.

Today, those in the nature reserve are left to develop freely.

From the birdwatching tower there is a good view over the reeds and open water of Gammelstadsviken.

The Town That rose from the Sea: uplift and changing landscape

The Town That Rose from the Sea

uplift and changing landscape

Editor: Lars Elenius

The Town That Rose from the Sea

uplift and changing landscape

Editor: Lars Elenius

Authors: Lars Elenius and Thomas Öberg

Table of Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Science and the rising land

The town of Luleå was built on a new site, because in the 17th century the harbour at the parish church became too shallow. Scientists believed that the shoaling was because the water of the biblical Flood was still receding.

Not in their wildest dreams could anyone have imagined that a 2 -3 km layer of ice had been lying on Northern Europe. Or that the land was now

rising after having been compressed for thousands of years.

0 2 4 6 8

-1

CHAPTER 2

The region rises from the sea

In the early seventh century the water level was just over 13 m higher than today at the place where the Church Town in Gammelstad stands

today. At that time we must imagine the place as an extremely small island without any structures. The little island lay in the middle of the strait that connected the Lule River with a sea inlet further east, which

would later be given the name Gammelstadsviken (Gammelstad Bay).

On the barren skerry there was neither a church nor a chapel.

Gammelstad

Boden

Luleå

Gammelstad

Gammelstad

Sunderbyn

Gäddvik

Luleä lven

Luleå

Rutvik

Björsbyn Holm-

ön Stor-

Porsön

Lill- Porsön Köpman-

holmen Reveln Skutön

Bälinge

Vattenleder för båt Vattennivån 950 e.Kr.

CHAPTER 3

The consequences to the Church Town

the cultivable land increased as the land rose. Drainage ditches were dug. What had been open water became farmland.

The coast continues to shoal due to postglacial rebound following the ice age. This has transformed nature around Gammelstad from an archipelago

environment a few hundred years ago to a lake environment today. There are attempts to prevent the inner firths from becoming overgrown with the help of dams. At the same time, the new characteristics of the fen-like Gammelstadsviken are coming into focus. This sea bay became a bird lake.

Thirty years ago, no one would have believed that the endangered White- Tailed Eagle would nest there in the 21st century.

CHAPTER 4

Transformation of the landscape