Luleaa: a town that defies darkness

Title

Creator

Coghill, Carol

Language

English

Year

1960

Subject

Luleaa (Sweden) -- Description and travel.

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

£uleaa: Ct Toum lltat. Defa Darkness by Carol Coghill Twn life in a harsh cli mate must, one imagines, inevitably be drab and dreary. One pictures its archi tecture as functional but grace less, its inhabitants as worthy but dour. Luleaa, coastal capital of Sweden’s largest county, Norrbotten, is there to prove one wrong. Close to the Arctic Circle and with a winter tem perature that makes most southerners shudder even to think of, sometimes down to minus thirty-five degrees centi grade, it is still one of the gay est and most active communi ties in Sweden. One of the reasons is doubt less its mushroom growth, for it has trebled its population to the present 30,000 in the last fifteen years and is still ex panding. Many of its citizens are first generation immigrants from the wild and desolate Norrboteen countryside and have not yet acquired a city dweller’s mentality. If you live in Luleaa you are likely to be working either in the iron ore or timber indus tries (it has one of the most modern steel mills in the coun try), in shipping, shipbuilding or engineering. For though Lu leaa harbor is icebound five months of the year, the town has since the end of the last century been the main port for shipping the ore from Sweden’s richest mining areas, and it al so receives much of the timber from her vast northern forests. Your home may be in one of the century-old red painted wooden houses that give the town such a bright welcoming look, or in the ultra modern blocks of flats that ring the su burbs. In either case you will have a beautiful view free of charge, of the Gulf of Bothnia stretching away on one side and the distant snowcapped mountains on the other. And December 1960 87 being a citizen of Luleaa, you will have a life enriched by co lorful tradition as well as by modern invention. The traditions have deep roots. Until the early Middle Ages, the Lapps roamed alone with their herds of reindeer in the country of Norrbotten. When the Swedish fur-trad ers began to settle along the coast they devoted large sums of money to building churches to which people would travel from all over the North. Spe cial housing had to be provid ed for those who came long dis tances and thus there grew up communities called “church villages,” cottage settlements which were inhabited only spo radically. This is how Luleaa grew up and the old town, “Gammelstad,” with its magni ficent fifteenth century church, still fulfill? its ancient func tions, although Luleaa itself has moved eastwards, as a result of the gradual emergence of land from the sea, an after-effect of the Ice Age. Though modern communica tions have largely solved the problem of long-distance travel and secularization has under mined the religious basis of the church villages, people still gather from far and wide on feast days and celebrate wed dings, christenings and funerals in this medieval setting. The fact of inheriting the trappings of a rich past does not prevent the people of Lu leaa from living fully and ener getically in the present. If you come to the town you are in fact more likely to be shown the ultra-modern Shopping Center before being taken on a visit to the Old Town. *yHis seven-story building, covered by an aluminum dome, was built by private enteprise in 1955, and has alrea dy caused quite a change in the life of the inhabitants. For it is nothing less than another “town,” as unique in its way as “Gammeslstad.” Built on the lines of an American shopping center, it has been shaped by its architect, an Englishman Ralph Erskine, with an eye to Swedish habits and ideas, one might even say, dreams. When you walk into “Shop ping,” as it is fondly called by the locals, you will still find yourself on a “street” with the shops lining it rather in the style of an Oriental Bazaar. But it will be a street with an even temperature of plus eigh teen degrees centigrade, and the southern atmosphere will be still further emphasized by soft music and bright lights. You will even be able to disco ver miniature squares of the piazza type with fountains and cafes. There are none of the esPanorama calators that give such an ef fect of hurry and bustle to the most modem shopping emporia; you go upwards by means of staircases of a few steps at a time. The human gregariousness that was the basis of the crea tion of Gammesltad today flourishes in “Shopping,’* where often up to 25,000 visitors are registered in a single day. Some come, of course, for ser ious shopping among the fifty odd stores, others simply to lounge in a cafe. In the even ings the building is used for political or religious meetings, dances, art shows, mannequin parades. The boys and girls of Luleaa’s many schools love the warm, relaxed atmosphere under the big aluminum dome. As a result “Shopping” has had its fair share of the “teddy boy” problem which seems insepara ble from modem city life. Dif ferent solutions are now being offered in the form of the crea tion of youth councils and clubs with headquarters in the build ing. While Gammelstad provides amusement and interest at the Protestant church festivals the year round, and “Shopping” gives the city a winter Riviera Nature herself also supplies ac tivities and entertainment dur ing a large part of the year. The surrounding archipelago offers unlimited facilities for boating and swimming, the great Lule river fishing, and the forests and hills of the hin terland marvelous skiing areas. In Luleaa, for all its up-todatedness, the winds still car ry a taste of the wilderness— it is not, after all so far to the woods where bears and wolves still make rare appearances. Emissaries from these regions — the Lapps in their brilliant blue and red costumes — can often be seen in the streets. Mostly, however these proud nomad people keep to the hills. Anybody who wants to know more about their way of life, without actually following them there, can drop into the Norrbotten museum, which has extensive charts of their wan derings and a remarkable col lection of Lapp chattels and costumes. The strange joy of living in this town bordering on the wilderness is perhaps most po ignant on a winter night, when the snow glistens coldly under skies shimmering with the strange radiance of the North ern lights, to which the neon blaze of the town, with the shopping center in the middle, gives out an answering bril liance. You will feel the triumph of defying the cold and the long dark winter days, knowing that the reward, 89 though far off, is awaiting you: a few hectic weeks of summer when the whole countryside will burst into leaf and flower and you will be able to enjoy the “sunlit nights” of the north ern summer with day merging into day, separated only by a few hours of twilight * * * Lilliputian Logic' One evening grandmother was reading to fouryear-old Cheryl from a book for little folks. The next evening Cheryl brought the book and laid it on her grandmother’s knee with this request: “Talk to it. ** *

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