Our goal for this tour of Sweden was to reach Kiruna, and to fly over Kebnekaise, the highest mountain in Sweden. Flemming and I got to Piteå in 3 days, but we couldn’t fly to Kiruna, because it was raining there every single day. We still had more than 3 weeks vacation left, so it wasn’t a problem at all. We could use our waiting time for exploring Piteå and its surroundings.
Piteå was a small and beautiful town, with broad streets, lots of flowers, and nice older style buildings. On the photo above is a sculpture “Sjösättning” by Ebba Hedquist, famous Swedish artist who was born in Piteå in 1909.
We had rented a car, and had plans for going to the easternmost part of Sweden, to the border with Finland, and to see the Swedish Lapland. But that day we just stayed in and around Piteå.
Typical Swedish post boxes:
They are always so colourful! In a small village, these boxes would normally be placed outside on the main road, and in a row, so that it is easier for a postman to deliver mail. Each household would have a post box of a different colour.
Main street of the town, and a town hall square:
On the town hall square, in one of the corners, there was a charming old telephone box:
It was beautifully renovated, but unfortunately no info about time it was from, who built it, etc.
We visited the church and its old graveyard. The bell tower was impressive:
Then we drove around in the country side. Often, we saw a private place on the river, with a table and chairs, like on this photo:
Flemming heard about a place called Öjebyn, that was the town center of Piteå during 15th-17th centuries. We headed there to have a look, and it turned out to be a real gem!
On the picture below I have indicated the places we visited that day. Red line is the Piteå airfield, approx. 15 km southeast is the town of Piteå, and the orange circle is Öjebyn:
One of the streets of ‘Ojebyn:
Today, Öjebyn is a residential area, but it has an old well-preserved town, Kyrkstaden (English: Church town). It is protected as a cultural site. The cottages in Kyrkstaden were reserved for and owned communally by people whose main homes were distant from the parish church. They were also used for markets and church holy days.
In the middle of Kyrkstaden, we discovered Solander Park, a small garden dedicated to Daniel Solander, famous Swedish naturalist, born in Öjebyn in 1733:
When captain James Cook left on his voyage with the Endeavour around the world in 1768, Daniel Solander was one of the men onboard. Thousands of plants and animals, especially insects, were gathered, described and named by Solander during that trip. Solander never returned to Sweden; he died in England at the age of 49.
View to another part of Öjebyn:
The Öjebyn church:
Kungastenen (could be translated as The Stone of the kings), is a memory stone of the Royal visits, originally raised in 1900. Kings’ and queens’ names are engraved on the stone with the dates of their visits:
A lonely cat on the streets of Öjebyn loved our attention:
Öjebyn has the world’s only Paltzeria, which serves different varieties of pitepalt, the culinary specialty of the village. The origin of pitepalt is thought to be Öjebyn, though we all know a similar dish from other corners of the world. The paltzeria was closed, but in a local supermarket we found pitepalt – meat filled dumplings of round shape. Flemming wasn’t very fond of eating it, but agreed to give it a try. I prepared according to the best recommendations from Google, and served with the lingonberry sauce:
It was fun to have it for dinner, and it tasted good:
And then some cherries for desert on the terrace of the flying club in Piteå:
The days are long there at this time of the year. The sunset was around midnight, and the sunrise – already at 2 a.m. Civil twilight – in between. We had a late night drive, and took some pictures of the Piteå river:
