Vaxjo and Smaland

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Vaxjo and the Smaland Glass Factories

October 27, 2001

Ingelstad, Sweden

Dear Friends and Family,

We were due for a break from larger cities so we looked in southern Sweden for a destination. Some guidebooks had recommended the area called "Smaland" for its streams, lakes and glass factories. Now, we are not much into packing along a bunch of glass in our small car, but we can always look. Besides, how could we pass up a destination town with the unpronounceable name of Vaxjo?

The road from Stockholm south was primarily high-speed freeway. It occurred to us that this was the first extended stretch of four-lane, divided, limited-access highway we had traveled in our first 3,800 kilometers. It was actually a nice break from the smaller roads but I'm sure we'll be searching for small roads again soon.

After five uneventful hours of driving, we located Vaxjo and went to our favorite destination, the Tourist Information (TI) center. (Do US towns have these, I wonder?) We asked for information on a small hotel we had seen advertised on the web and the TI lady said yes, the Solvikens Pensionat was a wonderful place and, with a car, it's location 10 miles away in Ingelstad should be no problem. She called to see if one of their dozen or so rooms was available. Actually, all dozen or so rooms were available. Furthermore, if we would care to choose fish or meat, they would prepare dinner for us as well. We said, "fish, please" and wondered just how far off the beaten path we'd turned this time.

When we arrived in Ingelstad, we took the required turns off the main road, down a residential street and over a pair of small wooden bridges to the Pensionat. The setting was absolutely charming: a small island with a 100 year-old farmhouse that had been converted to a resort and restaurant several decades ago. Inside, it was even more precious and Inge, the owner-manager, greeted us warmly and offered us our choice of rooms. Everything was the same price, so we chose a suite above the kitchen. This was easily three times the size of the hotel room we had just moved out of in Stockholm!

Dinner was equally special. This was Marianne's birthday and we had wanted a nice meal for the occasion. What could be nicer than a candlelight dinner for two served in the salon of the old house? The salmon was cooked perfectly and served by Hennie, our personal waiter (and evening manager for the hotel). Perfect, just perfect.

The next morning, we went down to our breakfast and found a wonderful array of Scandinavian breakfast offerings, again, all for just us two. As we sat in the sun room, looking out on the lake, we were convinced we could get used to this life. Apparently, the summer here is much more crowded and the hotel has many regular annual guests. According to Hennie, one lady in particular came for three months every summer for 25 or 30 years. She lived to be more than a hundred too, so the food must be healthy.

After breakfast, we set about learning about the decorative glass industry of Sweden. Making glass has been a local specialty for almost 200 years and today there are about a dozen-and-a-half "factories", mostly in Smaland, where glass making is part-industry, part-artisan workshop, and part-tourist attraction.

Our first "factory tour" was at the "Studio Glass" factory where four glass blowers were teamed up to make a particularly colorful candle holder. The production was all by hand and the craftsmen seemed choreographed as they moved from place to place blowing glass here, adding new blobs there, shaping and cutting and ending up with a finished product. Later we went to the larger Orrefors factory and saw a similar ballet.

On the road between Studio Glass and Orrefors, we ran across a factory that hand makes paper. This factory has made paper in essentially the same way for a couple hundred years. The water wheel has been replaced by an electric motor but the rest of the process appears to be unchanged. Screens are manually dipped into a fiber slurry, held up to drain and then the raw paper is layed between felt blotters to dry. For ten or 15 minutes we watched two men do this dip, drain, lay, blot process and they never varied. Like the glass blowers, their skill made it look easy but I was amazed that the paper turned out uniform sheet after hand-formed sheet.

After spending most of one day looking mostly at glass factories and factory shops, we knew we had to extend our Pensionat stay for a third day. We correctly assumed there would be space available.

On our extra day, we did some necessities such as a haircut for Marianne and some diary writing for me. We wanted to do laundry but the Vaxjo neighborhood has no self-operated cleaning facilities. Oh well, we've recycled before and we can do it again.

After chores, we looked inside the Vaxjo church with its distinctive twin towers. This is a normal working church, not a tourist attraction, and there were no English explanations for us but it seems the church has had its current twin-tower configuration for the last 100 or 200 years. Our guidebook says the first Christian church at this site was built in the 12th Century and drawings inside the church showed that it changed over the centuries.

We also visited the Vaxjo Emigration Museum. This museum chronicles the migration of 25% of Sweden's population to the US and Canada in the 1800's and early 1900's. America was anxious for labor and for farmers to settle the newly opened West. Meanwhile, potato crop failures in Sweden prompted a massive exodus as it had in Ireland as well as in other parts of Northern Europe. The museum traced the industry that grew up to service the emigration business, sponsored largely by steamship lines, railroads, and US industries. As a result, sections of Chicago and Minnesota became home to Swedish populations exceeding those in all but the largest cities in Sweden. The museum pointed out that Swedish-American immigrants gave the US such American necessities as Greyhound Bus Lines, practical snow chains and the egg carton.

So, we thank Sweden for her emigrants and for the hospitality shown us in our brief visit. Tomorrow we hope to reach Germany but we bring with us warm memories of our Scandinavian exploration.

Take care and invite an immigrant to lunch. I will.

John and Marianne.

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Created October 28, 2001

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