Episode 81 - Väderöbod Lighthouse

0:06 Hi, everyone. Hi, everyone. I'm Vince. And I'm Emily. And you're listening to The Lighthouse Lowdown. We can't help but dance every time. Yeah, we've had some difficulty getting started this morning. That's not true. Yeah, well, we had some coffee. We went to a banging, what is it, French bakery. Yeah, what is it called? How dare you? Something French. I don't know. It's on the box. It was off of Metcalf. If you guys are local to KC. Right next to Jose Peppers.

0:46 In an oriental supermarket. So we got fired up. We got some pastries. We got some coffee. Ready to go. It's like one of those special mornings where you don't think there's going to be anything special happening. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh. This is the best pastry I've ever had in my life. Look at how European this place is. That's what happened. I'm really excited. Good. I love pastry shops. I always wanted to work in a bakery. Really? Yeah. That's like your thing? Mm -hmm. We had a friend who worked in a bakery, kind of. Yeah. Bakery? Was it a bakery? It was a bakery. Yeah. Hurt her elbow. Too much baking. Yeah. Lots of piping bags squeezing.

1:31 Gotta keep the elbow in. Well, today we're on episode 81. 81! It's a Sunday morning. Thank you for joining us. Hopefully you are caffeinated as well. And this is my episode. It's been a little bit, so let's go. I'm so ready. Yeah. The history buoy of the day. You are familiar with the Lyle gun. I'm not familiar with it. Well, we're about to be. So there's a man named David. Well, he's passed now. David A. Lyle. He was a graduate from West Point, which is the Army's military academy. Like super elite, very hard to get into academy. In 1869, way back.

2:14 That's when he graduated. So his specialty was ordnance. So explosions, cannons, guns. I didn't know that was called ordnance. Ordnance. Yeah, they still use that word for bombs and rockets and shit. So kind of cool. There was a request from the Secretary of the Treasury in the United States at the time who was in charge of what was called the Life Saving Service. Later on, that would be incorporated into the U .S. Coast Guard. But at the time, Life Saving Service, which I think is a military body, they asked for the Army's assistance in improving their life -saving apparatus, the tools that they used. Oh, yes. Specifically for ships that were running aground because... It happened over and over again where near lighthouses, ships, that's the reason lighthouses were there, but ships would run aground or hit a rock or a reef or something they weren't expecting. And then they would begin to sink. And even though you could see them from the shore, most of the time, like. We were at Cape Cod at the life -saving station, and we saw they had a horse -drawn carriage where they would take a boat, and a horse would pull the boat, and there's a bunch of men, and they'd try to go out. But imagine it's storming, as almost always, the ocean. Storming, it's sand.

3:30 These boats are not flimsy. They're solid wood, just powerful. What do they say, like 1 ,000 pounds or something? Maybe thousands. They're huge, 30, 50 feet long. Even though it's a rowboat, it's still like... So you had to get that into the water, manage a horse and a cart and a bunch of people, wake them up, and then try to get to the boat. And then the ship that's sinking, you can't easily connect to it very well. So anyways, you can see there's some challenges. So they wanted to get some tools to help improve that process. So they contacted the armory. Lyle was, I think he was an officer. Yeah, as a graduate of the academy, you're an officer. He transferred to the Springfield Armory. which today is the name of a gun brand in the United States. Oh, cool. But Springfield Armory was historically the large armory of the United States Army. Was it in Springfield, Missouri? I think Illinois.

4:24 Oh. Got excited there. Not Mo. That's only two and a half hours from here. So we went to the Quad Cities, remember, for my family's... thing where we found milltown coffee yes yeah if you want emily to remember exactly if you want emily to remember a trip just tell her well it's the coffee shop where we saw the police officers going right before close oh yeah yeah yeah so wow you you really did conjure up the memory by saying that there you go um but yeah that's so springfield armory uh and he spent two years there um and there was an air quotes in addition to his regular duties oh Who knows what else he was doing. Yeah, he was stretching. He was an ordnance guy, so he spent two years playing with the things that they had available in the armory and kind of coming up with some new ideas and testing things. So in 1878, he had developed an accurate, lightweight gun cannon, mini cannon, which was put into service at life -saving stations.

5:26 Life -saving stations along the nation's coast, the United States. As a testimony to the effectiveness of this work, Lyle's gun, it's been estimated that by the year 1906, so roughly 30 years later, the gun was responsible for saving 4 ,500 lives. And this was the one that they shot a harpoon into the boat? We'll talk about it. Okay, okay. I didn't know if you were assuming that our listeners. I'll show you and we'll talk through it too in case people are just listening. It's interesting because I... Because we learned about it twice at two different life -saving stations, I felt like, wait a minute. Oh, no. I learned it twice because I went with Carly to Rehoboth Beach.

6:07 Oh, yeah. And they had a life -saving station. So anyway. And then Cape Cod had one. Yes. Yep. I felt like, was that Indian Point? Cape Cod? Yeah. Race Point. Race Point. Okay. So the one that I went to must have been Indian Point. Oh, no. I can't remember. So. It's fine. But I was just going to say that. Because we've learned about it twice. It feels like we've talked about it already on the podcast, but we haven't. Right. It's special. It's been in the background. But now it's a lighthouse buoy. But now it's a focus. Like a pyramid. So, you know, 1878 was the launch of this. That's the beginning of production. It went 4 ,500 lives is the count by the year 1906, which is crazy. Yeah, that's wild. I don't understand how that number exists, but that's the number. And then this is from the National Parks website, by the way. Kind of cool. Lyle's life -saving gun remained in production through World War II. So through the 1940s. 52, I think, was the end of World War II. 45 was... I forget now. I thought it was like 44 was the beginning.

7:12 I know it was in the 40s. Anyways. So what he did, he developed a small cannon that shot a projectile. to which a lightweight line, a small rope, was attached to a stranded vessel. So it shot the projectile over the vessel or to the vessel. And let's go to the website. I want to show you some photos as we talk through this. So this is the website I'm referencing, National Park Service. And this link is going to be in our description, of course. Massachusetts. So here's the small cannon. This is David. They're always fancier than I think about them in my head. Handsome son of a bitch. Look at that mustache. Well, the mustache is crazy. The goatee could go. For the time? Bold. Yeah, true. So there's a little cannon. Beautiful woodwork on this one.

7:58 I think this is an exhibit, but who knows. They still use these as far as exhibits go. They're not used today in modern rescue missions, but they were used for a long time. Here's the boat we were talking about with the horse -drawn carriage. Load of effort looks like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. That horse is pushing. So like 16, 17 men to make this happen versus going with the Lyle gun. We'll talk about this painting in a second. Okay, so here's this thing. It looks like a torpedo backwards. So you load it. It's about 18 pounds. You load it into the small cannon after loading a small pouch that has gunpowder in it. And then this end has a loop on it. They tie a rope to that loop. And do you remember, I think there's an image in here, this thing. Do you remember the box that had a bunch of rods in it and rope was woven up and down and up and down? So when they shot it, it would quickly unravel. So I saw a video of this demonstration on YouTube.

8:59 They tie the line. They wet the first six feet. That way the gunpowder doesn't burn the line, which is crazy. They tie the knots to the harpoon, if you will. And then... um they flip the box over so they dump out the line yeah and it's it's it's ready to unravel at crazy speed as this cannonball basically yeah because no way if it was touching anything it would get tangled yeah which or if you had a knot it'd be a problem and so what they would do is they'd fire an 18 pound thingy up to 600 yards oh wow which is insane six football fields six football fields in length shoot which is crazy the demonstrations i saw looked like 100 yards so i think they're using less gunpowder for safety and to not damage to be reasonable yeah you know something bad happens like for pure functionality and nowadays it's like we just want to demonstrate why we don't need to do the yeah also where do you find space to demonstrate 600 yards well the yeah the one i saw they fired it into the water oh okay But again, they had to make sure those knots were tied because we lost our projectile. Anyway, so they shoot this rope. And then it's, I don't know what the, it's not a heavy rope that appears.

10:14 It's like half an inch maybe in diameter. And so they can use that. The design was the ship receives this thing. Yeah. And then they can pull a heavier rope if they need a heavier rope to like pull the boat or to do whatever they need to do. In some cases, they would just put on what were called breeches buoys, which is, there's a lot of things shown in this painting that I want to talk about. It's just a really cool painting. Give me a second to find my note on it. You're good. So it's called The Lifeline. It's painted in 1884 by Winslow Holm. Absolutely awesome. It's a beautiful painting. And it was mentioned, there's, you know, all on this website, it mentions that this woman that's shown, she's shown overwhelmed. So she's passed out. Oh, of course. They always are. In the 1800s. It's so funny how, like, women in these time periods are like, oh, they're so delicate. They can't handle it. Like, they had to have been fainting.

11:17 Sorry, this is a totally unrelated, but I just. Honestly. So it's so funny every time that they're like, you know, the fainting couches like they can't. I don't want to say something that's inappropriate, but I do have an honest question. If we were to go back in time to the 1800s and men were weaker and smaller, they just they just were. They had more testosterone that's been shown. More intellectual focus. But they had. Poor nutrition. They didn't know anything about sleeping. They slept on terrible mattresses. They were crazy shifts. People died younger. They didn't, you know, we talked about mercury poisoning, that lead poison. Things were crazy all over the place.

11:58 Yeah. And they'll probably say this about us in 200 years from now. Plastics everywhere. Microplastics in their blood. It's much easier to be a human now. Yeah. So if you're a woman and you had, you worked all the time on the house or at. a laboring job, whatever life was not super easy. Also malnutrition, also lack of sleep, also caring for the babies, caring for the family, wearing these tight clothes that were period specific. I wonder if women didn't faint more. I mean, I know like, yeah, I know. And that was most of the point people would make is, Oh, sorry. Sorry. Is that, uh, women were wearing clothes that restricted their breathing. They got hot at all. Then yeah, there was a real chance of them passing out, you know? And And modesty was a thing. They're heavily covered. Like they're wearing like eight layers of fabric. So like, I get it. I just, I think it's so funny. It's like, of course. Yeah. In a stressful situation, she's passed out. Yeah. I mean, in the painting, the sea is super rough. There's a cliff off to the right. So they're near land. Yeah, they're doused with water. Today, if this happened, people would be fainting for sure. Yeah. People would be passing out, getting sick. It would be bad.

13:09 It's an interesting. The painting, like a stylistic choice that they would cover the face of the rescuer. So they talk about that. Oh. Just briefly in this text, they say that they obscured the face of the rescuer because then it could be any man. It could be anyone in the service. You can see his uniform, but not him. Yeah, it's not like a guy. It's like it's the entity of this life -saving service. That's cool. He's wearing a cap. It might be a helmet. I can't tell. And it talks about how her dress. shows her knees. Yeah, just a sliver of knees. And it's clung to her body because it's wet from the sea spray. Yeah, right. And they said normally this would be left out of any reputable gallery of the day. It would not show these risque knees.

13:54 Yeah, it's like you can see the outline of her thighs. Exactly. But it was such a well -known, beautiful, important painting that they let it go. Well, because it's all, it's... It's real. Yeah, exactly. It's not like they didn't paint this like, oh, look at her thighs. It's like, this is what it would be like if you were being, and if they wouldn't be showing that in galleries, like you wouldn't be seeing real stuff. It's probably evokes a lot of emotion in this time. Well, it's funny too. That's like the American mindset where if you go back even further in time, the statue of David is a naked man and, or then there's naked women all over. Yeah. Like sculptures covered. Yeah. So I just thought it was a beautiful painting. I wanted to include it, and it's really, really interesting. But you can see the lightweight rope going to the bottom of that pulley. Oh, yeah, you're right.

14:44 And then the heavier rope supposedly was transferred after the lightweight rope, you know, via the Lyle gun. In the top corner, is that the ship sails? I think so. I think it's kind of amorphous. We know there's land on the right. We know there's a ship on the left. They're being pulled to the right effectively by this. Cool. And then the other thing that's not really well shown here, I think I'll go up or down in a second, but the breeches buoy. I was like, what does that mean? It's pants. Yeah, yeah. As in your breeches. Floating pants. So I can't really tell in this painting if they wanted to use that or not, but essentially it was a flotation ring, and then inside they had sewn leather shorts that your legs would be inside of. I guess that was a big deal because someone could be passed out or they could be rocked pretty hard and they'd still be able to get across this line. So Breach's Bowie is something else maybe we can talk about in the future. But the painting was really cool.

15:49 And then this is a side story, but it showed a 600 -yard shot that was made because a river was overly wide. There was some flooding. Connecticut River flooded in 1936. The Lyle Lightsaving Gun helped establish communications by throwing lines to pull phone lines across the swollen river. It was in the local newspaper. So they showed in dashes where they made these shots and then brought temporary lines. Yeah. Super cool. Not related to a ship, but. Yeah. So I just thought that was a really neat one. Oh, and so if you want to see one today, obviously YouTube has. videos like i just talked about there's two places they said in the united states that still show exhibits i can't remember the second was the first was at race point okay yeah right next to the it's a u .s national cape cod seashore and it's next to the life -saving station so there's a race point lighthouse and the life -saving station we walk to along that big boardwalk yeah and they have kind of the i forget what it's called the land mass where they have flags they hang on um It's like the mast of a ship, but it's built into the earth. So they have firing sessions over there. And they said they give exhibits weekly each summer. And that was printed in the Cape Cod Times newspaper in 2005. So it's cool that when we were there in 2024, right?

17:13 Yeah, 2024. One of those two years. They're still doing it. The guys we saw there were super passionate. The Life Saving Station is definitely worth a visit. So, that is your history, Bowie. Very cool. Of the day. I like that. A little good. I kind of forgot that that was a thing we could cover. It's been on my list for a while. Yeah. Excellent, Bowie. What do we have next? Oh, no. We're going to Sweden. I'll just let you. The pronunciation. Okay. Best I can say. I've quested Google for this. Of course. Vaderobod. Vaderobod.

18:00 Vaderobod. Vaderobod. And anyone who's Swedish or speaks Swedish. So sorry. Please chime in. I can say in the word Fjallbacka, I think is the town. Fjallbacka. Because I was there and I heard it many times. And then that word is in English. Archipelago. And we got that one down for sure. So Vaderobod. and the Falbeca Archipelago. And I'm going to cover kind of two things, and I'll tell you why. So Baderabud, I did not physically see because it's about nine miles off the coast on a small archipelago, a small collection of islands we're going to talk about. And it's the big lighthouse out west. There's a couple, but one of the big lighthouses out west of where I was in Falbeca area in Sweden on my trip just two weeks ago. So I wanted to just, I have some personal photos I'll show.

18:51 But this lighthouse is a really big one. And then the archipelago has several lighthouses. But there is no information on the internet. Oh, shoot. I can tell you what the boat captain told me and what I observed, which is interesting. But I wanted to give a real lighthouse call out with some background information. He talked about the lighthouses a little? A little bit. I asked him. I told him about our podcast. Oh, yes. We may have one listener in Sweden now. So that's just what I wanted to get talking about. So I looked up some pronunciations to get this going. So Vader Obode. And then I went into Google Translate to figure out what's happening here. So there's a lot of things. So Vader means weather. Oh.

19:39 Obode means island hut. So weather, island hut, maybe. Also, Bode, B -O -D, means shed. Okay? Okay. And I was like, didn't we talk about lawn sorts, fear? Wasn't that the word lighthouse? Yes. Fear is lighthouse, which is not used here. Yeah. And then I had fun with this. Light and house, the words. The word light is use, which is L -J -U -S. Oh. Use. And house is huse. H -E -H -U -S. A lighthouse is a use -use. Now, I don't think that's what they actually say, but as far as Google Translate goes, that was the source. I thought that was funny. That was cute. So, Vejderabod is considered the most solitary lighthouse in Sweden because it's the furthest out. Obviously, it's quite isolated. It's on the outer islands in the southwestern Vejdero archipelago. The archipelago... It compromises 10 kilometers long row of islands. So we have the inner land and then two archipelagos that are western, out to sea, if you will, from Sweden.

20:56 I'm going to show you on a map shortly what those look like. The lighthouse is 15 kilometers west of Hamburgsund and Fjellbeke. So about nine miles is what my math said. And where's the map? It has great reviews. Yeah. I'm going to leave it open. But for a moment, here we are in Sweden. We're on the southwest coast. Oh, yeah. So you have Norway over here and Denmark below. But this is the open ocean. So you have two towns in here. Fjallbeka. My gosh, you guys did a lot of driving. Hamburgsund. So these are only about 15 minutes apart, weirdly. What are? Fjallbeka and Hamburgsund. Oh, yeah. I was just looking at, what is it? Jottenberg. Jottenberg. Yes, we'll talk about the trip for a second. So we flew into Gothenburg, Jottenberg, Jottenberg.

21:53 And then people are going to love this. Uddevalla is a university town, by the way. So we went up after, so we spent a couple days in Jottenberg, went up to stay out here. No, we didn't. We went up north first, and we met some family members on this area. And we saw... What area? Just south of the Norwegian border. I forget what the region is called. I have to ask my mom. She named the region, no problem. But I cannot right now. Sorenberg? I don't think it's going to be on Google Maps. But just south, so you can see there's a jetty that comes in of the Norway and Sweden border.

22:37 So I talked to my family members. Andreas was his name. Very talkative, super nice dude. Monica is Andreas' spouse. Okay. So you heard Monica, the name. Yes. These are very distant relatives my mom reconnected us with, and it was really awesome. They hosted us for dinner at their house. Oh, that's nice. We drove around. We saw some graveyards and churches that were historical for our family. Then we saw our old family farm. which is all in this area. So my mom's side of the family goes back to Sweden. Great, great. My great grandparents were Swedish on my mom's side. So they came to America in the 1800s when this part of Sweden was like starving. Things really went poorly. There's a big economic downturn.

23:25 Jobs were hard to find. So a bunch of them moved to the United States in one fell swoop. And then they kind of stopped. So it's not that common for immigrants from this part of Sweden to go to the U .S. Okay, just that one time. They were farmers, and it's beautiful land out here. Super green, rolling hills, rains a ton. The winters only get down to like 50 Fahrenheit because it's right on the ocean. Oh, I thought, for some reason, I thought Sweden was all very snowy and icy and dark. No, no. They said sometimes it'll get colder, but usually it's not. Interesting. We should be there. It was really beautiful. And my mom kept saying, oh, my gosh, this looks just like her hometown, which was Illinois. And then before that, the family lived in Iowa. Yeah. There's certain parts of Iowa that are really green and rolling. So anyways. Can I ask you a question?

24:17 Yeah. What did you guys have at their house to eat? I can't remember what it's called. It was a Swedish sandwich cake, smorgasbord. Yum. So it didn't have this on the side, but it was full of mayo. It was really good. So it was like bread and like veggies? Yeah, veggies and bread. There was some meats on top. It looked a lot like this. They just made that? She said she bought it from the store. Because she is a teacher. Monica is a teacher. And she had just done the... year end, like day before we showed up. Oh, really? So they just finished and sent their students off. Oh, that's so fun. Yeah, it was super refreshing.

24:59 I will say that was a lot of mayo. Yeah. They're like, oh, the Americans are coming. Let's give them. Let's give them just fat. Apparently it's a really traditional thing and it was really good. It looks tasty. Ooh, like egg stuff in there. I've never even heard of it before. My mom's making fresh homemade potato salad. Great. I'm not a potato salad guy. Well. Sorry, I just saw the egg part of that sandwich, and I was like, you know what else is happening today? Yeah. So I'll try it. Maybe it'll be great. I've never had my mom's homemade potato salad. Yeah. Pinky's up. So as we go, I'm just going to show the map for a moment. So we were up here, and then we went and spent two days down in Hamburgsund, which is here. It's a beautiful little town.

25:50 We're going to talk about some more. Oh, I thought you said Hamburgsund. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I pointed at the wrong one. Oh. I'm looking at a tiny screen too far away. I should look at the big screen. There's H's everywhere. Yeah. So Swedish is difficult. Apparently, they told me that it has ties to German and German can understand Swedish really well. I can believe that. I speak a little German. I'm Bishan. But I don't understand almost anything. As somebody who doesn't speak either one, they sound similar. Okay. They have the same like. throaty stuff yeah well it was people are super nice which is really the best part yeah traveling we love that and is that what we discovered in sweden too is that people were just like yeah we were in stockholm they were really pleasant and left you alone so it wasn't um yeah the wait staff and whatnot they weren't pushy sales people you walk into even like a trinket store which is for us tourists you walk in and they're like hello and then yeah They just leave you to your own devices. They just leave you alone. They're like, you know, you'll ask if you need something is the expectation. So that was nice. So we went up here two days in a little cottage in Hamburg.

26:58 We took a boat tour, saw this island archipelago. And then we went over to through Young Shipping. That's where I sent you. We went to like a McDonald's. So you went back down. Yeah, to Wachau, which is down here. Oh, wow. So this area. I'm looking for a town called Costa. Here it is. So Costa, Costa is, like Costa Boda is a really famous glass brand. So there's another town right next to it called Boda. If I can find it. Excuse me. Can't find it right now. But we stayed outside of Costa in another hut cottage out here, which is like five generations past town. All these properties are. It's crazy. But yeah, Vacu Costa, this is really pretty. And this is the kingdom of glass. So Orifers is a famous name. And the glasses I brought back are Orifers. So blue dot, crystal glass. We went to Nebro. That's where that guy and his daughter were working. Oh, yes.

28:02 Anyway, so I'm filling in some weird details here. But we went down here. And then we made the long drive about four and a half, five hours up to Stockholm. Okay. Turned in the car and spent another couple days in Stockholm. Nice. And Emily knows Stockholm pretty well. We went there two years ago for four days, five days. Yeah, four days. It was great. I highly recommend traveling to Sweden. My brother was telling me, he talked to some of his friends about, oh, yeah, we're going to Sweden. And they said, why? He goes, to visit, to be tourists. They're like, why? It's awesome. What are you talking about? It's probably one, I mean, listen, Japan is going to have to be number one on my list until something knocks it off, which would be difficult. But Sweden was, before I went to Japan, Sweden was like far above any other vacation spot I've ever been to. It's just beautiful. It's easy. People are sweet. The food is delicious. It's all like, I feel like it was the easiest and most rewarding vacation we've taken. There's not that many people there. Yes, it's quiet. Stockholm's their huge city. They don't like cars in the cities and things. Public transportation is very convenient, and it's everywhere. It's really good. Yeah, the guy told me, our tour guide, long story, but in the two major cities, Gothenburg and Stockholm, there are fees for congestion. So if your vehicle is seen, the license plates are scanned in the

29:34 city between 6 and 6. Yeah. then or six and 1800 as they say then uh you're fined it's like a reasonable fine yeah it's more like a like uh just you paid it's a tax yeah the taxes are super high uh in general like income tax and whatnot but they have really good services free university free health care uh it's a beautiful place i heard the summer this uh winter is uh brutal yeah so dark winter yeah but because of it's The summers are super bright. People just sit out in the sun. That's an activity they do. Absorb. Midsummer is a big celebration up there. There's a horror movie I watched on it that was not really relevant. But if you look how far north it is, I think it's Toronto, is roughly the same. I'm clicked on the lighthouse, so it won't let me see big waypoints. Yeah, my brother lived there for over five years, and the summers were just...

30:31 Everything that wasn't winter was just an amazing time. In the winter, it was like you were trying to hunker down and survive. When the sun's only up for like three hours, it's kind of a struggle. And then I was making fun of everyone super white like myself. And I was telling Scott, my brother, if we were to find a way to export Swedish sunscreen to the United States. We'd make a lot of money because it works. And I bought some. I actually have it. You should try it. What? It's 50 SPF. How dare you keep little secrets from me? It's not a secret. I used it. I mean, I just need it. Practically, I need it. I didn't buy it to bring it back. I'm only offended because you really talked up their sunscreen. And secretly, you have a tiny stash. I have a tiny stash. I'm trying it today. Anyways, it just feels different than ours. I don't think it has the same components.

31:23 Probably not. So it's not as oily. It worked. I didn't get burned. Good. And we were in the sun quite a bit. The UV index was five to six often. Okay. So the sun was burning up there in the summertime, which is kind of interesting. Yeah. But anyways. Back to our lighthouse. Back to the lighthouse. So we're going to go to the west coast, north side of Sweden. Fjallbeka, Ambreksund, right there. And then, so when we went to explore, we looked at this archipelago. Yeah, close to land. Which was about an hour on a boat that we went through. But we saw a lot of things in here. And then if you went further out, there's two island groups. Vajarana, I don't know. And Vajarobot, which we're talking about.

32:09 So the lighthouse is on this island. So you couldn't see it from where you were boating. It was too far. And if you look at the Google image, it's like. This is rock. Very rocky. It's very rock. But also it's the sun that makes it look this way. You can't physically see the lighthouse in this. And the other outbuildings are like bleached. I think summer sun really is tough out here. So just wanted to give you an idea of where we're at before we keep going. All right. There was two lighthouses here. The first one was built in 1867. It was oil -powered, so conventional lighthouse. And it was one of the type of lighthouses that they copied and used a lot of places. The name was Heidenstamm. It's probably someone's name. But it's got stilts, and it's a small building on top of the stilts. Not very tall up. This one, I think, is 60 feet tall. for example, but the Alderman was shorter. So you're saying before this lighthouse, they had a different one that was one on stilts. Okay. And I think we're going to see a photo of it, but this is the one that's there today. 1867, they built that one and they built some dwelling houses and established a lighthouse staff. There was about 20 people that lived there. Oh, no way. At the peak of its time.

33:24 Were they all to do with the lighthouse or was it like a little community? They were all to do with the lighthouse and then supporting those people. So there was a teacher that came and started a school. The teacher lived in the lighthouse keeper's house upstairs and had her own little room. And there was 20 people. So they had a school that ran from January to June. I don't know why. Maybe they sent the teacher home. I don't know. But she had her own room. There's no real big history that happened out there that's been recorded on this website. 1932, there was... New technology for navigation and communications. Obviously, telephone was growing. We're growing.

34:05 So it was decided that the Heinzdenstamm lighthouse should be taken down and replaced with a new lighthouse that would be able to be automated. So 1930s. So they said, without manpower, how could we keep a lighthouse out here? And this is what they came up with. That's interesting. So they extinguished this lighthouse. No, the first one. Okay. In 1964, so 30 years later after deciding. And it was demolished in 69. So there's a couple years where the two lighthouses stood next to each other. Oh. So this is translated to English, so it's probably not perfect. But this up here, Foreindigen Veiderabod, that's the association for Veiderabod, the formation of people for. So it shows you the island. Here's a picture that I was referencing. Oh, interesting.

34:58 So it's like, oh, that's so cool. It looks like a Scottish lighthouse, but skeletal, which I have never seen before. Yeah, skeletal. It does have the tower, so it's not an exposed staircase, if you will. Yeah, it looks exactly like a normal. Normally, for me, skeleton lighthouses look, like if you were to put a shell on the outside, it still wouldn't look exactly like a lighthouse. It's like it's too wide at the base. But this looks exactly just like a lighthouse you would build, except... Maybe it's because of the height. Because if you extended it up taller and kept that angle of the legs, it would go further and further. Good point. Yeah, this comment said, a rare picture, the short period when both lighthouses were erected on the island. Awesome. And this one was the original. It's on the west coast, so further out to sea. The new taller one was put inland on the east side. I think because there's a big plot of land that was flat over there. Maybe that's why... In the Google images, it doesn't show the lighthouse where the dot is. It's because the dot used to be where that is. Maybe. So the original one was black or is that rusted? So I can tell you. The original one. I can tell you. Was black. Okay. It was always black. With like an aluminum roof, it looks like. And then they built the new one and it was red with a black stripe. So 63 foot tall, the new one. So from 1964 to 85, it was up and it was orange with a black belt. Today, it's

36:30 painted a bright red color, singular. They switched it up. Yeah, the new lighthouse looks very military. I think it's because of the roof that overhangs the lantern room. Yeah, the roof that overhangs the lantern room. And there's something about that. One of the lighthouses we're going to see. inland on the archipelago i went to very short same structure though oh really without no without a tower it's only a couple feet tall huh oh cute so kind of interesting and and again the swedish like some of their brands that are popular um like volvo is from sweden husqvarna um which we toured both of those which is really cool there's a bunch of swedish brands it's a little bit german like in the sense for efficiency except it's got a little more quirk to it. Think of Ikea design and coloration and a little more positivity and artistic touch. So I think that comes into the lighthouses as well. That's interesting because I do know what you're talking about when you say like German utility. Yeah, and it's like Sweden, a little bit of flair. Yeah. That kind of goes with it. Yeah, a little less serious than German design, but kind of fun. So that short lighthouse was demolished in 69. The residential buildings were abandoned and were almost to a state of dilapidation. Oh, no. They were vandalized and then condemned by the government. Okay. Until

38:01 Forenagen Vedrabod was formed in 1979. So the association. Today, thanks to their work, which is all non -profit, the houses are almost back to their... original exterior condition wow so i think they're not inhabited no they're not livable but they're like visually yeah i mean this picture i've pulled up they look great they look good and the lighthouse is still an active signal nice it's automated of course and you can visit so this is part of a nature reserve and so it's kind of a national park and you can land kayaks or other small boats and visit this place and i've seen pictures of people camping there yeah it's way out to sea so If you look at it in the Google Maps, it looks really barren out there. But then when you look at it from this photo, it actually does a lot to explore.

38:51 It'd be a little scary, but I would be really interested to do a kayak from Fjallbeka. So you'd go nine miles. So you'd take a long time to do it. My arms. And then to go back the next day, I wouldn't be able to. Yeah. So maybe we should have like a two -person kayak. Come on! Well, think about this for a second. For us Kansans, okay, you'd be on the open ocean for miles. And I don't know what's out there, but there are large sea life out there. That's true. And it's not likely that you're going to get attacked or something. I don't mean to be overdramatic. I just mean the feeling of being on the ocean in a little kayak is scary for me to think about.

39:35 Yeah. Well, I just listened to a true crime podcast where... A lady and her husband, her fiance went out when it was a little stormy to an island and back in kayaks and he capsized and died because the water was so cold that he couldn't like your body locks up. You die. I've always wanted to ocean kayak. It would be really scary, but I ocean kayaked. Where? Belize. Really? Just went out for fun. It was a two -person kayak. Was it a fast kayak, very narrow? No, not particularly. It was more like to satiate the visitors. A little tourist. Yeah. Well, and that makes sense. I've owned kayaks. We used to kayak just a couple times we've been. But the wider and shorter it is, the more stable it is, the better it is for floating and drinking beer. Okay. And for newer kayakers. Some waves and stuff, yeah. You know, mine that I had, one of the reasons I really liked them, I had a, I can't remember the brand now. Pungo. Wilderness Systems. Pungo. 12 foot, 12 and a half foot long. So they get longer and thinner. And so mine was kind of a hybrid to where a new person would be fine. Yeah. Because it's pretty stable. But it's still challenging.

40:56 But it was way faster. Oh. Like my friends all had entry level kayaks and I bought like an intermediate kayak. And we just had flat water is what they call it. lakes you know ponds um here in kansas and i really enjoyed it because it was i could get out and go exercise in it um i could go all the way around a lake edge and my friends would want to go to the middle and back because they're tired yeah or as soon as you stop paddling it starts turning that's the sign of a cheap kayak so you so so we when you my kayak was better than yours yep And you just didn't say anything, so I felt extra weak and small. Well, so I had two. The other one was also Wilderness Systems. The green? The green one. It was an old, like, 90s model. It was rocky. And it was, again, the same style. It was 11 feet long, so longer than a standard 10 or 8 foot, but a little more narrow, but pretty stable. It was actually for fishing.

41:51 I actually enjoyed that kayak more than the other one. Yeah. Well, and the other one was really meant for midsize people. And I was always going to buy a 14 foot, which was meant for me. And I never, you know, $1 ,200. I never bought the second one. The second we have a place, we are listed. Hold on. The second we are living in a stable location and have storage space, we'll get kayaks again. I actually really enjoyed it. It was just, it was a lot to. get them down from the roof of our garage. Well, and you, you know, like we talked about, you can go out and throw an anchor down and you can literally drink beers or fish or you can go out and exercise. Are you going to go explore some little Island off of some lake? Like there's a lot of different kayaking is not really one thing. And what, one of the things I want to do like, um, outside of where my grandma lived in Ventura, California, there's a small group of islands. I forget what it's called. But they're really pretty and they have caves. And so you can go. One of the things that's common to do there is to sea kayak on a tour.

43:00 Is it hard? I don't know. My mentality is anytime you go on vacation, train for the vacation. If you're going to go around Sweden and walk a bunch of hills and walk through the city, you should be at home walking five miles a day, walking hills, getting new shoes, stretching. It makes it that much more enjoyable. Yeah, because you know that you're physically capable. Like right now, if you and I were about to go on a vacation and you're like, why don't we sign up for this kayaking? We're not ready. To an island. I'd be like, uh, no. If you were like, hey, in our trip six months from now, like, do you want to be ready to do that? And I would be like, hell yeah. Right. Even if you're doing like a hike, 45 minute hike. No big deal. Anyone could make a 45 minute walk uphill. But you're going to feel it the next day. Yeah. You're going to be tired. Then you'll be stunted. Yeah. Sorry, I got us so off track. That's what the Belize kayak is for. It's like, you know, the casual floater.

43:59 Yeah. We're off track. But you can visit Vida Rabote. And most often people do it by sea kayak. Yeah. I saw some sea kayaks on the archipelago in groups. The water was really still. It was crazy flat. My photos, which we'll look at. That day, so they told us the tides don't impact much inside the archipelago. They really don't go up and down much, which is interesting. Very strange. I think the formation of Norway and the island below, which is Denmark, kind of break up some of that. That's a barrier, yeah. And then the archipelago has, so Sweden has the most number of islands of any country in the world, I think is what they told me. They named all the little ones. So, anyways. I bet there's like, sorry, I won't get it. No, it's all right. I was going to say, I bet there's so many different ownerships of islands. Like rich people everywhere.

44:52 Like buy an island. Buy an island. Have a tiny island. Yeah. So I made a mistake. I just read. The light is no longer active. The tower is still, I say it's active and they still paint it. And it's still a visual representation. Yeah, but it's not flashing. Yeah. And that was in 2008. They decided that it was deemed superfluous. for merchant ships and the swedish maritime administration asked that it be extinguished because it creates confusion probably if they're looking for something else but um so that's just a day mark falbeca in that that coastal area is known for herring um oh fish like massive collects collections of fish and there's not so many now that's kind of overfished it in the past which is too bad the city's been there the classic story falbeca has been there for long time they think the vikings were fishing there so wow there's been a settlement for a long time but today um lobster catch are big up there in november october um and it's mostly there's like 1100 people that live there so it's really nice yeah they say tourism it's not like that's what scott's friends why would you go to sweden yeah well it's not rome i was just about to say it's not like a rome tourism it's not paris like it's not supposed to be like We're going to go to the Coliseum, and then right next door, we're going to go see this thing, and then we're going to go see this thing. It's a place to absorb, but not a place to chip off things. It's a real place. Yeah. Anyways, so

46:25 2008, the light went out. We just love travel. We're like, ooh, travel. In 2010, the Vader Abode Association, I can't say the word anymore. No, no, you're good. They bought the lighthouse from the government for the symbolic sum of one krona. Oh, that's so cute. Swedish crown. Yeah. And they took over the ownership and responsibility for the lighthouse. Nice. And has allowed it to continue to shine. So, for example, there's some translation in currency about a tenth. So if it's a thousand krona, it's about a hundred dollars. Okay. I discovered that there's some percentage off there. Effectively. So a penny, you know, one krona is potentially a tenth of a penny. So anyways, it was not a big sale is the point. Yeah, it's just symbolic, right? In the summer of 2011. Sorry, it got spooky outside.

47:21 Yeah, it's a little dark. Gonna get some rain. Sorry. This is fun. I'm having a good time. Yeah, me too. Cute. Okay. In the summer of 2011. The county administrative board decided to create the nature reserve that I spoke about. So in connection with the nature reserve, parts of the former bird protection areas were also changed with regard to the lighthouse. So the southeastern part of the island was made available to visitors throughout the year. So there's areas of the island they ask you not to disturb. But the physical lighthouse in these buildings we see, that's kind of designed for people to go visit. That would make sense. Also, it's the easiest part for you to access. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm almost at the end of my notes, but I have some things I'd like to show I think will be entertaining.

48:17 Okay. So we'll continue to talk. So I want to show you photos of Fjallbeka, the city. There's just this website. So it's a coastal town. It's kind of illustrated from this big -ass rock, which is granite, that's in the middle of the town. So the town is kind of separated. Huh. North and south, if you will. Yeah. And then they have a big port area. It's all small boats. They don't want to build on it? I think it's hard to, especially with plumbing. Okay. I'm guessing that's the challenge. Didn't even think about that. And then there's a hike that I showed you some photos of personally. I won't show them here because they're kind of off topic. But there's a hike you can go on up to the top of this rock where you can look down on the city. Is that where you went on? Mm -hmm. Oh, this is nice seeing it from like a top angle. Yeah. This is from the south looking north. So we got picked up right here for our little tour. Beautiful buildings, a church that's been there forever and a half. This rock you can see, but it's just a beautiful little town. It's gorgeous. On the coast. So interesting that there's just this giant hunk of rock right in the middle of the city. And they just leave it alone. They're like, I'll just build around it. Yeah. Just wanted to show some. So you get, it's green, it's rocky.

49:34 All the red roofs. They told us, by the way, this rock is granite. And it's one of the huge exports from the west coast of Sweden. They send granite to Italy, Germany, France, and it paves all the streets. Oh, yeah. So anywhere, I've always been fascinated by that. They're like cobblestones or squares. In Sweden when we were. Yeah, yeah. We're dragging those damn suitcases. Over rough cobblestones. I told my mom that. I said, next time I come to Gamla Stan, this little island in the middle of Stockholm, I will not have a rolling suitcase. But my mom brought a rolling suitcase. Did she roll it over the cobblestones? Yeah. Was it terrible? I helped a little bit. Oh, okay. Because you don't throw your shoulder out. It hurts. Key tip for everybody.

50:20 Unless you really can't carry it. Unless you really can't. bring a backpack or a suitcase with a handle that you can trade off hands instead of a rolling bag to anywhere in Western Europe. Because these cobblestones, which come from... They'll tear your arm out of your socket. Come from Rebecca. They're like an inch tall. In between, there's a boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They're actually like four -inch cubes, it turns out. And they set them... But they're tall. Yeah, because the grout goes away. Anyways, so they're fantastic for walking surfaces. But they're... They're very durable and they're cheap, whatever. And beautiful. They're way better than us in the United States. We use frigging concrete everywhere. And it just, it's so boring. It's so ugly. Like there's different colors of granite. So they can have, like if there's a. a stripe around the edge of a road. They just use white granite or red granite. Yeah. Anyways, it's just so, I was fascinated by that. There's so much value into something being visually appealing. You can attract a lot of people to your city just by having cobblestone streets. People are like, Oh wow, this looks so nice. Or even my hometown has a little brick street area. It's like, Oh cool. Streets are, the roads are brick. It's just not a big deal. Cool. Oh yeah. I remember that. Like in Manhattan, there's like a little area that's in Lawrence too, I think. So here's some pictures from my trip. I trimmed them just to show the boat only. I won't click on them because I'll waste all day, but we'll click on

51:52 something if we see. So it's my mom, my brother, and I went on this little boat, six people. I got to find the lighthouse. So there's a bunch of lighthouses, and I really couldn't find much information on them. But you'll see the water's super, super calm. It's really pretty out there. I think this is an overlook house. This is at the top of something. That's so small. You mentioned it's part of the lighthouse system. Really? Yeah, so the lighthouse system is a bunch of small lighthouses like this one. And my camera's not, I don't have a great zoom lens. It did clear up as you were zooming back out. But you can see it's the same turret style. Yeah. And it's white. And it's got, so I thought I saw this through my camera, and then I asked him as we were getting back to the dock, and I was correct.

52:43 They're range lights. So they all have a panel of green, a panel of, two panels of red, and then. Those are not range lights. Aren't they? No, it's called sector lights or something. What's a range light then? Range light is when there's two that they line up together. Oh. Yeah. Wow. Got to go back to our history buoy a long time ago. Apparently. Well, thank you for being the specialist and correcting me. You're welcome. Some of our listeners are going to appreciate that accuracy. Well, you know, we're just learning. We don't know what we're talking about. Yeah, we're just here for fun. And I'm just clicking through photos, guys. I'm looking for some more lighthouse stuff. Oh, you should show the picture that you took of the buildings where it's perfectly reflective. Refracted in the water. I mean, here's a pretty good one. It's not as good as the one.

53:41 I think we're coming up on it. Okay. And none of these pictures are edited yet. So usually my editing software. Look at that. It's just a rock. But the water was so calm. And I actually have photos in here. Yeah, those. You have a particular favorite you want to look for? Go over like. That's my mom. She's so cute. Okay, I guess everyone should be watching this on our YouTube. See Vince's pictures. Yeah, I'm sorry for those of you who are just listening. We're flipping through the pictures. If you want to, check them out on our YouTube. Oh, here's a good picture. We're close. And this area is blocked out. But the other side, which we did see. Little stairs. I think Scott actually took a pretty good picture. That's a good one. See, the last picture is always the best one for me. I'm always like, yep, satisfied. Oh, yes, the red and green.

54:37 So there you go. So they're not range lights. They're sector lights. Thanks for the correction. And here's some comms solar panel probably and some antenna. But it's on the face of the rock, which makes sense. And he told me, the boat captain, there's a series of lighthouses, which all of them have these sector lights. He called them range lights. Yeah. But he's also English, second language. But he would say that, you know, more or less, they'll tell you if you're in a safe zone or not. And then I added as a bonus, this is on top of a restaurant we went to. I love it when they lean into their history, their lighthouse history. The Harbor House. Cute. And I don't want to take, I looked into this more than we need to describe, but the Harbor House, first off, really good food. It's in Hamburgsund. What did you eat? I have pictures on my phone. Okay.

55:31 I went there twice. I know once was a seafood Alfredo. Oh. And the other, I don't remember, but it was good. Yum. I remember the bar. I talked to the guy about the beers there. But this also has like three little hotel rooms. One's an apartment, three apartments built into it. You can rent out above the restaurant. And this patio is attached to one of them. So you could have your own personal lighthouse. Outside of the patio. Wicked. Again, I have the website and all that, but I didn't figure it was really going to add much to our episode today. It won't add much to our episode, but it'll add to our lives someday. Big Swedish flag. Swedish. I love Sweden. I had a great time.

56:14 I also feel, I understand why my mom wanted this to go. I feel like I'm always going to be more connected to Sweden. And in some ways, my ancestors from that side, that I met somebody and they were super nice and talkative. Excited to know you. We got to see more than, you know, the typical tourist would never go look at a farm or a graveyard or a church. But we saw these beautiful places that meant something to our family. Yeah. And everything over there is old as heck. You know, long history. That's the best part. And I was just telling Vince, for our listeners, that... Often, Vince and I hear something is 100 years old. We're like, oh, it's not that much. Because we're so used to researching lighthouses that can be hundreds of years old, especially overseas where lighthouses were being built in the 1600s, 1500s. And so our idea of time has been warped where I'm like, 150 years is like, oh, yeah, it's old. It's not super old. And the world is so interesting because of the history. Even the non -monumental history, like family history.

57:29 They were telling me about our farm and how it split in half. There was two brothers, and they didn't know how to break it up, so they just split it, and they remained close. And anyways, today, they still have ownership of that. And these two cottages we stayed at, one of them was an old lady, probably in her late 70s. mid eighties, older lady, not old. And she told us, Oh yeah, this was her mom's house. Her mom passed away and she lives right over there. She pointed at the next house next door. And so if you need anything, give her a call. And then the other cottage we stayed at, she told us another lady in her seventies. Yeah, we live in that house right there. I was born in that house. Oh my gosh. And it's, this is all their property. They've had it for generations. And, and, um, you know, we went to a church where, multiple family members are buried and they all got married and baptized there. And it's like a place in family history.

58:22 It's so interesting to me compared to, you know, just not knowing that story makes, makes me kind of sad. So it's fun to be a part of it, even if I don't remember the details. Yeah. So I don't know. Yeah. And my mom went as funny. She went with her mom and my sister, Karen, uh, in the year 2000 or together. Together they went. In the year 2000, they met Monica and reconnected with some family. And then on this trip, we met Monica's daughter, who's 20 -ish, 25 maybe. We just said hi. She didn't spend the day with us. She was busy. But if I go back in 25 years with family, then hopefully she'll answer and we can say hi. But it's this connection that otherwise wouldn't exist. My grandma made the trip before.

59:13 In the 80s. And she was the one who did all the research and connected with family members back then. Which would be a lot harder at that time. I don't know. On paper, if I read someone was doing that, I'd be like, okay, kind of silly. But it was fun for me. It was very meaningful. I think it is. A lot of fun. Got off track a little bit, guys. Talked to Sweden and my family more. But if you came along for the ride, I really appreciate it. Yeah, we love that you're here. We love that we're getting more reviews and that everyone's sticking around and checking out our podcast. We appreciate that. We're just doing it for fun. We're hanging. We had someone leave a comment on YouTube. Hey, we love this. It deserves more views. And he said, you should check out blank website. And I was like, okay, what's that?

1:00:01 I looked at it. You can buy views. And so you pay and you have real, air quotes, real views. You can pay for likes or shares or follows. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. So I looked into it a little bit. Oh, no. Well, that's how people make it. We're not going to do that. That's the point. We're not going to do that. I keep telling people, if there's five people that listen, that's great. Who cares? We're not even doing this for anything. When we first started, we were like, oh, let's make advertisements. We'll make like $10 per episode just for fun. And I think that was good at the beginning to feel motivated, but now we're motivated by our own content in a way that I don't require people to be commenting and listening to want to do another episode. I just want to do it. So like, thank you everybody and all of our listeners for being here. And I don't feel the pressure to have more. I feel like this is, this is why we do it. Yeah. I mean, there's a dream down.

1:01:05 Not down the line, but I mean like down a path where, you know, we would be traveling and there'd be business expenses because we're going to see lighthouses. We'd be well connected to the community. We know a lot of people now, but in the lighthouse community, we'd know people, we'd keep up with them. Um, we would be making enough money where this could be a halftime or, or maybe more than halftime job for you. But like, you know, there's merch and then there's advertisements and there's, it would be cool. But, For now and for what we're doing with our lives, we're about to get married. There's lots of things moving right now. I think this is super fun. And if no one ever listens to these, we'll have them. And who cares? It's entertaining. It's a good time for us to spend together. Anyway, so you folks who are listening, we get to learn. And when people say, what do you like? I was filling out a form for our engagement photos. And they're like, what do you and your fiance like to do together? And I'm like, we have a podcast talking about lighthouses. That's right. That's always fun. And here we are. Episode 81. We're absolutely crushing it. Absolutely.

1:02:14 So please check out our Instagram. Please check out us on Spotify, Apple Music, anywhere you podcast. Share it with somebody if you want to. Yeah. We're on YouTube as well. We've got our website at thelighthouselowdown .com. It was just renewed. Our domain was just renewed. So we're around for another year for certain. And I keep playing with the idea of swag. I'm sorry. I keep teasing it with everybody. But hats or shirts or something. We will do something. When we have more time, we'll do it. Like right now, we're in the throes of wedding planning and moving. And then shortly after that, we'll be moving again. So if anyone wants something, we'll work on it. Let us know. But yeah, thank you so much for listening. And we'll see you next time on the Lighthouse Lowdown.