After getting amazed by the Stone Ship (Stenskeppet) in Strömstad and the vast natural exhibition of rock carvings in Vitlycke Museum, we continued our drive along the Swedish coast and reached a picturesque seaside village called Fjällbacka. I fell in love with the village, although we only spent a couple of hours there. We had some delicious Swedish pizza, and then hiked a little towards the puzzling cleft with four boulders stuck in them! It was thrilling to go under them. Then, we visited a rock carving site in Aspeberget.
Fjällbacka was eye-candy, with the pretty houses, narrow streets and numerous boats and yachts. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a popular summer destination. Fjällbacka is actually a fishing village in Tanum. Read more interesting facts about it here: https://www.vastsverige.com/en/tanum/produkter/fjallbacka/. Many famous people apparently spent their summers in the archipelago, and were gotten inspired to make masterpieces, like in literature and film. I wouldn’t mind going back there in summer.
As it was autumn, the streets had people, but not a lot. We looked for a place to eat on the promenade and found Kroken restaurant, where we had some delicious thin-crust Swedish pizza!
A popular attraction in Fjällbacka would be the Kungsklyftan. One can hike on top of the mountain, or walk below. Kungsklyftan, as I’ve mentioned, is a cleft with huge boulders stuck in them. It reminded me of Kjeragbolten in Norway, which is one boulder stuck in between mountain edges. We chose to take the path under the boulder because, well, the entrance was easier to find. The path up to Kungsklyftan was very rocky, so I was careful not to twist my ankle.
After leaving all the stones unturned (hopefully), we reached the famous boulders. It was scary to walk below them, like if fate hates you, you could just perish in a blink of an eye. But it we made it! Truly, how those boulders got stuck there was puzzling.
How cool was that?! On the other side, there was the stairs going up to the hilltop of Vetteberget. Some translations: “berg” is the swedish (or scandinavian) word for mountain. “Fjäll” also means mountain. You see the map of Vetteberget in the next picture.
Then, we walked back to the parking lot by the church where we parked the car. I could really imagine the promenade and the streets teeming with people, had we come a couple of months earlier. But I liked it like that – the promenade all to our selves!
We also had a quick look at the neogothic church in the village, which was built in 1892 and designed by architect Adrian C. Peterson.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
Before completely leaving Tanum, we visited another rock carvings site. It was also a big field, which was actually guarded by a fence, so I was a bit scared going out there. In Aspeberget, we saw a high concentration of rock carvings, some were even unpainted! It was very interesting and cool! We saw animal-, ship- and human figures.
I find it amazing how the carvings were preserved. Way to go, ancient humans!
Before leaving the site, we picked up a geniusly hidden geocache. 😉 Spoiler alert!
Driving forward, we were distracted by two huge sattelite disks! Like, what were they for? I told Carl that there was a geocache hidden there, which means that we could check it out!
The site is called Tanum teleport. According to sources (most are in swedish or norwegian, so I’ll just translate the one from https://snl.no/Tanum_bakkestasjon), the station was opened in 1971 and has 5 parabolic antennas with a diameter of 14 meters to 30 meters. The station had a capacity for many thousands of telephone connections. Later on, the trafic was taken over by fiber cables. So, in the end, the station was shut down in 2002. BUT! It had played a major part in the early development of the internet in the 1970’s. Super cool – we learned som history while geocaching in the middle of the woods somewhere in Tanum!
It was getting dark then, so we decided to call it a day and booked a hotel in Trollhättan spontaneously! Trollhättan – what a funny name for a city! Well, I would later find out how cool this city is.. More about it in the next entry!
The road trip continues…
#spreadloveandpositivevibes
ALL PHOTOS AND VIDEOS ON THIS BLOG ARE MINE.