Vike museum courtyard

The museum farm Vike (Swedish. Vike minnesgård) is a beach farm where fields and buildings are intact and there is an old herb garden, a hop garden ("Humlegården"). Vike is located near the beach on the east coast of the Swedish island of Gotland , south of Slite on Tjalder Bay. A sawmill and a fulling mill for woolen fabrics once worked on the small river Vike .

Vike museum courtyard

Hop garden from the beginning of the 19th century

Vike's origins go back to the Middle Ages . Between the large moors in the west there was a driveway to the Vike farm, which despite the small arable and pasture areas was a well-going farm. The drainage of the moor and the conversion of the river into a sewer during the 1890s brought a big change to the area. But the ancient buildings have been preserved.

From the street, Vike appears like an enclosed courtyard with wooden farm buildings under large thatched roofs , surrounded by high palisades ("stand tunar") that protected the courtyard from unwelcome guests. The buildings are built in typical Gotland plank construction. Barn and threshing house with horse run and stable were probably built in the 18th century. The house is a limestone house with a wooden roof from the beginning of the 19th century. There is a forge , which was not unusual for Gotland farms. Because of the fire hazard, it is at a reasonable distance from the other buildings. There are fishing shacks on the beach.

No noteworthy modernizations were made. Vike was run by the siblings Ole, Agnes and Emma Wedin until the 1950s, whose family had lived on the farm since at least the middle of the 18th century. Ole is said to have been no further than Visby from home in 50 years , and if so, then almost only by boat. He tilled the land, used the beach, forged, carpentered and also made his own shoes. The pasture area was enough for the workhorses and the cows on the farm. The seaweed collected on the beach gave strength to the sandy soil and kept the grain containers for bread and hot drinks always full. So the farm became a testimony to the times of subsistence farming .

literature

• M. Jonsson, S.-O. Lindquist: Gotland cultural guide . 1993, ISBN 91-88036-09-X , pp. 89-91 .

Web links

• Short text swed. + Picture

Coordinates: 57 ° 38 ′ 27.7 "  N , 18 ° 46 ′ 0.4"  E