Sweden has ships, wood, snow, but especially whimsical people

There we were, in Gamleby, Småland, Sweden. I have been told that Småland is rather similar to redneck country in the States... Where there is nothing to do but drive your car around and try to be cool by revving up while passing by pedestrians. And if course, drinking. Usually, not both of these at the same time, but it is redneck country, you never know...

But Gamleby, rather seemed to me quite enchanting and promising. This little town of like 2 500 peeps, has quite some history in it. Paintings and carvings on rock walls from before the Vikings, medieval arabian coins, a castle, a sculpture park full of trolls and most importantly, a shipyard. But what really makes this place special is with whom were living; Egil and Kerstin. (Egil is pronounced égil with the G almsot a k sound and Kerstin is pronounced Sherstin) They are a mid-sixties couple who now owns five historical boats, a shipyard and a giant old boarding house in Gamleby. They have built their own shipyard from scratch, saw mill, dry dock, everything. There aslo is a boat builder who is now working on refinishing the Thelma, one of the last old Swedish folkbåt, a 16 meter or so long sailing boat from 1900’s. One-masted with a giant sail, built for the archipelago here and only three remaining of it’s kind in Sweden.

But anyway, here we are, sometimes helping the boat builder, which is what we really want of course and sometimes finishing up this building they’re making for like a lunch room, kitchen, head... Cause right now the kitchen/hang out room is in the carpentry shop, less than ideal. And this house is kind of like the office At The Land. Some things aren’t exactly square or fit right... Feels like I’m back At The Land, never quite left the States it seems... It was built by a work camp of international volunteers, which I am pretty sure none of them knew much about house-building...Which also brings me back to these two people, who somehow manage all this. I say somehow, because no matter how crooked and unsquare that little house is (which also slightly represents the sum of all their projects) they do end up making everything work. Their are bright, very bright people, but they are a little... whimsy. Egil especially...
A little exmaple: We were talking about stability of ships at supper one evening and then the next morning during breakfest he decided he was going to show us how to calculate stability by hand! By the way, stability calculations are now done with computers and the process usually requires months...

And he told us that for the two big boats that they rebuilt (Vega and Linnea, a three-masted topsail schooner and a two-masted schooner), they had to calculate it and Egil thought he should do it himself. So he found this old German book from 1903 and taught himself how to do it. And he did it correctly, too... The same applies for everything else, if he doesn’t know it, he just tries to find the info somewhere and teach himself. Also tries to calculate everything, bring everything down to a mathematical formula... But he is very bright and good at it, to a point that he is pretty well-known in Sweden for ships and made drawings for the construction of some ships. He’s a regular consultant for repairs and building Tallships... Yet he’s so whimsical and everywhere all the time, you wonder how this could of all work! Especially when you see him and his wife, Kerstin, have an argument like the one they had other day about e-mailing! It was hilarious! Kerstin is the sensible one in this couple and she’s the one who take cares of all parperwork and computer related things, you know, to make things actually work. And Kerstin was on the computer doing somthing and Egil was like: I don’t remember what to do to check my e-mail...
Kerston just kind of made a non-commital sound, hopping he would go away or something. But Egil persisted and said: ‘‘I know I have to click something to get there, but I don’t know what!’’
Kerstin said: ‘‘But you know what! I’ve shown you this like a hundred times before!’’
Egil: ‘‘ But I don’t remember! If you don’t show me, I’ll just click anything!...’’
Kerstin: ‘‘ Why can’t you just learned this? I’ve shown you a hundred, no make that a thousand times already!’’
And Egil just keeps on going, in this very like childish teasing voice: ‘‘You don’t want to show me, then I’ll just click anything! I tell you, I’ll click anything!” And this just goes on and on.... It’s pretty hilarious to see this guy, who’s always talking about one ship or another and their technicalities and how to calculate how much this wood can bend, how much stress it can receive, blah, blah blah, and yet still be unable to check his cellphone for SMS...

Yet he is gold mine, everybody should see their shipyard! They have these train tracks into the water and pull out the ships unto land themselves with a winch. It’s very impressive and they made their own saw mill and have extended it to accommodate 15 meters-long trees so as to make deck planks as long as possible. Less ending-seam, less caulking pain in the... And then they couldn’t get trees long enough delivered to them, so they got their own little old truck with a longer bed and went to pick up the trees themselves! It’s crazy the stories they have and even more crazier is that all this old machines, most from the 60’s still all work... Although they’ve been siting for years, through winter snow and ice, they all start when needed, or maybe after a little coaxing. But there are still functional and being used.

They also try to make everything old- fashioned. Like going around picking trees with curves to make knees and using every section of it in different ways or making their own copper nails.... (Egil has wrote a book about all of this, too) And this is actually an other funny story that explains to you more of Egil’s character. Across the street from his house was an old printing company. In the 1981, the guy who owned it and was running it, small-business of course, was getting pretty old and thought he’d retire instead of upgrading his machinery. He was still doing it old- fashion, you know, placing every letter together in a mould and then printing that page over and over again.... All by hand... So when Egil say that he was closing shop, he couldn’t stand that, had to buy every last bit of machinery and keep it up to shape. Now that he had all this printing gear, what was he going to do with it? Well, might as well write a book and print it! So he wrote a book on the renovation of Linnéa and printed it and everything, the only thing he didn’t do, is the binding... Anyway, he’s kind of crazy like that... Who ever had the idea of writing a book only because they had a printing press?

But these are the people we are living with and volunteering for. The little house is done, anyway our part in it is, thankfully! It now has nice wood planks everywhere! The Thelma, that old Swedish folkbåt, is now our main attention. We are mostly spending our time gluing layers upon layers of thin mahogany boards to make up the deck house with it’s proper bend. In between gluing, we clear off snow from ships, install fasteners to frames and planks on Thelma and help Egil in some of his schemes... The most exciting for us, which was right after two weeks of working on that little crooked house, was sawing hatch beams. Now this procedure usually implies that you’re cutting up some wood into beams, as wide and long as possible. Nothing exciting there, right? Well, this is Egil... He figured that a certain giant oak tree laying buried in the snow somewhere was of sufficient length and width to make the whole hatch from it, instead of a multitude of beams building up to the desired height. So first, pick up the said tree with giant crane. Since Egil himself was driving it, that was quite spectacular.... Then, cutting it... Humm... Then the tree in question is too big for their sawmill, of course... Defeat? Of course not, let’s bring out the contraption. This is where the excitement reaches it’s pinnacle. Because the contraption is two over-sized chainsaws welded together with a steel chassis mounted around it so as to cut straight... Of course, this thing can’t be driven single-handedly, have to be two people on it at all times... I think here a picture is really the only thing left to be said, or showed.






So, this is part of our périple here, but more later this post is long enough as it is!!!!