Hi everyone, I'm Emily.
And I'm Vince.
And this is the Lighthouse Lowdown.
Oh.
What?
It's like when you take a sip of coffee and it's just like this slug of caramel comes
up your straw.
That sounds delicious.
It's just.
I love slugs of caramel.
There shouldn't be anything solid in my liquid.
It's a semi-solid.
So it throws me off anytime I'm drinking and it's like a piece of ice comes in my mouth.
I'm like, oh.
Thank you Starbucks.
Thank you for the caramel.
For the caramel slugs.
We've got caramel macchiatos in the studio today.
So we recorded yesterday and we're doing back to back recordings.
So we should be extra warm.
This one posts first.
We're doing a series of two international lighthouses.
The first one is going to be this one.
We're going to Sweden for this episode.
And Vince and I will be going to Sweden in real life.
When you hear this episode, I think we'll be going to that lighthouse that day.
So my Instagram post will come out a little bit late so I can include my own pictures.
So you can think of us in Sweden when you're listening to us.
Why you're listening.
Yeah.
Because life is proven wrong by us being there.
Honestly, it's because everything's in Swedish.
Everything is in Swedish.
And you just be like, oh, you Google translate and it works fine.
No, it's not.
They're not.
It's not a straight translation?
No.
Well, it's just like, it's not a flawless.
So it'll Google translate things that aren't supposed to be translated.
It just translates things.
In this episode, we have the term by fear.
And I don't think I know what that means.
Yeah.
It translates.
Google translates it to be lighthouse.
It's like, it's that's absolutely not.
It's like B.I. fear is lighthouse in Swedish.
Okay.
Yeah.
Or something.
Right.
I'm just going to pronounce it like an American because I can't.
We're going to get I can only do so much.
I accept that.
So logically, you would think that means to to like second lighthouse.
But Google translates it to be lighthouse like BEE like a bumblebee lighthouse.
Do I really trust that or do I just go with intuition and just be like, it's all it just
means is second lighthouse.
Anyway, so that's been the struggle of doing international lighthouses.
Not just that it's hard to find information on them, but it's all in another language
that Google does its best to translate, but you know, that's all they have to work with.
Well, if anyone knows Swedish and is listening to our podcast, please enlighten us.
Yeah.
If you ever if you hear anything that's just straight out wrong, like even like years and
like history and stuff, I don't like I'm just going to trust this jumble of broken English
that Google's delivering to me.
That's all I have.
Find some Swedish resources.
Get it all sorted.
What about asking Chase while I looked up how to pronounce the letters in Swedish, you
know, so it's like maybe I could walk myself through my own pronunciation of words.
But and who is Chase for the listeners?
Chase is my brother.
He lives in Sweden.
You didn't know.
Yeah, we're visiting him when we're going to Sweden.
So yeah, we're so we're visiting him in Stockholm for three days on our way to Spain.
Spain for a friend's wedding.
Yeah, give me a lot of fun.
But yeah, well, I think we should do that.
We should talk to him and ask after what we got wrong with our recording here.
Yeah, we can cover it as a history buoy or something.
Yeah, it's a little add on with the more you know.
Yeah.
You know, we'll have a whole segment on how wrong we are about stuff.
Yeah.
Well, that, you know, we could fill a couple hours.
So we're what about a month?
No.
Yeah, three weeks.
Three.
About three weeks.
We'll be heading over there.
Oh, gives me anxiety.
Cool.
See which one of us is an avid traveler.
The other one's just like, it'll be good.
We'll have a good time.
Yeah, it'll be there.
So I feel a little bit better.
I just went on a little traveling escapade recently, and I definitely just need some
familiar.
You had some good stories from that one, at least.
I did.
Yeah, it was a good time.
Stories not for the podcast, maybe for a different podcast.
Yeah, no podcast.
All right.
For listeners, it's a bachelorette trip.
Yeah, we don't.
Different context.
No Lighthouses were involved.
Unfortunately.
So today I'm going to start with the history buoy.
I won't give you the name yet.
Okay.
So since we're going to Sweden, we want to talk about for the history buoy, the history
of Lighthouses in Sweden.
Okay.
So you can get an idea of what that looks like for our Lighthouse that we're covering
today.
The interesting thing is that our next episode is about Japan, and you see that their history
starts way later than Lighthouses first came to be in the world.
It was like middle 1800s that Japan actually started building Lighthouses.
So that's insane considering even the US, which is a very young country, especially
compared to Japan, has Lighthouses that started over a hundred years before they got around
to it.
So it's interesting that in Sweden, talking about the history of Lighthouses there is
the same as talking about the history of Lighthouses of all time.
One of the places where the earliest Lighthouses are seen.
And so you can just talk about the history of Lighthouses in general, and it applies
to Sweden.
Nice.
Kind of crazy.
I started, I did talk about this in our history of Lighthouses episode, how Lighthouses came
to be.
And it's the same for Sweden is that the beginning was just bonfires on hilltops and elevating
the fire obviously improves visibility.
And so eventually fires were placed on platforms, which is how Lighthouses came to be.
What were they called?
Do you know before it was a Lighthouse?
Because a Lighthouse obviously is a conjunction of a light being present at someone lives
at this place.
Seamark.
That's cool.
Yeah.
There's a mention of it.
Well, the first Lighthouse in Sweden was lit in 1561.
The oldest known Seamark is the Falsterbo.
That's crazy.
I can't...Falsterbo Seamark from 1260s.
All right.
I was going to say about the 1500s.
I can't name any other single historical event that I know happened in the 1500s.
Oh, really?
I don't know of any offhand.
I better could look some up.
Or 1600s or 1400s.
Yeah.
Let alone 1200s.
I'm pretty sure this was like before, was this before Roman time?
I have no idea.
No, that can't be possible.
I knew this in middle school maybe, but you know.
What happened?
It's been a couple of years.
Here we are.
1560s.
Okay.
The complete Geneva Bible is published.
Not familiar.
Me either.
The first tulip bulb is brought from Constantinople.
Constantinople.
Okay.
None of these are recognizable.
Tulips.
All right.
No, I don't want that to be the only thing.
The Mongols invade and occupy King Hai.
Wait, wait.
I say moguls.
Oh, the great age of piracy in the Caribbean starts around this time.
That's what we want to know.
Running champagne.
We need to stay on brand.
That's what we're going to say.
Pirates.
Pirates started.
We did talk.
Actually, we did talk about that because we talked about.
I didn't connect those years though.
Hog Island White House.
That seems like a lot longer ago to me.
1500s.
Thank you for that.
You're welcome.
Originally, firewood was being used for these little hillside bonfires.
And in the 1500s, it changed to Apna Col Ferrar, which translates to open coal lights, which
just means that the firewood was replaced with coal in braziers on platforms.
Okay.
Like a brass dish container.
Brazier.
Anyway, in 1560, King Frederick II of Denmark ordered that three brazier type lighthouses
would be built, the first and oldest in Sweden being the Kålen Lighthouse, which still is
there today.
How's that spelled?
K-U-L-L-E-N.
Okay.
It's not like Twilight.
Not Cologne.
Oh, no.
I was going a very different direction with mine.
Any Twilight fans out there?
I'm not familiar with that.
What am I missing?
Twilight?
The Kålens.
Is it a name?
It's the last name of the vampire family.
Yeah, I didn't know that.
Moving on.
It's spelled differently, which is why I was excited that you asked.
Anyway, 1636, a special type of light became common in Sweden called Vipfja.
I love the pronunciations.
I'm trying, but it almost makes it worse that I'm trying and failing.
You got this.
Just think of Ajo.
Why you keep bringing that up?
It's painful.
So in this type of light, Kåls were placed in a metal basket, was on a long stick.
Cool.
And it kind of operated like a light switch, and then it would be raised.
You'd lower the basket at one end of the stick to fill it with Kål, and then you would pull
down on the other end of the stick to lift the Kåls into the air.
A teeter totter.
Yes, it's like that.
And so that, it was a raised, burning Kåls so that you could see them.
Hang on, I got a picture.
Here's what the open Kål looked like.
Blow that up.
All right.
So it's a rock platform with staircase leading to the top of the rocks and a handrail.
They're very ahead of their time.
I don't know what the center is.
I assume it's like a table of material, like firewood, Kål.
It's open up here.
Kål goes in here, and this is all just like aeration or something.
I thought the Kål was in the lantern on the right.
This?
Yeah.
No, that's just probably for so they can see when they're going up the stairs.
Ocean came in and was like, hey.
I don't know.
No, this is where the fire is.
You're certain?
I'm positive.
Well, why do they have a lantern?
So they can see that going up the stairs.
I don't feel like that's a concern of the 1500s.
Why not?
I don't know.
You don't think they cared about safety?
It didn't get dark.
It wasn't ever dark there.
Their stairs were much better than modern stairs.
All right, well, I learned something new.
So big stones make up this tower, which looks about 15 feet tall, 20 feet tall.
Yeah, maybe.
With some coal burning apparatus atop of it.
And you can kind of see from this picture how the remnants, it's the beginning of lighthouses.
If you just put a dome up here, then it just looks like a lighthouse.
Yeah, all I need is glass.
All right, here's the...
Here.
That is cool.
So it's like a little teeter totter.
I am seeing a question.
How do they...
So there's like a rope coming down from the basket so they can pull it down.
They got a counterweight on the bottom side.
They probably lift that off.
Man, that's got to be well balanced for it to come down and refilled to go back up.
This is just a replica.
So this is somewhere in Sweden where you can just...
Well, they did not get lazy with the replica.
Assuming that this is what it looked like in the olden days.
1500s, yeah.
How do they find a stick that long?
Tall trees, I guess.
This is impressive.
So yeah, that's what it looks like.
Those were common at the same time that they had open coal lights and then eventually they'd
get phased out.
Just after these came coal lighthouses in braziers with polished metal plates for reflection.
So it was like one of the earliest cases of using a flame's reflection to enhance the
light.
At the end of the 1700s, there were still only about 10 lighthouses in Sweden.
So between mid 1500s and the end of the 1700s, we still only had made about 10 lighthouses.
So it wasn't like they were booming, but they were putting them where it was necessary for
trade and ports.
At the end of the century, a Swedish engineer invented rotating parabolic reflectors with
clockwork and was the first of its kind installed at a Swedish lighthouse, which was pretty
common.
Look at them.
Yeah, that's probably the bare bones of starting clockwork in lighthouses for flashing patterns
and stuff.
So pretty cool.
I can't imagine inventing that.
What has to be going on in your brain that you're like, I just got to figure a way to
make this rotate.
Well even if you got the idea from something, it comes to you, right?
Okay, you got the idea.
Now between the idea and making it work reliably, like a physical thing, that's really impressive.
I always found it like hard to imagine that people were hired as inventors.
They were meant to do research and their inventions came out as a result of all that research.
Yeah.
I was just like, how do you be employed as a researcher, as an inventor?
And at what point is it no longer, like today, do we still have people who just research
and try to invent stuff?
I'm sure they do.
I don't know.
Anyway, moving on to the next century, the 1800s, lighthouses in Sweden.
Soared past 400, so obviously the 1800s was a time of growth for Sweden when it comes
to lighthouses.
And the Fränel Lens were introduced to Sweden in the 1840s, but it took a while for them
to be applied to the lighthouses that they had just because it was definitely expensive.
It was expensive, but worth it, which is how the Fränel Lens spread so easily to other
lighthouses.
Okay.
Yeah, worth the cost.
The 1900s in Sweden brought along electrification, but it was really slow.
For some reason in Sweden, they just took a long time to electrify lighthouses.
They probably just had their system and weren't going to worry about it too much.
And this was also true for automation.
And in the 1990s, so really not that long ago, there were still 90 lighthouses that
were still being tended to by keepers.
No way.
Yeah.
But it was like...
1850s?
No, no, 1950s.
Yeah, about 1950s and 60s.
So they took a long time to still do that.
That is nuts.
That's the highest we've heard of anywhere.
I wonder why.
So I'm sure today they're all automated because everything's wireless.
I think all of them are.
But the 90s...
That's really cool.
The 90s, they still had keepers.
I don't know.
It sounds crazy.
Cool.
So that's the history of lighthouses in Sweden.
Are we going to see a map of Sweden?
I don't have one.
Would you mind looking one up?
Is that going to throw you off?
Because I would like to learn some more.
I know we're going to Stockholm and Stockholm...
We're not going to Sweden other than Stockholm.
But it's an archipelago, as I've been told, a series of islands.
So obviously waterfronts are many there.
Yeah.
But not that many lighthouses.
I don't know my geography.
Well, I think to some point, if you have too many lighthouses in one area, they would actually
be harder to navigate than if you had key points to either stay towards or to stay away
from.
Yeah.
So here's Stockholm.
It's a little islands.
Yeah.
Lots of water traffic.
So can you zoom out and show Sweden?
I think Stockholm is actually South Sweden.
See how wrong I am.
Kind of.
It's kind of South.
So it's on the East Coast and the Baltic Sea.
So the lighthouses are likely...
Well, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, those are Oslo...
No, Oslo is Norway.
Those are all Sweden though.
Gothenburg, Copenhagen, and then up the entire inlet, which is the Gulf of Bothnia?
Bothnia?
Mm-hmm.
It's like Bosnia with a Lisp.
Cool.
Thanks.
I wonder where the lighthouses are mostly.
Near the cities or...
Because near Stockholm, which obviously we'll talk about, I think, that's our trip.
There's not many, right?
We just talked about the archipelago.
No.
Yeah.
I really just happened upon this one because it was...
There's a couple of lighthouses, but they're modern.
They're more like...
Booth.
There's towers.
They're more like...
Metal towers.
Like seaport lights and not like lighthouses.
Okay.
But this one has a lot of history that we're covering today.
And it's taking us to this little island.
Whoa.
Okay.
So it is the southernmost island in the Stockholm archipelago.
Ninshammungen.
Nyn...
Nynasam.
Nynasam, I think it is.
Nynasam.
You know, my family was from Sweden and I really don't know any Swedish.
Yeah.
It's hard.
It's not...
I mean, there's obviously harder languages to learn because at least some of the sounds
in their alphabet are similar to how we would.
But there's also three more vowels that we don't have in the English language.
And I can't remember which vowel it is, but it doesn't sound the same in English.
It's hard to learn because we don't have that sound in the English alphabet.
I wonder if it's like German at all.
Like that A right there.
Yeah.
That's an A umlaut.
That's the mark.
So it's again, it's a pronunciation difference.
I don't know.
Yeah.
There was some...
I can't remember which vowel it was, but it was like, the closest thing we can give to
you for an example is...
And I was just like, we can't even...
You can't even try to understand it just by reading.
You have to hear someone say it to understand.
Yeah.
Like there's, I'm going to totally guess, Jordbro versus Søretorn.
So the U versus O sound, depending on...
At least in German, that's how it would work.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
We'll learn something.
I don't know.
Hopefully we can tell you more from an educated perspective.
Yeah, we're doing our best.
So we are going to Landsort, the island of...
Hang on.
Is Landsort not the island?
Landsort is the town, I think.
And the island is called Oya or maybe it's...
What's the O?
Uumlau.
U.
Uya.
What?
U.
Uya.
Iii.
Someone who speaks German is going to be like, bro, you're just making stuff up at this
point.
Yeah, I know.
I'm doing my best.
U.
Uya.
Wow.
The island is...
Can you show me the name of the island?
Can you zoom in or something?
That way I can rip a guess away.
You don't have to feel so bad.
Uya.
It's probably pronounced like ja or something like that.
No, no.
The J is ya.
Right.
The J is behind an Oumlau.
No, I read the pronunciation rules.
Okay, so it's ja?
It's not.
It's ya.
Uya.
I really hope I'm right.
Landsorts, Gastham and Stuga.
I'm sounding German now.
Landsorts, fire, fear.
Fear, yeah.
When a Swedish person pronounces it, the R isn't really...
It's not really accentuated.
It's not an emphasis.
R is where you go fear.
R is not really there as much.
So I sound like a French person.
Fear.
Oh.
That's how it works.
So worldly and educated.
Okay.
So other than oh yeah, it's uya if it was...
If it's what I'm totally guessing.
U.
It's two different sounds.
I can't get that sound.
U.
I feel bad for the listeners at this point.
So we're going there if you're looking on the screen.
Yes.
Okay.
If you look at a map of Sweden, we're going to the, like I said, the most, the southernmost
island in Stockholm archipelago.
O, ja.
Oumlau.
Oumlaut.
Which I think means out loud.
What?
I don't know.
Confidence is waning.
And at the very bottom of this little island, it's very, it's three, about three miles long
and half a mile wide.
So it's a walking island.
Cars are not there.
So you have to either rent bikes or walk.
Wow.
And the very southernmost tip of this island, not including this tiny, teeny tiny little
piece of land sticking off is Landsortsfjär.
Okay.
Sorry.
Lansorts.
Lansortsfjär.
We're not American.
Lansortsfjär.
And that is the town of Lansorts Lighthouse.
So Lansorts is the town.
Lansorts ownership.
Lansortsfjär.
Okay.
Yeah.
Our lighthouse that we're looking at today, I'll show you a picture.
It's very unique shape.
It's the most of the lighthouse is perfectly cylindrical and white.
And then at the top, they added a portion that sharply tapers.
It's like a cone shape and it's bright red and ends at a black lantern room.
So cool.
It used to be this white cylinder with the black lantern room just sitting on the flat
surface.
And then they added the tapered point.
I don't know if I wrote notes about why that is or if it was just to lift it a little bit,
but other than that, I don't know why they would do it.
But yeah, it makes it a very unique looking lighthouse.
It's 83 feet tall and currently has a third order lens with a light characteristic of
FL.
This is a special one.
Flash.
Yeah.
Flashing.
In parentheses, one plus four.
And I did read that they are, it's like an exciting thing to have.
It's like not a normal flashing pattern to have.
And I'll tell you about it in a second.
One plus four W, 60 seconds, 22 nautical mile.
The one plus four basically says it's a flashing pattern of like you have one flash and then
there's an eclipse and then four fast flashes and then the eclipse.
Rapid fire.
Yeah.
So the way that this one is, it's like a 60 second period, but you have one second quick
flash and then you have, I think two seconds of darkness and then four quick flashes.
And then the rest of that minute are darkness.
Oh weird.
So it's very intermittent.
Yeah.
And it's white.
And something we'll talk about later, which I already kind of mentioned is the second
light, which has its own flash pattern, but is also in the lighthouse.
And its characteristic is occulting white, red, green for 10 seconds and 14 nautical
miles.
And I had to work hard to figure out what this looks like.
And I'll show you a picture when I start to talk more about it, but it's very cool.
It's not something I've ever seen before.
So there's two lights by like we talked about.
Yeah.
The by fear that that's where this came from is.
Yeah.
It's the first time I've heard of anything about it.
But it's a thing.
Let's learn more.
Let's dive into the history of this lighthouse.
1651, a wooden lighthouse tower was built.
The first to be built on Swedish land by Swedish hands.
So there were a couple of lighthouses before this one, but they were built by the Danish,
I want to say.
And so this is the first one to be built by Swedish.
I'm going to say engineers, but it's so long ago.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Carpenters.
Constructors.
Carpenters.
Stone masons.
Yeah.
Swedish construction people.
Swedish plumbers, clearly.
I don't know how things worked back then.
The sheet metal workers went out there.
It was originally lit with tallow candles and copper.
So a little bit of a reflection thing going on.
And they couldn't decide on ownership after it was built.
There was two guys who were involved in making it and they couldn't decide who was going
to have ownership over it.
They didn't decide before they built it.
Yeah.
So it was abandoned a year later, which is so funny that they're like...
No one can have it.
Yeah.
Like, well, we just fine.
Like we just leave it then.
Nobody gets it.
What?
Crazy.
Here, let me go ahead and pull up a picture as you can see.
Lomsorsfjär.
Fjär.
Pretty little town with no roads.
Yep.
There is a walking path from top to bottom.
It veers off in a couple of places for you to see the fun things about this island and
Lomsors.
But we're going to talk about that later.
Pretty image.
It looks sturdy in this image.
It's very perfectly up and down.
Yeah.
There's no taper on that white main body.
I think that's maybe why it looks so resilient in this picture is just because the sides
are perfectly straight of this lighthouse, which is not something we see.
It's normally like a conical lighthouse.
Although I would guess it would actually be easier to build a straight wall.
Yeah.
Than a tapered wall.
Especially as far back as we're talking about.
This wooden lighthouse tower is not the same one that we have today.
Right.
The one that I talked about.
But I guess I'll go on.
And so it was another 15 years before Johan van der Hagen got a royal charter to build
a new lighthouse from wood, tallow candles, and some kind of mirror reflection thing.
Johan van der Hagen.
Johan van der.
Van der.
Hagen.
Van der Hagen.
Hagen.
Van der Hagen.
I don't know.
This one burnt down in 1686.
And so it was like another 17 years that that lasted before it was burned down.
And it couldn't find what burnt down the lighthouse.
But considering we were still using open flame in the lighthouse.
That might be the source.
That's wood.
Like maybe that's what it was.
Oops.
17 years ain't bad then.
Yeah.
For a wood structure.
17 years of not dropping the ball.
For a wood structure that has an open flame in it at all times, sometimes unsupervised,
pretty good.
17 years.
So a year later, a contract is signed to Margareta van der Hagen.
And what happened is that it was signed to her husband, Johan.
Johan.
And he was dead at this point.
And so she just took it upon herself to.
How did he die?
I don't know.
I think probably natural causes.
Like a fire?
Yeah, maybe.
Sorry.
This.
Johan's past.
Yeah.
The contract was for a new stone tower in the same place and was to be a coal lighthouse.
Because we were talking about at this time, the crown was starting to convert their little
lighthouses into coal lighthouses instead of.
The crown of Sweden.
The crown.
The king and our queen.
Oh, I didn't look this up.
I saw it just before I closed my notes and I just threw it in here.
But in 1719, a Russian pillage happened.
That sounds bad.
And this is all translated.
So I'm not sure if that's the exact translation that it's supposed to be.
But they attempted to burn down the lighthouse.
But because the walls are a meter thick and stone, it survived and still stands.
Hold on.
The walls are six feet thick?
Is that a meter?
A meter is three feet, I think.
Oh my gosh.
A yard is three feet.
So a meter is somewhere.
No, I think a meter is six feet.
I've got to put me wrong.
You're not a meter tall.
Well, like 1.2 meters tall.
3.2, 3.28 feet.
I was just totally wrong.
I'm sorry, everyone.
I should know better.
Aren't you an engineer?
Well.
You're an American engineer.
I'm an engineer in training.
Yeah, that's embarrassing.
We worked with, it's Imperial, right?
Yeah, Imperial units.
It's a metric.
Anyways, I should know that.
But wow, still three feet.
That's half of what I was thinking.
I wish I had a little bit of a better understanding of what it was.
I'm sorry.
I wish I had had time to look up more about what this Russian pillage was and if it was
like a war we were having or something.
But that's all I got.
In 1839, so for like 200 years, nothing was really going on at this lighthouse besides
the Russian attempt at burning it down.
Which is no small event to the people who were there.
Yeah.
It's crazy because that isn't listed in Lonsort's webpage of history information.
What?
Is this attempt to burn it down.
I saw it in just some other, what's it called?
Here, let me see.
From the lighthouse's perspective, it's like.
Atlas Obscura.
Someone tried to burn it down.
I've definitely used that before.
I don't know if it's credible.
Idiots.
But that is where I went.
Okay, the Atlas Obscura.
So in 1839, the crown takes control of the lighthouse.
So originally, Margareta was given, she was allowed to tax ships that came by using the
lighthouse and keep all of the money.
She was balling out of control.
Yeah.
So it was after about, I think it was four years, maybe five years, the crown started
taking a third of that.
But it was still like a pretty good amount of money.
And she had a place to live for free.
So it was just.
Taxes.
It was wonderful.
Taxes.
So did she, thank you.
Did she live in the tower?
Is there a residence within the tower or is there a separate keeper's house?
I don't know.
I don't see, I don't really see one here.
And it was never mentioned if there was a keeper's house.
But I'm also reading.
There could be room in there.
There could be.
Well, you can set up tours.
It's turning into a pain in the butt to try and do it from the US.
So Chase is going to get a text here pretty soon that says, please call this number.
All right.
So taxes.
But yeah, I don't know for certain.
They're taking a third.
Yeah.
So eventually, I mean, I don't know about how the ownership transferred.
Obviously, this was over 100 years later.
And so Margaret is not there anymore.
So maybe her kids had it or something.
But eventually, the Crown takes control of the lighthouse again.
So they have ownership over it.
And a year later, it was renovated or rebuilt.
I couldn't, I found sources for both, but.
Okay.
Translate.
I don't know.
Kind of the same thing.
Yeah.
It's more sad when it's rebuilt because it's like, oh, man.
Yeah, take away some of the shine.
Yeah.
Some of the age.
So we'll say it was renovated.
And it was given modern oil lanterns and a parabolic reflector system.
So we're updating this lighthouse.
Roughly what year?
1840.
Okay.
So I'm not, I don't know.
This is about when they were doing phrenolenses, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, about in that timeframe.
Yeah.
So it took another 30 years after that before they brought in a phrenolense.
So I'm not sure what the stopper was because at this point there weren't that many lighthouses
going on.
And this one's one of the oldest and in the southernmost part of Sweden, you'd think,
or Stockholm, you'd think you care about it having a bright light.
I don't know.
I wonder where the shipping lanes are.
If these are people only coming to this island or if they're using this as a, once you find
this lighthouse, then it takes you up the coast to Stockholm via the shipping lane.
You know what I mean?
So from time, this was more of an entryway.
One goes up to the left into all of that.
No, this is a property line.
Oh, a border.
Oh, excuse me.
Oh yeah, I saw that before.
It's a county border.
Either way, it's the leading edge of land out there.
You would not want to run into it.
So that makes sense.
And at that time it was like a defensive position as well.
And I'll touch briefly on how that affects the light.
Yeah, the island.
But in 1870, the top part of the stone tower is removed and replaced with this red conical
metal top.
Oh, they actually shortened it.
I think it just meant that they just took off the top layer.
Yeah, they just built into it.
And they also converted it to a tower with clockwork and a frontal lens.
So we've officially modernized.
It was a second order lens, 50 seconds of white, 2 and 1 half seconds of an eclipse,
and then 5 seconds of red, and then a 2 and 1 half second eclipse.
So pretty cool.
So that was a lot.
It's a lot of 50 seconds of white.
It's almost fixed.
And then they just had this tiny moment of red.
And that was kind of fun.
It got electrified in 1938 and was given the third order lens from another Swedish lighthouse.
I didn't look too much into it.
But 1955, it got a Bifier, which is a second beacon inside the tower at a lower level than
the main light with its own light characteristic.
So we talked about that as well.
And last night, you heard me get excited because I was like, I was just-
You were looking for something.
Yeah, I was like, I just happened upon something I had a question about.
And it was a angle of the lighthouse where you can see the second light from the inside.
I could not figure out where this light was coming out of because it's got tiny windows.
It's got a door.
Where is the second light?
And so I found a picture.
It is also a Fresnel lens.
It's fifth order and is the fixed white, red, green.
Basically, let me show you a picture, but I'll try to describe it first.
It's like the Fresnel lens is facing a slot in the lighthouse or a window or some opening.
And they have glass plates in front of the Fresnel lens that are different colors.
And so it's like if you had glass doors on a door frame, that's what it looks like.
And one of them's green, one of them's red.
And then there's a tiny space in between the two where it would just be white light filtering
through.
So when you look at it, you're just seeing an illuminated window basically that's green,
white, and red.
And there's a Fresnel lens behind that.
So it's super powerful.
So what's the purpose of that?
So at some position you can tell?
Yeah, it's like just more direction.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah.
So I just pulled up a picture for him to take a look at.
That's really cool.
I've never seen anything like that.
I know, me either.
Well, when I first passed this, I was like, what kind of weirdness?
I didn't even pay it any attention because I was just like, I don't know what that is
all about.
That has nothing to do with this lighthouse, but it sure does.
And this never moves.
No.
Let me show you a picture.
It looks like it's open.
Wow.
It is on a rock.
It's hard to tell, but look, you can see this red, white, and green coming through this
window.
Helicopter photo.
So what is that then?
So it's telling you what the position?
It's probably just another way that when you're sailing around the lighthouse, once you see
this, that maybe you're either on the right path or the wrong path.
Oh, you're passing it.
Yeah.
So this second light is not facing directly out to sea.
It looks like, so if you're coming up, this is facing south, I'm thinking.
So if you're coming up to the east side of the island from the south, you'd be passing,
you'd see red and then white for a moment as you're parallel to the light.
And then as you're passing the light, it would turn to green, I think.
Well, what do red and green or red and blue mean on boats and planes?
Isn't that showing starboard and port side?
Yeah.
If you, yeah.
Red and green are usually indicating which side of it you want to be on with your ship.
But I don't know if that's relevant here because really the red and the green are just the
light colors that go far enough.
You don't want to use colors that aren't going to be visible even close to, like if you used
purple or something, you wouldn't see it for a long time compared to white.
You know, the nautical mile difference would be a lot.
So.
Well, that's pretty cool.
Maybe if you're coming at it, it would show you, you're good to go to the south, to the
left, to the red side.
And if you go to the right side, you're going to run into the island.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Let's see if we can learn more, but that's cool.
I've never seen that before.
Yeah.
Maybe I'll try and make that a history buoy.
The science of the colors they selected.
I do think you're right.
It's yeah, I don't know.
It makes it more complicated that this is just coming through instead of coming through,
you know, 360 degrees, the top of a lighthouse.
It's coming through just a tiny hole in the side.
It's not one perspective.
Yeah.
It's not going to be visible from very many angles.
I doubt there's one on the other side.
No, I don't think so.
Just one in there.
Interesting.
Bye, fear.
Bye, bye.
Moving on.
This was automated in 1963 and nowadays the lighthouse gives chores at 11 a.m., 1 p.m.,
and 3 p.m. every day during the summer months and by appointments at other times.
Who you contact for an appointment?
I cannot figure out.
I've sent emails to a couple different places.
Is it not technically summertime in May?
I don't think so.
I think it's still springtime.
It's actually chilly.
Like, have you seen what the weather is like?
No.
On the island, it was, I didn't make notes on it, but it is talking about how the climate
is very strangely different from the mainland.
Things that happen on the mainland don't happen on this island.
So it's like a whole separate climate going on.
But while we're there, the high is an average of 50.
Very high.
Yeah.
And the all-time high that's ever been on that island during, in the May is 75 degrees.
That's cool.
So it's going to be a little chilly.
I think the all-time low was 24 degrees.
Oh, okay.
So it's pretty stable.
Well, yeah.
And actually, I was looking at the weather for this coming week, and the difference between
the highs and lows are only about two to three degrees.
Water keeps it stable.
I guess so.
It reminds me of Triangle Island.
That was true also for the Little Ross Island.
It was always talked about how things were very different.
Just, I mean, it wasn't even that far away.
It was just like 300 yards or something.
But things between there would just not reach the lighthouse.
Interesting.
Maybe we can learn more about that too.
Talk about it.
Yeah.
Weather patterns on islands.
That would be a cool topic.
If you have not listened to Triangle Island, it's one of the episodes that I got to do.
It might have been my first one.
I think it was.
Yeah.
It was a lot of fun.
There's some good weather stories up there.
Yeah.
So what's the outside?
Is it like a lake or is that like the outside of this tower we're looking at?
It's white texture.
It might be a coating.
Stucco.
Like the Ocracoke lighthouse.
Yeah.
It kind of looks like it's got that same texture going on.
But I know it's a stone lighthouse, but it's got to have some kind of coating on it.
And then the red looks like a sheet metal.
Yeah.
It's like iron or maybe, I think iron.
Something strong, I'm sure.
Little lightning pole on top.
So cute.
Oh, I so badly want to climb it.
We have to make an appointment and I got to figure it out because I want to be able to
go inside.
There's pictures of people climbing it, so it's possible.
I just...
Do you know if you climb it, can you go to the red platform or can you go to the light
room?
I don't know.
Maybe both.
Maybe we could just ask.
There's a handrail at both.
Well, we know no Swedish, so I'm hoping they know some English.
That's just the hope.
I'm sure they will.
But that's all I have on Lonsorts Fjord.
And I'm going to talk about the island a little bit because if we're going to be visiting,
maybe we can talk about what we want to do.
Oh gosh, what is it?
Juha...
Ja...
Uja?
Uja.
Like I said, southernmost island in the archipelago.
It's about three miles long and half a mile wide and it's very quiet town with only 27
people living on it.
Nice.
But a lot of people have summer homes here where they vacation.
And really at any time of the year because I think things are a lot more mild, at least
weather wise on this island than in the mainland.
So one of the first few things that pop up when you look up at this island besides the
lighthouse is a pilot tower.
And it's basically like an airport control tower, but for boats.
And so pilots would be directing basically directing traffic of ships to make sure that
they wouldn't be hitting rocks and stuff.
Make sure they're heading in the right direction.
It's newly renovated and now a hotel with a renowned chef working there.
So if you stay at this hotel, then you get really delicious meals.
And they have pictures online on their website.
And I'm linking everything that I looked at, everything I'm referencing is going to be
in the show notes.
There's a ton of references.
I think I have like 15 different links where you can look at stuff.
There's two rooms per floor and there's a shared bathroom on each floor and two people
can stay in each room, but they're like little twin beds.
So we'd be like, it's like we're in a dorm.
The restaurant Svetljas is where the chef works and it's part of the hotel experience
is the restaurant.
And I believe you can eat there by appointment, not in the summer months.
And so that's one of the phone numbers that I'm going to have chase calls.
If we can arrange to eat there when it's not.
So you mentioned this is a pilot's tower, pilot tower, which is now a hotel as well.
So I don't think there's, I don't think it's used.
Pilots are people who go out on small boats, on pilot boats and get on large boats and
bring them into port or take them away from port.
That's what I thought pilots did.
Okay.
So I don't only know that because I was sitting in Alaska at a dock and I saw a boat that
said, I'm pretty sure now my memory is failing.
It said pilot boat.
And I was like, what's that?
My dad told me we saw some old guy get on and get taken out with a backpack.
And I guess they like jump on a ship and that's their whole job is cause they know the port
really well.
So they take over the boat.
In my head, I was thinking they were up there and this was like, like radio communication.
Yeah.
That they would connect and talk them through it.
But you could be right.
There could be, there's just not a lot of places to jump on and off this island easily.
And they would have to cut around to the, um, the west side of the island, which would
be make it very difficult for them to continue on the pathway up towards Stockholm.
I don't know.
So I don't know.
Hopefully we'll learn some more.
Yeah.
We can ask when we get there, but if you make an appointment and special arrangements, you
can sit on the seventh floor of the pilot tower.
So you can get like a nice view while you're eating your seven floors.
Oh my gosh.
Wednesdays during the summer have live music on the terrace and really delicious food.
Look at my show notes.
There's pictures of the food that they serve.
And also there's been a lot of blog posts from people that go to this restaurant or
stay in the tower and they have really nice things to say about the food.
Nice.
And then we can go there.
If not, there's a pub called Lansort Saltboden.
I don't know.
I don't have any other information, but that that's the, I think they said that's the only
other place to eat on the island.
Wow.
It's very small.
Hopefully they're open.
We'd be like, okay, well catch a boat off here.
So what else is there in town?
I mean, people, so there's summer homes are out there.
Yeah.
It's a very popular place for birding.
So a lot of people go to say birds.
You can rent bikes.
There's lots of art, like local art there.
There's a plague cemetery and south of that remnants of a labyrinth dating back at least
300, sorry, 3000 years.
Labyrinth like a maze.
So legend has it that when you found your way through, when they had built it originally,
you'd be given good fortune in fishing and fertility.
And actually most coastal labyrinths were built to be like magic.
Like they built them so that you would pass through it and be given good fortune for the
fishing season.
Apparently.
So there's remnants of that.
You can go see just a bunch of like little, you can swim in the Harbor and there's lots
of like half of this island is like a forest.
You can go explore.
There's like different lookout points where you can go to and a sunken ship and just things
to explore.
Cool.
And the islands all, it's all walkable.
They have from top to bottom, they have a walking path or you can rent a bike and bike
it.
Do you know the story of the sunken ship?
I read it, but I don't remember it now.
I didn't make a note.
Nothing to do with the lighthouse.
No.
Turning off.
Nope.
Fortunately, no.
The colors got mixed up.
Cool.
But yeah.
That is it.
Beautiful.
That is the story and history behind Lanssortsfjär.
Yeah.
The Bafjär.
In Sweden.
I was going to try to say the island to me again and I was like, yeah.
Doing our best as well as we can.
We'll have to report back.
Yeah.
Maybe we have it right.
Maybe we would just be.
Oh yeah.
I think we got a new audio interface courtesy of ourselves.
And so we sponsored ourselves on that one.
It's a big, big purchase, but it may allow us to do a couple more tricks in the near
future including playing sounds.
So that would be nice.
I can have the pronunciations ready so I never have to say it.
I'd have to click a button and it just comes out.
Yeah.
And I'll have the friend's laugh track ready to go.
Not good.
All right.
Let me see.
I think I have another photo to show you.
This is the drawing, a drawing of what it looked like before they had added that top
on it.
So probably just took off this.
It made her thick.
It looks rugged.
It looks like a rap album cover.
This looks like before they like maybe repainted it or something.
Maybe it had to get a good pressure wash after this.
Is that a cannon?
Oh yes.
I didn't even talk about any of that.
You're going to talk about military.
Oh no.
It's, I don't have notes on it, but they have like coastal.
Tell us all about it.
Artilleries.
There's something else you can, you can, it's a nuclear bomb proof facility that's like
underground in the island that you can tour.
Awesome.
Yeah.
It's like, it was built to hold the soldiers there for a month, like without them having
to leave.
Wow.
And then I don't, I don't have it ready.
I can't believe it's something I forgot.
I wrote it in our, our travel notes for visiting here, but didn't.
Well, I think we should just do a part two after we visit.
Yeah, maybe we could do it like a recap of the two lighthouses.
Two lighthouses.
Well, lawn sorts and then the Japanese lighthouse.
Oh, okay.
All right.
Well, cool.
It's gorgeous.
There's a cannon in this photo, I think.
Yep.
They've got, gosh, I can't believe I never look it up.
All right.
Go to our show notes.
I have lots of references and websites there.
If you want to go check out the things that I've talked about and also in the show notes
will be a link tree link where you can follow us on any of our social medias or figure out
how to contact us or see where you can listen to our podcasts.
Very good.
Thank you guys for listening.
We'll see you next time on the lighthouse blow down.