Over on the west coast of Sweden lies the city of Helsingborg, a very old town with a rich history.  It is one of the oldest in Sweden and now the fourth largest city.  It is also on the closest point to Sweden’s neighbor, Denmark, with its sister city Helsingør across the narrow sound.  Helsingør is of course famous from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, and the prince of Denmark may have hid out from his uncle across the water in old Helsingborg.  The city often belonged to Denmark over the course of its history, until the final attempt of the Danes to hold it.  In 1710 they landed 14,000 men nearby and the Battle of Helsingborg commenced.  One of our ancestors, Johan Blom, fought in that battle as part of Södermanlands Regimentet, and managed to get himself captured.  He remained a Danish prisoner of war for the next eight years.  The record states that during the battle he lost his “paj rock”, a heavy overcoat issued to the soldiers.  Why this was important enough to record I don’t know, but as the battle took place in February of that year I am sure he sorely missed it as a Danish prisoner.  It was a sobering feeling to think of our ancestors who fought and suffered in this area.

We had the chance to travel to this very interesting city recently in the course of our assignment to conduct inspections of the young missionaries’ apartments.  We drove into town and located the apartments without difficulty thanks to our on-board GPS (whom we have named Britta in honor of our cheerful granddaughter).  Between inspections we thought we would take a look at the city’s most prominent historic feature, an ancient tower located on the city’s high point in a lovely little park.  The 600 year-old tower, called Kärnan (“the Kernel”), is all that’s left of an ancient fortress that protected the town from invaders.  About 35 meters (115 feet) tall, it now sits all by itself in a nice little park.  Nearby are stone steps called Hallbergs Trappor, named after a prominent citizen and first built of wood in 1888, then replaced with stone in the 1930’s.  We climbed the steps to the top of the hill and had a wonderful view of old Helsingborg.  Unfortunately the tower was closed for the season so we will have to return to climb to the top.  We did climb the stairway up to the formidable entry door, however.