Lake Vänern and the Göta Canal

We woke up to clear skies and bright sunlight on Tuesday, June 30, and Läckö Slott (Castle) looked stunning across the water, against the blue sky and green countryside of the island it sits on. After breakfast and launching the dinghy, we puttered over to the guest docks, arriving at the medieval castle shortly after in opened at 10 a.m.

Läckö Slott in the mid-morning light from Mantra's foredeck

The foundations for a fortified castle in this location were laid by the Church in 1298, when walls and a couple houses comprised a small fort. Following the Reformation in 1527, King Gustav Vasa took possession of the property, and in 1615, it was granted to Jacob Pontusson De la Gardie. He embarked an an extensive building spree, remodeling and adding a third floor to the keep as well a portal to the main courtyard.

His son, Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, initiated major construction projects in 1654, adding a fourth floor and employing artists to decorate the walls and ceilings. The De la Gardie family are most closely associated with the design, furnishing and decoration of the castle, although the property passed to another count in 1752 and to a general in 1810. The castle reflects the tastes of Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie with it Baroque style and French-influenced interiors.  

We entered the castle through a portal with arched ceilings and frescoes depicting winding plants and went through a frescoed vestibule into the courtyard and then the magnificent castle church, which was built 1655-68. The wooden sculptures in the niches, framed by grisaille paintings, depict the apostles of Jesus. These statues and the other works of art make this a unique place. 

The entrance to the courtyard

Inside the courtyard

The altarpiece in the church

The organ with cherubs, a feature repeated in other parts of the castle

Statues in niches

From there, we went to the Small Garden, which is beautifully landscaped and well-tended by staff. The plantings were a mixture of vegetables and flowers in an array of colors and a long, shady pergola at the end of which is a gilded wooden statue.

The Small Garden

Mullein

Garden plots on the outside of the pergola

The Small Garden and one of the towers of the castle

Statue at the end of the pergola

We then visited the armory room, which used to be the wine cellar, the kitchen. In the past, guns and other arms were important acquisitions and reflected fine craftsmanship in design and decoration. Hunting among the nobles was popular and helped them retain their skills when they were not off a war. 

The armory room

We roamed around the various rooms of the kitchen including he head chef's quarters as well as other service rooms. Then we stopped on the second floor to see an exhibition of Swedish Rörstrand pottery, founded in 1726 and in operation until a couple decades ago.

On the third floor, we visited some of the rooms and joined a tour of this level at noon. Our tour guide was knowledgeable and an excellent presenter, and we learned a lot about the De la Guardie family, the interior design, and life for aristocrats and peasants during their period of residence. The King's Hall is ornately decorated and the designs in the ceiling as well as the cherubs hanging from it change from the head of the hall, where a putty-colored angel is holding a crown indicating the high status of the persons sitting at table under it, to the far end of the hall, where objects from everyday life hang above the places of lesser nobility. No peasants were allowed in the hall, so the sons of nobles served the food and drink at banquets. Musicians, who were lower class, provided music from balconies but they were hidden behind high walls.

The King's Hall

The cherub with a crown

The musicians' gallery, where they could be heard but not seen

Adjacent to the King's Hall, which glorifies war, were the Peace Room and the Austrian Room, designed at the end of the Thirty Years' War in which Sweden was victorious. The Peace Room's ceiling depicts Justitia and Pax kissing, a symbol of a just peace, and was commissioned by Magnus to counterpose the armory of the King's Hall. He wanted to portray himself as a wise, diplomatic statesman as well as a military commander.

Peace Room

The Austrian Room was not in its current state during Magnus' time but was decorated, after a couple centuries of emptiness and neglect, to reflect European interior design of the 17th century.

Ceiling of the Austrian Room

Magnus had married a Swedish princess, and, with our guide, we walked through her chambers. The wall paper, which was a thick as cardboard, was made in rectangles and rather than being glued to the walls it was nailed. The nail heads were left showing because nails were expensive, so they were a sign of wealth. Next we saw the De la Guardia's private dining room.

Princess Maria's receiving room

Princess Maria's bed chamber, with original 17th century flooring

The dining room with an elaborate linen press that was expensive and never used

Continuing up on our own to the fourth floor, we found guest rooms with elaborate canopies and frames for the beds and rich drapery. Other rooms there included the linen room and another kitchen.

The room where the linen was actually pressed

One of the guest bedrooms

As we were walking on the large rectangular paving stones leading from the castle, we noticed that they contained marine fossils of great size, particularly orthocera, a nautiloid cephalopod. 

Orthocera fossil

After a few hours at the castle, we returned to the boat, hoisted the dinghy on the foredeck, and pulled up anchor around 3:30 p.m. For hours, we sailed on a deep broad reach or wing-and-wing, average 5 knots in 10 knots of wind. It was a great day of sailing! At 10 p.m., we anchored on the east side of Lake Vänern close to Sjötorp, the western end of the Göta Canal. We enjoyed a brilliant orange sunset before going to bed content after a good day on the water. 

Sailing wing-and-wing

Sunset over Lake Vänern

The next sunny morning, Wednesday, July 1, it took us 20 minutes to pull up anchor and then dock at Sjötorp. We checked in at the office for the Göta Canal, where a friendly lock keeper explained how the locks worked and provided us with the skipper's guide and a lot of practical information. When it was our turn, we were assisted by this man and another lock keeper in tying up to the wall of the lock so they could show us the proper way to do it. 

Mantra in the first lock

Three hours and two more locks later, we stopped for the day, at 2:30 p.m. We docked bow in, as is typical here in Scandinavia, picking up a mooring ball at the stern since the last lock keeper of the day had advised us to do that, saying our length would not be an issue. Actually, he was wrong. We had to be at an angle and pick up two adjacent mooring balls to be secure. I was not happy about having to clamber over the bowsprit and the anchor to get on the dock. 

We went to the only real attraction in town, the canal museum, just a short walk from the marina. Situated in an old red harbor warehouse above a lovely restaurant with hand-embroidered linens, it contains displays of equipment used to build the Göta Canal as well as actual intact interiors from 19th century boats, including the pilot house, captain's and first mate's cabins, the galley and the toilet. I jumped back in surprise when I opened the door to this tiny room as a realistic mannequin was seated there with his pants down!

Restaurant in the old warehouse

Pilot house of M/V Valborg

I used Google Maps to lead me to a grocery store, walking along the canal. I arrived to find absolutely nothing there, not even remnants of former buildings. I walked back along the other side, admiring the houses, gardens and meadows, passed the marina and walked a couple blocks in the other direction from the marina to a little corner store that had some of the things on my list, most importantly milk for Peter's tea.

Homes and wildflowers along the canal

Inn along the canal

When I returned to Mantra, I was relieved to find that Peter was ready to move to another dock where we could tie up alongside. I struggled up over the anchor and we glided to the other side of the canal. 

Traveling on the canals in Sweden is a leisurely past-time. Maximum speed is 5 knots, and it is not unusual to have to wait for bridge or lock openings. On Thursday, July 2, we cast off at 8:40 a.m. and docked at Töreboda at 5:00 p.m., having passed through 13 locks and 11 bridges. In 8 hours, we traveled 10 kilometers! 

Mantra meandering through the Göta Canal

Water entering a lock

Each lock takes at least half an hour. The procedure is to wait for the green light and then proceed into the open lock. There is a little dock by the entrance onto which I leap while the boat is moving quite slowly, holding a bow line and a stern line. The bow line is an old halyard which is led from the electric winch in the cockpit, forward the length of the boat, through a block, and then back to the open gate by the pilot house. The purpose of this is to keep the line taut as the swirling water that eddies back up behind the stern tries to push the boat forward. That day, after a few embarrassing moments, we perfected our technique and learned how to deal with some wind trying to blow the boat away from the wall. 

On the lower left, the type of little dock I leap onto as Mantra glides past

Töreboda is a small city with not much in the way of attractions. At least there was a lot of pleasant scenery along the way, and I had time to read the signs about the canal as I waited for the boat to rise.

Forest along the canal

Homes in the woods along the canal

Older home along the canal

Today, rain was predicted for the whole day, but it was not raining in the late morning, so we decided to cast off from Töreboda and move to another marina just a little way farther (or two hours of puttering and waiting for bridge openings and one lock) because it has laundry facilities, which we desperately needed. We arrived at Vassbacken around noon. The surrounding countryside is bucolic; there is no town. It is a vacation spot with good amenities for people traveling along the canal in boats or in caravans. There is a single restaurant, where we had a delicious meal while listening to live music by a single guitarist/vocalist with electronic accompaniment. We sat at a picnic table and talked with a local man, an immigrant here from England. The last of the six loads of laundry should be finished in an hour or so. It is such a luxury to have good dryers in which everything dries completely.

Musician at the resaurant

But, I haven't written at all about the history and importance of the Göta Canal. Well, that's for tomorrow!