Most who read this have probably never heard of the town Trollhttan. It is a medium sized city, population of about 60,000, in the southwest of Sweden. Trollhttan may not be famous or spectacular. But there are several things there that we found interesting and thats why we went there this summer. One of the things that draw us there was actually a dairy store that doesnt even exist anymore. Well get back to that later on. First we will tell you about some more typical sightseeing we did in the city.
The river Gta lv runs through Trollhttan. Gta lv has long been an important trade route for transporting goods from south central Sweden to the west coast. However, in Trollhttan there were some large rapids making it impossible for ships to pass. In the mid 18th century an attempt was made to build a series of locks to allow for the ships to bypass the rapids safely. That project was never finished due to various difficulties. There are some remains left from this early attempt to build locks
We have seen works by this artist before. We have a photo of one of his works in a blog entry we posted in 2018
About 50 years later a new attempt was made to make Gta lv safe to travel throughout its length. This time the project was a success and with the help of no less than eight locks it was in the year 1800 for the first time possible to bypass the rapids by ship. But soon the capacity of these locks became insufficient. Therefore, yet another set of locks were built and inaugurated in 1844. These new locks were soon also insufficient and too small. In 1916 they were replaced by the set of locks that are in operation today. The historical locks and the current ones together form an interesting piece of industrial history that at least we find worth visiting.
Thats not the only industrial heritage in Trollhttan. The now defunct car manufacturer SAAB Automobile had their headquarters and much of their production based in Trollhttan. Car enthusiasts might find a visit to the SAAB museum rewarding since there are several unique cars on display there. In fact, even movie buffs might find the museum worth a visit because one of the cars there can be seen in the movie
The river Gta lv runs through Trollhttan. Gta lv has long been an important trade route for transporting goods from south central Sweden to the west coast.
The Back in the were mostly shot in California as they are Hollywood productions. The closest thing to Hollywood we have in Sweden is the film studios in Trollhttan. Actually the film studios go under the somewhat silly name Trollywood. Movies that have been filmed in the film studios in Trollhttan include Dogville and Melancholia. Also the movie Show me Love, which we briefly mentioned in our previous blog entry, was filmed in Trollhttan.
We have two more things from Trollhttan we want to write about here. Both of those are a bit odd and hardly something the typical visitor would be interested in. Peter LeMarc is a Swedish singer songwriter who was born and raised in Trollhttan. In the song Little Willie John he tells a love story from when he was young. The beautiful love story he tells is partly also true. The lyrics are in Swedish, they are very poetic and are impossible to translate. But Ill translate two lines anyway.
She lived on the wrong side of the river, in a disused dairy store. ...We used to drive around in her Dodge -67. She said
In the mid 18th century an attempt to build locks in Trollhttan failed. All that today can be seen of this project is two cut outs in the rock where the locks were planned to be.
That dairy store did actually exist 50 years ago and it stood at what today is Kungsgatan in central Trollhttan. The dairy store was torn down a long time ago and there is no trace of it today. But we still felt that we had to check out where his girlfriends dairy store used to be. We found it and we have added a photo of the spot as it looks today.
