fort – Observations from Uppsala

Hemsö Fästning – Coastal Defense from the 1950s

Continuing on my blog posts about our Hemester (part 1 covered Bodens Fästning), this blog post will cover Hemsö Fästning. Both are fascinating places, but also rather different, and clearly demonstrate the changes from the early 1900s to the Cold War of the 1950s.

Bodens Fästning – A Fortress in the North of Sweden

Due to Covid-19, this year’s summer vacation involved a “staycation”, or “hemester” as we say in Swedish. We went up north in Sweden, and took the chance to visit some military museums. In particular, the fortresses at Hemsön and Boden (fästning means fortress). Both are fascinating places, but also rather different, and clearly demonstrate the developments from the early 1900s to the Cold War of the 1950s. This post covers Boden, with a separate post for Hemsö released a few days after this post.