Boulognerskogen and a Church

I managed to take in a fair bit on the half day after I arrived in Gävle yesterday, but today is my only full day here. Despite the forecast calling for rain off and on throughout the day, I was determined to make the most of it.

The morning started mainly cloudy, but with some sunny breaks, so I figured it was a good time to take in a recommended park, Boulognerskogen.

Google Translate translates “Boulognerskogen” into Boulogne Forest. I did a riff yesterday on how the Swedes often ram two words together to create one. I won’t repeat that here. Whatever. I mean, what ever.

After leaving Boulognerskogen, I took a walk to take a gander at a church my guidebook mentioned, Heliga Trefaldighets Kyrka.

Boulognerskogen

The point where I think I entered Boulognerskogen is a little green space on either side of the river that runs through Gävle, with a bridge over the river close to where I entered the green space. Apple Maps and an interpretive sign that I saw farther into the park told me the river is Gavleån.

That’s it. Gavleån. Not Gavleån River. Not River Gavleån. Just Gavleån.

A little investigation based on a guess told me why. Do you want to guess? (Swedish speakers are excluded from this quiz.)

Yes, that’s right. Google Translate tells me that ån is the Swedish word for river. Gavleån means Gävle River. So, Gavleån River or River Gavleån would have been redundant.

Don’t ask me why they drop the umlaut in Gävle. Maybe they think it’s greedy of short words to have two diacritics, so they make do with just the ring diacritic in ån. I don’t know.

Moving along, the reason I said I thought that was where I entered Boulognerskogen was that I’m not sure it was Boulognerskogen at that point. I crossed the bridge when I came to it because Apple Maps told me to. But it also said that Boulognerskogen was still a piece farther on, and I had to walk along a definitely-not-park-like sidewalk past some buildings to get there.

When I zoomed out, I saw that there was a lot of green and blue (water) on the map with “Boulognerskogen” placed in various spots throughout it, including in the middle of a blue blob.

I don’t know why Apple Maps chose that particular instance of Boulognerskogen to send me to, but it was as good a spot as any.

Just past the buildings, the park turns into a beautiful forested area. Plus, there’s a dam on the river at that point, which creates a lovely lake behind it. I know I sometimes overdo alliteration in these pages, but it was a lovely lake. I can’t help that.

Some paths go around the lake. I followed one.

A short way along the path, I came to a weird building. Its base was a stubby cylinder with a peaked roof. Perched on stilts above that was another structure that was a polygon (I didn’t count the sides), or whatever you call the three-dimensional extension of a polygon.

That upper building looked like an observation gallery, with windows wrapped all the way around towards its top. Its roof looked like an elongated Kremlin roof, but not colourful.

This puzzled me. I didn’t see any way to get from the lower structure to the upper one. There wasn’t a hint of a window or door on the lower structure on the side I approached it from. Nor could I guess the purpose of the building(s).

I walked around it. On the other side, there was a door, but still no windows. On that side, there was a sign on a post in the ground beside the building. It was only in Swedish. The camera function of Google Translate struggled to translate it. Either it was garbled Swedish to start with, or the translation was garbled. I got enough to determine that it was a bell tower and had something to do with the military.

With that information, I looked more closely. I could just make out a bit of the bell visible in the upper structure. I also noticed a long, angled box going from the bottom structure to the top. It had been camouflaged by being the same colour as the stilts that surround it. I assume there are stairs in that box.

After leaving the weird bell tower behind, I continued walking along the forested paths around the lake, including crossing a bridge at the point where the river flows into it. There’s not a lot to add other than beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. But I’ll find a little more to say anyway.

Back on the same side I was on before I crossed the first bridge, the greenery continues all the way to that first bridge without interruption. On that side of the lake, there are a couple of small areas with exercise equipment, another area with a couple of volleyball courts, and some open fields for other activities.

As I walked past the lake back to where it becomes a river again, below the dam on that side of the river, there’s a channel that branches off the river. It continues for a piece until it reaches a smaller dam, that it falls over.

There are two notable effects of this. For one, although they were at the same elevation at the point the channel branches off, the surface of the channel is very noticeably higher at the second dam than the surface of the river beside it. Second, while the river is quite active as it flows over rocks, the channel is perfectly peaceful, with a mirrored surface.

Beside the channel, there’s a lovely lagoon. Yes, dammit. A lovely lagoon. Alliteration happens, my friends. Alliteration happens.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed Boulognerskogen. Really. I can’t tell you. How does one quantify these sorts of things? But suffice it to say, I spent well over two hours there and didn’t regret a minute of it. I enjoyably filled the time walking, drinking in the sights while walking, sitting, and drinking in the sights while sitting.

Heliga Trefaldighets Kyrka

Google Translate tells me that “Heliga Trefaldighets Kyrka” translates to “Holy Trinity Church” in English. No doubt, you want to know what it looks like inside and out. To be honest, so do I.

In the introduction, I told you that I walked over to take a gander at the church. I did not lie. Taking a gander was indeed the purpose I set for the walk, an admittedly very short walk once I left Boulognerskogen.

However, I was, I won’t say surprised, but rather, disappointed to learn that there is a chapter of the DLJSSIA in Gävle. (DLJSSIA is the Don’t Let Joel See Stuff International Association.)

When I got there, construction fences surrounded the church and scaffolding covered much of its facade. A large sign affixed to the construction fence provided a QR code. It took me to a web page that, with the help of the translate function*, told me that the church closed for renovations on May 12, 2025. It’s now June 9th, 2025.

The web page didn’t say when the church will reopen, but I suspect they have someone posted at the train station so they can tear down the faux construction paraphernalia the instant I leave. I’m sure they want to reopen for everyone else as soon as they can. I want to know who tipped them off that I was coming.

My guidebook tells me the church is a “seventeenth-century masterpiece of woodcarved decoration.” My guidebook gives special mention to the pulpit (but it doesn’t say why) and the towering altarpiece and screen. I’ll never know.

Frustrated and disappointed, I took a break for lunch. More later.

(*By the way, the Apple Translate utility doesn’t currently offer Swedish, nor will its Safari web browser translate Swedish web pages. The Google Translate app and Google’s Chrome browser will. Not only that, but I was able to download Swedish into the Google Translate app before I left for Sweden. Hence, I have translation capabilities even if I’m offline.)