PETTER GOTTBERG
According to legend, Petter Gottberg was a tenant, lumberjack, murderer, pirate and shipwreck scavenger. He was born in 1762 at Bjers in Guldrupe in the middle of Gotland where his parents owned a farm. His mother died when he was 11 years old.
At the age of 20 he started working as a farm hand at Gandarve in Vänge. He didn’t last long there, only a year, and after that he registered at the seaman’s house in Visby. In March 1784 he went to sea. It is thought that his ship was captured by pirates and he was forced to join up with them. Gottberg managed to escape and took up residence in Stockholm in 1789. He got married but his wife died of consumption in 1799. Gottberg inherited the property on Glasbruksgatan and re-married the same year. In 1801 he signed a contract with Magnus Benedictius to rent Sandön for a year. He sailed over with his family in September of the same year. Even when Benedictius went bankrupt Gottberg remained on the island and signed a new contract with the new owner, a man by the name of Stenberij, in 1806.
Legend has it that Gottberg lured the crews from shipwrecks into his barn and then shot them through small openings in the wall. Nobody knows if this really happened. Regardless of what happened, the Hörlin brothers Hans and Göran, who grew up on the island, have picked numerous lead pellets out of the barn’s walls, and how they got there is anybody’s guess…
There are many stories about Gottberg and the beginning of the end comes a few days before Christmas 1814, when a yacht, the ” Cerberus af Greifswald” was stranded in Franska bukten (French Bay). Part of its cargo consisted of pork, leather, liquor, hemp, and a wolfskin fur coat.
When Gottberg sold part of the cargo in Stockholm the following summer, the wolfskin coat was recognised and after an investigation he was convicted in court for plundering a shipwreck. By his own confession Gottberg was sentenced to 28 days of bread and water as well as attending a Sunday church service (a shame punishment) which he served December 21, 1817 outside Fårö church.
”Gottberg’s jail” is a timbered storehouse. The barred opening on one gable has most likely given the building its name.
The barn is a gigantic sheep house in the proper sense of the word, and was built in 1823-24 by Petter Gottberg. Here his sheep could be fed and seek shelter during the winter. The sheep house is built of logs dove-tailed at the corners with a roof of wooden boards. The old barn had deteriorated over the years and the Gotska Sandön Heritage Society carried out an extensive renovation in 1977.
MADAME SÖDERLUND
"Madame", as she was called, was named Johanna Albertina Söderlund born by the maiden name of Bergdahl in Berga Österäker, Uppland on May 27, 1815. She moved to Sandön on July 29, 1854 with her husband Anders, who came as a refugee from Nuckö in Estonia, and their two children Emma and Ferdinand.
A man by the name of Paterson owned Sandön during the 1850s and had logging operations there until 1859 when the pilotage service bought the island and started to build the first lighthouses on the north-western part of the island. Paterson stipulated, if he sold the island, that his employees should be employed by the pilotage service until they were able to find other work.
When the lighthouses were put in operation in October 1859, ”Madame” and her three children were the only remaining employees of Paterson’s left on the island. Her son Hjalmar was born in 1858 and her husband had died the same year. “Madame” continued to live at Gamla garden until 1877, when she moved to the lighthouse settlement to keep house for her sun Hjalmar who was the keeper of the light there. In 1890 Hjalmar was transferred to Tärnudden’s lighthouse. “Madame” moved with him and she died at Tärnudden on April 8, 1906.
