Skatelövs Hembygdsgård
Local museum near Grimslöv
A little away from the church village Grimslöv in the southern half of the municipality Alvesta is the small museum Skatelövs Hembygdsgård, also called Rosenlund, with historical buildings from the 18th and 19th century.
The homestead Rosenlund, which is situated within sight of the large lake Åsnen, consists of four historical buildings from the surrounding area. Some of which are used as a museum of local history with typical interiors of the time and show a part of the local cultural history.
The oldest building of the museum is the Linas Stuga. A typical Ryggasstuga, as it used to be common in the rural areas of Småland. These are small one-storey wooden houses, usually with peat or grass roofs, without ceilings between the living quarters and the roof truss. The Ryggasstuga here in Rosenlund dates from the late 18th century and was already in place before the museum was established in the late 1940s.
The stuga is in a way the nucleus of the museum. The last owner, Karolina Svensson, had already signed over her cottage, including the furnishings and the grounds to the local heritage association during her lifetime in exchange for a lifelong right of residence. After Lina's death in 1952, her stuga was restored to its original condition.
Other buildings in Rosenlund
The main building at Rosenlund, a large two and a half storey wooden house, dates from 1856 and was once the main house of a farm in the region. On its upper floor there is a museum of local history, the establishment of an old local shop, a room with information about the ironworks Huseby Bruk and a room with a historical loom.
In addition to the kitchen and toilets, there are two rooms on the ground floor with furnishings typical of the period, as well as a memorial room for the well-known fairy tale collector Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius (1818–1889). In the 1840s he published the first book with a large collection of Swedish folk tales, which in its scope is quite comparable to the work of the Brothers Grimm in Germany.
The one and a half storey building next to the main building is the so-called brewery house, in which the waffle café of the local history association, which is open in summer, is located in the ambience of an old brewhouse.
Just next to it is an extremely rare example of a historical and completely intact field barn. Until the end of the land reform in the 1920s, there were over 100 such barns in Grimslöv parish alone, which served as temporary storage for the harvest from the scattered fields, but this field barn is now the only one left in the region.
Sagobygden, the fairyland
Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius came from the region and many of the fairy tales he collected come from southwestern Småland. Therefore, the region with the municipalities of Alvesta, Älmhult and Ljungby is also called the Fairyland (Sagobygden). Spread over the three municipalities there are about 40 marked sites of the old tales with showcases where you can read the old stories on the spot (also in English). The Sagomuseet in Ljungby offers extensive information about the fairytales in the region.
