Tuesday

I wanted to show you a few pictures of the gardens of Bosjo Cloister; they were quite impressive with the rose gardens.  Much of the place is still private residence, so it was off limits to most of the building that would have housed the monks.  In the vaults of the basement they had the exhibition of Liljefors. The few they had were actually for sale, that is, if you had $70,000.  Dollars!

Elsie knew a lot about the history of the place, so over coffee she told us about it.  All of southern Sweden was controlled by Denmark up until the 1600’s.  They had a monopoly on the rich farmlands and fishing industry around the coast there and of course earned a lot of money from it all.  They weren’t about to give it up to Sweden.  The Vikings were slowly being converted over to Christianity, with Denmark being first on the list for Scandinavia.  Around 900 AD the roman church sent up monks to build cloisters and convert the locals to the proper religion in their eyes.  I took a picture of one of the tombstones from 1031 AD.

  Who knows how long this process took, but any ways they build a nice compound, equipped with elaborate flower gardens today. They boast about their famous oak tree garden, which was planted one thousand years ago.

The Benedictine convent was founded in 1080 A.D.   In 1536 the convent activity ceased and in 1560 it became a private castle.  The Bonde af Bjorne family has owned it since the 1500’s.  

Seems like a nice place to call home !

Richard Boyer