PATER NOSTER

For centuries, seafarers approached Marstrand with foreboding, for it was only reached through a treacherous maze of reefs and islets. There were no charts, only reports, oral or written.

Keen eyes scanned the horizon for seamarks, hills and beacons. There was every reason to call on a higher power for aid: "Our father, which art in heaven..." During the Catholic period the prayers were read in Latin: "Pater Noster, qui est in caelis..." The whole group of islands eventually came to be known as Pater Noster.

Sailing-ship traffic reached its zenith in the mid-nineteenth century and in 1868 there was at last a lighthouse on Hamneskär, the largest of the three lighthouses in Bohuslän designed by Nils Gustaf von Heidenstam.

Until 1964 three families lived here all the year round, collecting rainwater in the tank and growing potatoes on the little patch of earth which had been laboriously brought out. In 1939 a new harbour was completed on the east side of the island. In 1964 the lighthouse was automated and in 1977 it was finally extinguished, replaced by a caisson lighthouse on Hätteberget.