TJURHOLMEN

From Hvaleröarna just north-west of Tjurholmen a rugged type of boat, gaff-rigged, decked and about ten metres long, came to Bohuslän, becoming known in Swedish as a koster.

The koster is the predecessor of the vessel with the hot-bulb engine which chugged into the twentieth century as the typical Swedish fishing boat.

The ancestor of these boats is the snipa, the characteristic Bohuslän boat with a pointed stern, a direct descendant of the vessels of the Vikings.

But the boat-building tradition of the Nordic countries was subject to early influences from the south. The Hanseatic cog of the Middle Ages aroused attention with an innovation in the stern: the rudder. In the sixteenth century the spritsail was brought here by the Dutch and the English. The yawl and the skiff, which became typical Bohus craft, did not begin to appear until well into the nineteenth century.

The Norwegian Bohuslän became Swedish territory in 1658. The new border separated the island of Thurholmen from the Hvaler islands.

The typical boat in Bohuslän, the "snipa", illustrated the fact that cultural bonds cannot be broken, neither through political decisions nor by erecting cairns along the border. This is the end of the Blue Skagerrak Trail - or the beginning if you are sailing south!