Lintalund, Naturreservat

At Lintalund, a piece of our old cultural landscape remains. Nestled within the cultivated spruce forest, the nature reserve with its fields and meadows offers visitors a glimpse of what the rural landscape looked like in earlier times.

The land surrounding the cultivated fields once consisted of heathlands and juniper-covered pastures, used for grazing. Farmers fenced off the valuable crops, allowing livestock to graze on the poor and nearly unusable outlands. Today, grazing animals help keep the old fields open. Without them, the landscape would become overgrown, risking the loss of certain species.

Plenty of Clearance Cairns

The old fields are dotted with clearance cairns. Over generations, farmers used crowbars, spades, and sheer manual labor to remove stones from the farmland. Imagine the hard work involved in gathering all those stones and piling them up! It's no surprise that, in the early 1900s, farming was abandoned in favor of using the land as a meadow instead.

Near the house, the meadow is maintained in the traditional way, with spring cleaning and scything later in the summer. This species-rich dry meadow is one of the last actively managed wooded meadows in the county. Some of the trees in the meadow have been pollarded—harvested for their leafy branches in late summer to be stored as winter fodder for livestock.

Plants and Wildlife

In the meadow, you can find plants such as Mountain Arnica, Common Milkwort, Quaking Grass, and even the orchid Common Spotted Orchid. In the shadier areas, Lily of the Valley and Cow-wheat grow. Birds you might see or hear include the European Green Woodpecker, Marsh Tit, Mistle Thrush, Great Spotted Woodpecker, and Long-tailed Tit.

There Used to Be Two Farms

Lintalund once had two farms side by side. One was sold in 1916 and moved to Rydöbruk. In the 1970s, the last residents, Svea and David Jakobsson, left Lintalund. They bequeathed the entire farm, including land and inventory, to the Torup Local Heritage Association, which now manages the site.

Just a few hundred meters from Lintalund, you’ll find Glassbo Waffle Cottage, open during the summer months.

Opening hours can be found on the waffle cottage's website.