Information about Långa croft, Insjöslingan

The crofter Gustaf
Olofsson came to these beautiful surroundings and felt that he had arrived
home. Today, you can only see traces of his home but the beautiful surroundings
remain.

The
solitary croft on Lång was built by Gustaf Olofsson shortly after the lowering
of the sea when Möckeln was lowered by more than one meter in the late 1850s.
The prospectors hoped that the lowering would generate 500 hectares of arable
land, but the lake consisted of mostly rock and gravel that could not be used
for anything other than grazing. However, Gustaf Olofsson appreciated the
location and received permission from the landowner to build a croft and settle
down at Lång.

Gustaf
built two houses, one of which was probably used as what was called an
”undantagsstuga” – a cottage reserved for the farm owners when they became
elderly and had signed over the farm to their children. The walls are made of
clay found in the ground of the island. Instead of stone and brick, he used
wooden blocks to build the walls. It is also the reason why only mounds of soil
remain of the buildings, as the wood in the walls was carried away during year
of famine in 1867–1868.

Gustaf and his wife Lisbet had a couple of cows and built a
barn. They were good crofters who were particularly skilled at managing fruit
trees. During the First World War, when the croft had been abandoned for more
than ten years, large quantities of fruit were taken from the family’s old
trees to be used as emergency food, both for immediate use and for drying.
Today, only the stone cellar from one of the houses remains, as well as the
fine red oaks planted by the Hörberg family.

The map shows the
approximate location of the information sign and the traces of Långa croft.