The history of Kläpphagen

In 2019 we found this farm that we felt we could develop into something amazing. We wanted to preserve as much of the old environment as possible, but unfortunately we were forced to demolish the old manor building because it was in such poor condition. We reused all the materials that were healthy for the other buildings. This is also where our interest in the old and the history of Kläpphagen was born.

In 1861, the first residential building began to be built at Kläpphagen. Here they practiced agriculture and also had livestock. We focus our story on 3 brothers and their mother who lived at Kläpphagen at the beginning of the 20th century, the big fisherman Rudolf, the thinker Hjalmar, the godly Reinhold and the pious mother Charlotta. In 1901, the Baptist congregation ELIM was formed, where the devoted Charlotta played the first violin. It was not only in the congregation that she was devoted, but she inspired faith in all the people around her. So to the mild degree that son Oskar became a preacher and Reinhold a missionary. It is said that when Reinhold was plowing the field in the harbor marsh, he had a so-called revelation, that he would become a missionary. So he left the plow and went home with the horse, and then he went to the mission school in Örebro. There he studied diligently and devotedly for a couple of years before he went to the Belgian Congo in Africa and worked as a missionary. After several years of work and toil with the so-called unsaved savages, he came home for a visit. He had with him various souvenirs such as crossbows with poisoned arrows, spears and jungle knives. The poison arrows and the crossbow were immediately donated to Strömstad’s museum, these were considered too dangerous to have in the house with three resourceful boys. On Sundays, when the others on the farm were in church, the bus boys took the opportunity to throw darts with spears. A couple of years after the visit to Kläpphagen, Reinhold died of acute blood poisoning in the Belgian Congo.

Hjalmar, who was supposed to take care of the farm, was more interested in literature and music. He was intellectual and wrote many articles in magazines and his sweet tones brought pleasure to the ear of the common man. Rudolf was the only one in the group of children who did not become religious, he instead devoted his life to fishing on the boat Freden. Luckily, Rudolf had found a good girl for a wife, Signe, who ran the farm exemplary with the help of Hjalmar and the children. When Rudolf could not cope with the fishery, they continued to run the farm for a few years, but on an increasingly smaller scale until the end of the 50s when the last animals were sold.

Evert Taube, who loved Koster, walked past Kläpphagen one day and was struck by its beauty and felt that this is where he would like to live. He wanted to buy the whole row, but it didn’t work out. So Kläpphagen remained in the brothers’ possession, and maybe it was luck, because otherwise we wouldn’t own the farm today.