History is more than what has been

In the 1860s Vallda had just over 2,300 residents. During the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th, Vallda became a depopulated parish, mainly because of a lack of livelihoods and jobs. As many as 900 people emigrated from Vallda to America, while many others moved to other Swedish towns. The trend only turned in the 1950s, when better connections to Kungsbacka and Gothenburg made it possible to live in the countryside and work in town.

Today Vallda has just over 8,450 residents according to Statistics Sweden, about 11 percent of Kungsbacka’s population. The gender balance is even, with only a little over one percent more men than women.

People with roots in Vallda are now in the minority compared with those who have chosen the village as their new home. We cannot know for certain where the first settlers of the later Old Stone Age (10,000–4100 BC) came from, but it is a fair guess that they too came from the Gothenburg direction, where earlier settlements have been documented at Sandarna, Västra Frölunda and Balltorp.

The Swedish History Museum describes the Old Stone Age like this: “People spread north, first along the ice-free coasts and then inland. Around 7000 BC the ice was gone, and there were settlements across Scandinavia. Most Stone Age people in the north were seasonal – they moved between sites as the seasons changed to get the best from nature.”

Then as now, people thrived along the coasts, especially in summer. Many areas of today’s Vallda were once summer-cottage districts that became permanent homes, and new housing has also been added in recent years. History does seem to repeat itself.

Another parallel is that Vallda Rectory is once again home to a physician. In 1822 the priest Johan Emanuel Ljungvall took up his post in Vallda/Släp. Like his predecessor Gustaf Fredrik Hjortberg fifty years earlier, he served not only as a priest but as a doctor.

History is a fascinating subject, and we all need some acquaintance with our own – not least to handle the present and the future. Copies of the Vallda book can be found in Vallda Church, at Nordhallands Hembygdsförening on Västergatan in Kungsbacka, and now also at Prästgårdskliniken in Vallda Rectory.

Welcome, and welcome back.

PS. The title of this post is a rephrasing of a quote by Sigrid Undset (1882–1949): “For it is not true that history is only what has been.”