Photos

This is the burial site for 100 soldiers belonging to the Dalarna Regiment.

After taking part in the battle of Trangen in Norway (in the war against Denmark-Norway) on April 25th 1808, they were located to several villages in the parish of Järnskog. Here many of them died from so called campsickness, mainly dysentery. Denmark-Norway were allied with France in those days and it is an irony in the fact that one of the enemies, a certain Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, was later to become king of Sweden. But that is a different story!

You can read more about the battle of Trangen here and here.

Most of these men are unknown, but according to some saved registers, we know that number 64 Slång Jon Matsson from Altsarbyn, Rättvik, died here at Boda on November 5th, 1808. He is assumed to be of the men buried at this site.

I was here once before with a school excursion and I believe it must have been in 1949 or 1950. In those days this was a beautiful hill with pine trees. Around the hill was only open grass slopes. When we were here just some weeks ago I realised that trees can grow a lot in nearly 60 years. The hill was now quite hard to discover in the surrounding forest of birches and bushes. Furthermore, as the railway between Koppom and Arvika used to pass about 50 metres from this site, I must have seen this twice daily in the years 1952 to 1960, going to school at Arvika. We were actually walking along the abandoned railway track when I ”rediscovered” this site.

I will post some WS photos as well. The first shows a simple memorial stone from 1878 with the inscription: ”Royal Dalarna Regiment burial site from the Military Campaign 1808”.

The second WS shows the main memorial stone from 1899, with a similar inscription and a ”verse”.