Pater Noster is a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

lighthouse A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lens (optics), lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Ligh ...

and the name of a small archipelago in

Bohuslän Bohuslän () is a Provinces of Sweden, Swedish province in Götaland, on the northernmost part of the country's west coast. It is bordered by Dalsland to the northeast, Västergötland to the southeast, the Skagerrak arm of the North Sea to the ...

on the Swedish west coast.

History

There were plans to build a lighthouse on the island in the 1750s, but a light was instead placed on the fortification of

Carlsten Carlsten () is a stone fortress located at Marstrand, on the western coast of Sweden. The fortress was built on the orders of King Charles X of Sweden, Carl X of Sweden following the Treaty of Roskilde, 1658 to protect the newly acquired provinc ...

Marstrand Marstrand () is a seaside locality situated in Kungälv Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden. It had 1,320 inhabitants in 2010. The town got its name from its location on the island of Marstrand. Despite its small population, for histo ...

. That light was replaced by Pater Noster in 1868. The lighthouse is of engineer

Nils Gustaf von Heidenstam Nils ''Gustav'' von Heidenstam (1822 – 2 June 1887) was a Swedish engineer born in Blekinge. He was the chief engineer of the Swedish Royal Coast Guard. Life He was the son of Werther Werner von Heidenstam (16 October 1763 – 1852) and fathe ...

's typical iron design. Pater Noster originally had a large first order

Fresnel lens A Fresnel lens ( ; ; or ) is a type of composite compact lens (optics), lens which reduces the amount of material required compared to a conventional lens by dividing the lens into a set of concentric annular sections. The simpler Dioptrics, d ...

in its lantern and the flame originally ran on

colza oil Close-up of canola blooms Canola flower Rapeseed oil is one of the oldest known vegetable oils. There are both edible and industrial forms produced from rapeseed, the seed of several cultivars of the plant family Brassicaceae. Historicall ...

. A

paraffin Paraffin may refer to: Substances * Paraffin wax, a white or colorless soft solid (also in liquid form) that is used as a lubricant and for other applications * Liquid paraffin (drug), a very highly refined mineral oil used in cosmetics and for med ...

lamp was installed in 1887. The lighthouse was automated in 1964 and the large lens replaced by a small 4th order lens. In 1977 Pater Noster lighthouse was deactivated in favor of the modern lighthouse

Hätteberget Hätteberget is the name of a Sweden, Swedish docking lighthouse situated in the sea west of Marstrand and south of Tjörn. It was built in 1977 as a replacement for the old Pater Noster Lighthouse. The lighthouse is a concrete tower with helicop ...

placed in open water. Pater Noster started to fall out of repair as the salt water made the iron construction rusty and weak.

Restoration

In 2002, a large restoration project began. The lighthouse was transported to the town of

Uddevalla Uddevalla is a Stad (Sweden), town in Västra Götaland County, Sweden. It’s the seat of Uddevalla Municipality. In 2015, it had a population of 34,781, making it the largest town fully in Bohuslän. Uddevalla is located where the river Bäveån ...

, and later to

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

. The tower was very rusty and overall in bad condition; consequently, restoration took much longer than originally planned, mostly because of insufficient funding. But many local companies and persons volunteered to complete the work. In the summer of 2007, the lighthouse was shipped back to Hamneskär. In the autumn it was reactivated. In 2015, the lens room was renovated and equipped with a high standard kitchen by the furniture design company Marbodal, as a part of their PR-campaign. In 2020 during the

pandemic A pandemic ( ) is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has a sudden increase in cases and spreads across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic (epi ...

, a lottery called "The Isolated Cinema" was announced by the

Gothenburg Film Festival Göteborg Film Festival (GFF), formerly Göteborg International Film Festival (GIFF), known in English as the Gothenburg Film Festival, formerly Gothenburg International Film Festival, is an annual film festival in Gothenburg, Sweden and the large ...

, with the prize of visiting the lighthouse for looking at movie premieres for one person alone in the lens room the whole festival week. The lottery got worldwide attention, with over 12,000 attenders from more than 45 countries. The winner was an emergency nurse from Sweden. Also in 2020, the accommodation of the previous lighthouse keepers was renovated and since then, a hotel and conference centre named "Ett Hem vid Horisonten" (transl. 'A Home on the Horizon') is kept in the building. The business has become internationally famous and in 2022, the hotel won the eminent Global New Concept Award by AHEAD Awards that year.

Gallery

File:Lighthouse Pater Noster visits Goteborg.jpg, The lighthouse is shipped after renovation on Arendals wharf, Gothenburg. File:Fyren Pater Noster gallerverk.jpg

Bibliography

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References

External links