A town that moved
Ängelholm sits on the Rönne River (Rönne å) in Skåne, Sweden's southernmost province, close to where the river meets the bay of Skälderviken.
It began as a move. In 1516 King Christian II of Denmark founded the town as Engelholm, shifting the settlement inland from Luntertun on the coast, which was hard to defend and kept filling with drifting sand. Skåne belonged to Denmark until 1658. Only a church ruin is left at Luntertun today.
The river
The Rönne River curves around the original town center in a wide bend, and some older properties still run in long, narrow plots from the street down to the water.
Our photo is from the river on a summer morning.
The UFO in the woods
In the Kronoskogen forest outside town stands the Ängelholm UFO memorial, a concrete model of a flying saucer and its landing marks, built in 1972.
It marks the story of Gösta Carlsson, a local entrepreneur known as the Pollen King for his bee pollen business, who said he met a UFO and its crew there in May 1946. Researchers from the Swedish UFO group UFO-Sverige later found no convincing evidence it happened as he described, but the monument has become a local landmark, a short walk from the beach.
The sign at the gate tells the story in Swedish: Carlsson said he saw the craft and its crew on May 18, 1946, and in 1972 he had the monument built, a smaller model of the craft with the landing marks laid out where he said it touched down. From the gate it's about 500 meters through the woods.
