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Cultural
landscape
The history of Lake Hornborga is also the history of human beings.
More than that, in fact, Lake Hornborga is human beings! Without the
hard work and sweat of generations of people, the landscape and the
lake would have looked very different.
As you wander through the countryside, you can see traces of these
people everywhere: meadows, cattle beats, stone walls and lopped trees.
Meadows
Nowadays, there are very few meadows in the Swedish countryside. A
real meadow is in fact a natural feeding area which has never been
drained, fertilised or limed. What is more, a meadow should be mowed
late in the summer, when the plants have had time to seed.
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Stone walls
The cattle beats and stone walls also remind us of people's hard work
in the past. To drive the cattle between the cow-houses in the village
and the grazing land in outlying districts, cattle paths were created
and, to keep the animals in the meadows and away from the arable land,
stone walls were built. The stone walls that now remain are just a
tiny fragment of the walls that were originally built. At the time
of the land-parcelling act, in the mid-19th century, there were far
more stone walls.
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Lopped
trees
In the past, lopped trees were a common sight in the countryside.
Lopping was a way of pruning trees to obtain winter fodder for the
animals. There are some recently lopped trees at Lake Hornborga, not
least at the Fågeludden parking lot.
Diversity is wealth
The meadows, cattle beats, stone walls and lopped trees create small
yet vital environments for a number of specialists in the animal world.
The diversity is in fact the basis of wealth in the countryside and
hard work is need to create diversity.
Without hard work, we will not be able to conserve our heritage from
previous generations at Lake Hornborga.
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