Ängelholm UFO memorial

The Ängelholm UFO memorial is a Swedish monument dedicated to an alleged UFO landing site in the Kronoskogen forest near Ängelholm. It includes a concrete scale model of a flying saucer, the purportedly life-size landing impressions on the ground, and copper plaques mounted on pillars. These reflect the account of Swedish entrepreneur Gösta Carlsson who attributed his success to a 1946 UFO encounter. The memorial, erected in 1972, is maintained by the local government. It has become a tourist destination and is Swedish National Heritage Board heritage site RAÄ Strövelstorp 47:1.

Ängelholm UFO memorial
Native name
Swedish: UFO-monumentet i Ängelholm
Drone photograph of the memorial
LocationKronoskogen, Ängelholm, Skåne, Sweden
Coordinates56°13′58.4″N 12°49′8.55″E
BuiltSeptember 1972
Governing bodySwedish National Heritage Board

Background
Photograph of a Swedish-language plaque
Translated from Swedish, an on-site plaque reads:
"A UFO landed and took off at this location on May 18, 1946.
All cement markings are cast exactly according to existing impressions in the ground and according to the dimensional sketch, which an eyewitness to the event drew up on May 19, 1946.
Vegeholm 1-9 1972
Gösta Carlsson"

Gösta Carlsson (1918–2003)[1] founded Cernelle AB in 1953. He became known as Pollenkungen (The Pollen King) because the company uses bee pollen to create herbal remedies.[2] Carlsson invested in the local ice hockey club, Rögle BK. He converted a former Cernelle warehouse into an arena and signed Ulf Sterner, Sweden's first player to make a National Hockey League roster. In the 1960s, Rögle BK won its division and was promoted to the country's highest league (Hockeyettan).[3][4]

Carlsson attributed his success to an earlier UFO experience.[4] In the 1970s, he revealed his May 1946 encounter in the woods near Ängelholm.[5] Carlsson was walking back from the beach through Kronoskogen, a forest planted into sandy soil to protect the coast,[4] when he says he noticed a light at the edge of a clearing. He approached what, from a distance, seemed to be a crew setting up a "funfair carousel".[6] Upon entering the glade, he reported seeing a disc sitting on a keel-like fin and a pair of retractable legs. Carlsson claims to have interacted with the crew, one of whom used a device resembling a chest-mounted bellows camera to keep him away. After Carlsson witnessed the craft leave, he returned to the clearing to gather what he believed were artifacts discarded by the crew, including a quartz rod. He measured gouges in the ground that he attributed to the craft and created sketches; these would form the basis of the future UFO memorial.[7]

One of the first public statements that Carlsson gave was to journalist Eugen Semitjov.[7] Semitjov went with Carlsson to the clearing before the memorial's construction. After interviewing Carlsson, Semitjov tested quartz allegedly discarded by the crew. He sent it to the mineralogical department at Stockholm University without revealing the provenance. Researchers at Stockholm found it to be completely mundane.[7]: 219  In 1995, Swedish ufologist Clas Svahn wrote a book with Carlsson about the incident, Mötet i gläntan (The Meeting in the Clearing).[6] According to Svahn, there was no convincing evidence that the event occurred as described by Carlsson.[8] Svahn has described typical alien abductions as "stories [that] originate in inner experiences rather than in an external, physical reality."[9] Carlsson both maintained that the events occurred and acknowledged that they might sound like dreams to others. He additionally connected the Kronoskogen encounter to subsequent fainting spells, nightmares, and an experience that he described as if his skull were an overloaded radio receiver.[10] Swedish historian, Dick Harrison, characterized Carlsson's narrative as "alleged but not proven".[4]

Monument
Aerial photograph
Drone photograph
Aerial photograph of the site in 1963 (left), and drone photo of the completed memorial in 2021 (right)

A concrete model of a flying saucer, cast in Carlsson's Välinge factory, is the centerpiece of the memorial. The one-eighth-scale replica, built from Carlsson's sketches, sits on a rear fin, and support legs atop a cement slab. A metal, periscope-like device protrudes from the top. Concrete paths depicting landing impressions circle the disc to give a sense of size. Copper plates mounted on pillars at the edge of the clearing provide the purported eyewitness testimony.[7][5] A plaque beside a nearby pit claims the ship's crew used it as a temporary grave.[11] The monument is Swedish National Heritage Board heritage site number RAÄ Strövelstorp 47:1.[12][13]

The memorial is a tourist destination, a few kilometers from Ängelholm,[13] and within walking distance from the beach. As of 2015, Ängelholm Municipality maintains the privately-owned site. A 2015 initiative allowed workers to clear away encroaching plants, replace rotten wood benches, and touch up the cement paths on the forest floor.[14] Guided tours lead visitors from the Skåne Line bunkers on the beach, through the Kronoskogen forest, and into the glade.[15] Tour guide Ingrid Persson Skog describes the area as, "Scandinavia's only monument of an extraterrestrial visit".[16]

See also

References
  1. "Sannsagan om Pollenkungen" [The true story of the Pollen King]. Helsingborgs Dagblad (in Swedish). 23 November 2003.
  2. Cernelle (2023). "About us: History". Archived from the original on 20 March 2023. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  3. Carlsson, Bo; Backman, Jyri; Stark, Tobias (June 2022). "The hegemonic impact of the NHL and the 'Americanization' of Swedish ice hockey and resistance: Rögle BK as 'hockey culture'". Sport in Society. 25 (6): 1125–1141. doi:10.1080/17430437.2022.2063581. ISSN 1743-0437. S2CID 248440213. Archived from the original on 2023-03-26. Retrieved 2023-01-29.
  4. Harrison, Dick (28 April 2017). "UFO i Skåne?" [UFO in Skåne?]. Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 27 January 2023. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  5. "Världens första monument över "flygande tefat"" [The world's first "flying saucer" monument]. Arbetet (in Swedish). 29 September 1972. Archived from the original on 2023-01-27. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  6. Svahn, Clas; Carlsson, Gösta (1995). Mötet i gläntan - Sveriges mest kända närkontakt med UFO [The meeting in the clearing - Sweden's most famous close contact with UFOs] (in Swedish). Sweden: Parthenon. ISBN 9789185044139. Min första tanke är att det är en tivolikarusell som någon kört dit. [My first thought is that it's a funfair carousel that someone drove out there.]
  7. Semitjov, Eugen (1974). "13 Mannen som teg i 25 år" [The man who was silent for 25 years]. De otroliga tefaten [The incredible saucers] (in Swedish). Stockholm, Sweden: Askild & Kärnekull. pp. 210–226. ISBN 9789170089268.
  8. "FAQ - Svar på vanliga frågor om UFO och UFO-Sverige" [FAQ - Answers to frequently asked questions about UFOs and UFO-Sweden]. ufo.se (in Swedish). UFO-Sweden. Archived from the original on 2008-04-25. Retrieved 2008-05-06.
  9. Oscarsson, Mattias (18 December 2022). "Finns sanningen om utomjordingarna i ett arkiv i Norrköping?" [Is the truth about the aliens in a Norrköping archive?]. Sydsvenskan (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  10. Semitjov, Eugen (1974). "13 Mannen som teg i 25 år" [The man who was silent for 25 years]. De otroliga tefaten [The incredible saucers] (in Swedish). Stockholm, Sweden: Askild & Kärnekull. pp. 222–226. ISBN 9789170089268. Archived from the original on 2023-03-26. Retrieved 2023-02-11. p. 224: [...]säger Gösta Carlsson. Jag ser ett likblekt flickansikte inramat av ljust hár. Det börjar bli för mycket för mig i drömmen. Just när jag försöker skrika, bleknar bilden bort, krymper som i en TV. Jag vaknar badande i kallsvett och med blixtrande huvudvärk. Det känns som om skallen fungerat som någon sorts radiosändare och mottagare samtidigt [Says Gösta Carlsson, 'I see a pale girl's face framed by fair hair. It's getting to be too much for me in the dream. Just as I try to scream, the image fades away, shrinks like a tube television going out. I wake up bathed in a cold sweat, with a throbbing headache. It feels as if my skull functioned as some kind of radio transmitter and receiver at the same time.']
  11. Gravplats [Graves] (on-site plaque) (in Swedish). Ängelholm, Sweden: pollenkungen.se. I denna grop begravdes tillfälligt tvá döda besättningsmän medan det skedade rymdskeppet reparerades. [Two dead crew members were temporarily buried in this pit meanwhile the spaceship was repaired.]
  12. Högberg, Anders; Holtorf, Cornelius (2020). Cultural Heritage and the Future. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. p. 14. ISBN 978-1138829015.
  13. RAÄ-nummer 47:1
  14. Gunnarsson, Evelina (20 July 2015). "Nu röjs det kring ufot" [Now it is clear about UFOs]. Helsingborgs Dagblad (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  15. Niklasson, Anette (11 July 2022). "Guidade turer vid ufo-monumentet" [Guided tours at the UFO monument]. Helsingborgs Dagblad (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  16. "75 år sedan UFO-dramat i Ängelholm" [75 years since the UFO drama in Ängelholm]. svt.se (in Swedish). Sveriges Television AB. 6 April 2021. Retrieved 8 April 2023. Skandinaviens enda monument över ett utomjordiskt besök [Scandinavia's only monument of an extraterrestrial visit.]
  17. Jasińska, Joanna (11 July 2020). "Close encounter of third kind: the mystery surrounding an alleged alien abduction that still captures the imagination". The First News. Polish Press Agency.
  18. Brocklehurst, Steven (9 November 2019). "The UFO sighting investigated by the police". BBC Scotland News. Retrieved 30 March 2023.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ängelholm UFO Monument.
External image
image icon Painting of the account
Dan Sternoczky illustrated Carlsson's account in UFO-Aktuellt (1985).
  • Pollenkungen – The image gallery from the Pollenkungen (Pollen King) documentary contains news clippings and photographs of the memorial's construction.
  • UFO-Monumentet Ängelholm – Video drone tour
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