Lummelunda Cave

Story

The Lummelunda Cave is located in a nature reserve at Lummelunda north of Visby on Gotland, Sweden. The explored part of this karst cave is almost 4.5km, making it one of the longest caves in Sweden. It is created by the drainage water from the Martebo mire. The water forms a stream with its outlet in the Baltic Sea. In the 15th to 19th centuries, mills and an ironwork were set up by the stream.Although the entrance of the cave has been known for centuries, the main part of it was discovered by three teenage boys during the 1940s–50s. It is visited by around 100,000 people every year and is one of the major tourist attractions on Gotland.HistoryThe cave was most likely formed before the last ice age. The water that creates it is drainage from the Martebo mire which is approximately 11km east of Lummelunda. Most of the water runs as a stream, the Lummelundsån, through the north part of the cave system, exiting the limestone cliffs (known as the Klint) a few hundred meters from the coastline. The stream was much larger and more forceful before the mire, once the largest on Gotland, was drained at the end of the 19th century. The remaining drainage is led through an underground 1150m canal, dropping 17m from Martebo mire to Lummelunda, at 400 liters/second.The stream has been used for industry since the Middle Ages. According to an undocumented litigation in 1778, a mill was built at Lummelunda in 1418. The oldest reliable record is from 1594, where three mills are listed at the stream. In the 1620s, six mills were in use at the Lummelundsån. The cave itself has been known as long as the stream has been used. Carl Linnaeus wrote about the cave during his journey to Gotland in the summer of 1741. The part of the cave where the stream has its outlet, the Linné's Cave, is named after him. The Linné's Cave is 6m wide, 3m high and about 12m long. The bottom of it is filled with water. The Lummelunda Cave is mentioned in the 1917 cave investigation made by geologist and Gotlander Henrik Munthe, where it is called Kytt-Janns källare ("Kytt-Jann's cellar").

"VÄLKOMMEN TILL ETT ÄVENTYR I LUMMELUNDAGROTTANSedan 1959 har tusentals besökare tagit sig hit varje år för att uppleva den magiska grottan och dess vackra droppstenar. På området finns café, butik och restaurang.Kom och upptäck bergets hemligheter med oss!"