6. The well
The year is 1616 and a message comes from Copenhagen – in order to ensure the fresh water demand, a new well will be built at Bohus. Several convicts are sent from Copenhagen and Elsinore. One of them is Peter Mattson who has been sentenced to death, but gets his death sentence converted to life while working in the well. One can only wonder what it looked like the day he set foot here in the courtyard to do his first hard day of work at the well.
Several prisoners of the same caliber are sent to Bohus shortly afterwards. One might think that penal servitude is better than execution, but in a sense it was only a more prolonged death penalty that awaited these prisoners.
It was never a question of merely digging a new well. The ground here in the courtyard consists of pure granite. Firing or heating was the technology used t to be able to get down into the rock. An extremely slow procedure that involves heating the rock with fire so that cracks form. The rock can then be broken with a sledgehammer and skewers. After a fire, you can at best, break about a decimeter of rock at a time.
When dusk falls on Bohus, it’s time for the risky job of lighting the fires down in the well. The fires are usually allowed to burn out during the night and the smoke is vented as best as possible before the prisoners return to the well the next day. You can imagine what it feels like to be forced to enter against your will into a smoky and hot shaft and then work there all day with a sledgehammer and skewers.
The work is very tough and is further aggravated by the prisoners being chained and beaten in iron shackles. Fatalities, rock falls and infections after abrasions from the buoys are so frequent that County Governor Jörgen Lunge has to write to Copenhagen at regular intervals to recruit new prisoners for Bohus.
For a full 13 years, the work of slowly firing down into the rock continues until one day, when a depth of 22 meters is reached, you suddenly discover that water is beginning to seep in and the endless work on the well is finally over.
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