After almost 2 hours on the train from Stockholm, I was in the town of Ängelsberg next to the idyllic Åmänningen Lake, this small town was very pretty with many cute wooden houses, hard to believe that I did not came for summer vacation, but to see industrial site – the Engelsbergs Ironworks. From the train station, it was a really nice 1.5 Kilometers Walk to the complex, passed cute sculpture park and a big tree house along the small lake. The complex of former ironwork mill, the World Heritage Sites, was located well in the middle of the forest, so lovely that may misunderstand to typical farming village.

Almost every building was painted in red or black, a great contrast to very bright green forest under the blue sky of spring. The biggest building was the former iron smelting building; from outside it was looked like a big farmhouse for livestock, a good example of early industrial architectural style which still based on agricultural building type. Behind the Smelting building was the large complex of worker village built in the different styles depend on construction periods. The village was lovely with great surroundings, I was not sure that the beauty landscape was an original or not, if it was, this place may be one of the most beautiful factories I’ve see. The complex had everything for workers including brewery! My friend whose great grandfather, migrated from Wallonia, was once worked in Engelsberg even said that he hard to believe the hash life story his father told him about their ancestor when we saw this lovely place.

Then I walked back to Ängelsberg for lunch before back to Stockholm, all in all, a nice half day trip to see this idyllic place. In my opinion, Engelsbergs Ironwork is a fine place to see and very accessible by frequent trains connect to Stockholm. As I mentioned this place is hard to believe to be industrial site, in order to appreciate this place, visitor should make a bit of research to understand its history, but if not, just come to admire the real Swedish rural landscape, lovely lake, and cute Swedish red houses, Ängelsberg is a perfect place, maybe better than spend a whole day in Stockholm’s Skansen for set up cultural village.