It stood for 350 years, bearing fruit for a dozen generations, but strong winds finally brought down what is believed to be the oldest pear tree in Scandinavia.
Ever since the mid-1600s, the massive pear tree had helped feed the people outside Enkoeping, an hour’s drive west of Stockholm.
On Saturday night, as Alf and Eivor Svantesson were going to bed after watching Sweden’s Carolina Kluft win the Olympic gold in the heptathlon in Athens, the tree keeled over outside their house in an ear-deafening crash.
”It sounded like gunshots at first,” Eivor Svantesson said. ”We thought someone was saluting the gold.”
As they looked out the window, they saw their beloved tree had fallen to the ground. Strong winds had been blowing in the area for the last couple of days, Eivor Svantesson said. The inside of the trunk also turned out to be rotten.
”It feels very empty now,” said Svantesson (74). She has lived in the house since 1959.
”As a child, I played and hid in that tree, and my children and their children have as well. This whole area was known for that tree.”
Her husband, Alf, said a professor from Uppsala University, Anton Nilsson, dated the tree in 1989. It was widely believed to be the oldest of its kind in the Nordic countries — Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Its trunk measured 4,2m in circumference and it was about 6m tall, Alf said. — Sapa-AP