Vä is a former town in

Scania Scania, also known by its native name of Skåne (, ), is the southernmost of the historical provinces (''landskap'') of Sweden. Located in the south tip of the geographical region of Götaland, the province is roughly conterminous with Skåne ...

, now a village in the

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

Kristianstad Kristianstad (, ; older spelling from Danish ''Christianstad'') is a city and the seat of Kristianstad Municipality, Scania County, Sweden with 40,145 inhabitants in 2016. During the last 15 years, it has gone from a garrison town to a devel ...

in Sweden, ca 5 km south west of the town of

History

The name stems from the old Danish word ''væ'', meaning "cult place or holy ground". Vä Church is one of the oldest stone churches in Sweden, and contains some of the oldest and most monumental

church murals in Sweden Church murals or church wall paintings are mostly medieval paintings found in several Swedish churches. They usually adorn the vaults or walls of the buildings. In Swedish they are sometimes referred to as ''kalkmålningar'', literally "lime ...

. The first written mentioning of Vä as a town is from the 1250s, but already in the early 13th century, the place is mentioned in the

Danish Census Book The Danish Census Book or the Danish book of land taxation ( la, Liber Census Daniæ), ( da, Kong Valdemars Jordebog) dates from the 13th century and consists of a number of separate manuscripts. The original manuscripts are now housed in the Da ...

, by King Valdemar. The town was burnt many times. Most notable are the burnings by Karl Knutsson in 1452, Svante Sture in 1509, in 1569 by the Swedish duke Charles (later king Charles IX. The most infamous burning of Væ, as well as the last, was done by the Swedish King Gustaf II Adolf in 1612. Væ (as of then) was the largest settlement within 24 Danish parishes which the young Swedish king burned down more or less for his own pleasure and without meeting any resistance whatsoever. For this, there exists an exceptional good source. The king boasted of his crimes against civilian Danes in a letter to a cousin which is stored at the Swedish National Archive.The Swedish author Wilhelm Moberg, "Hur historien förfalskas", page 124 of ''333 Årsboken'', Settern, , the author describes the contents of a letter from the mentioned king to his cousin Duke Johan, dated 13 February 1612, which the author read at the Swedish National Archive. Moberg died in 1973, 18 years before the printing of this collection ("333Årsboken"), and had no dealings with the publishing foundation The destroyed town was two years later replaced by ''Christianstad'' by the Danish king

Christian IV Christian IV (12 April 1577 – 28 February 1648) was King of Denmark and Norway and Duke of Holstein and Schleswig from 1588 until his death in 1648. His reign of 59 years, 330 days is the longest of Danish monarchs and Scandinavian monar ...

, which was built in 1614 on the island of ''Allø'', today's Kristianstad. The destroyed Væ lost its privileges as a town and became a substitute for the farmers from nearby villages of ''Næsby'' and ''Nosaby'', who had in their turn had to give up land to build Kristianstad, along with the former town of

Åhus Åhus () is the second largest urban areas in Sweden, locality in Kristianstad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 9,840 inhabitants in 2015, but the number triples during the summer due to tourists who come seeking the beaches and nature o ...

. Today, there are some remains of the former church buildings; in addition to the church, there is also an old wall with pillars and a brick cairn that was the old church of Saint Gertrude and remains of old streets.

References

Sources

Nordisk Familjebok

Salmonsens konversationslexikon
Populated places in Skåne County {{Skåne-geo-stub