HISTORY Before the 1100 century Karl´s and the village of Bondarv have a very long history beginning over a thousand years ago. Some of it can be sensed upon entering the courtyard amongst the sun burnt buildings. A buried altar stone with burnt animal bones testify to this. Hidden and almost forgotten graves in the near vicinity tells us about the first settlers and how they made it possible to make a living in this place for ages to come. In the 1350´s The Black Death raged across the country and also swept over Järvsö parish. Legend speaks of a young girl as the only survivor of Bondarv village. She supposedly lived at the site where Karl´s is situated today. She started a new family with a wanderer, hence securing the family´s future. The first known farmer at the site was born in the end of the 1400´s. In the 1600´s The farm bears the name Karl after Carl Carlsson that farmed the grounds during the later part of the 1600´s. He married the daughter in the family that had resided in the farm for centuries. Her name was Marit and she took Carl to be her husband against her father’s will. Carl was a very controversial man and Marit came to be accused and convicted for witchcraft. In the 1700´s The farm has stood on this site for over a thousand years, but what you see today are buildings erected from mid 1700´s until the turn of the century. When the farm was completed and properly cared for, it is said that the wife Gölin with pride and joy over her husband’s work said: Now we live in a farm fit for a king!” In the 1800´s The last wedding at the farm took place in 1833. The beautifully decorated bed in the main house is a token from this wedding. Nine years later the only son in the marriage was born; Jonas. He came to be the last farmer to live here at Karl´s. He never married and was childless. He let everything stay “as it was in the olden days”. At Karl´s, time came to a stop. Karl´s or Karl´s Farm Jonas died in 1922. The buildings were then in quite poor shape, and they deteriorated even more before the Local Committee bought the farm a few years later. The farm had already been studied, measured and reported about, by the Nordic Museum ethnologist Sigurd Erixon. By the beginning of the 1900´s old Swedish folk culture was studied by architects like Ivar Tengbom and Johan Åkerlund, and Karl´s farm in Bondarv was exemplified in the book “Old Swedish Folk homes” When the Local Committee by the end of the 1920´s became owners of the farm, they made it into a local museum and show farm, and it started to be called Karl´s Farm. Activities now soared on the farm. The houses were given new roofs. Windows and doors were repaired, and items sold on auctions were bought back. Donations came pouring in. Never before had the shelves been filled with so much porcelain, as now. The locals of Järvsö were glad for Karl´s, the repairs and the decorating. They donated their own inherited furniture, pots, tools and textiles. And that´s how it came to be that the old hayforks, tools, and ironclad pitchforks bear the marks of several different names and trademarks. It is also why the grain barn is full of the finest carriages and wagons. Butter cups, cheese tins, sausage bags and other food related items in the chamber remind us of how the self maintained household was run for centuries. So recently and yet so long ago. Karl´s logo is designed by Åsa Jägergård. The buildings with their different functions have been placed around the courtyard in the slope facing the river Ljusnan´s valley. The courtyard shapes a room where the past and the present melt together and you can easily imagine how life was lived for over 200 years ago. The story about Karl´s and it´s people comes to life every summer in a light- and sound play- the Karl´s Farm play. The farm is owned by Hälsinglands joint local committee and operated by Karl´s committee within Järvsö Local committee.