Gammelstad Church Town

The houses were only used on Sundays and during religious festivals to accommodate worshipers from the surrounding countryside who could not return home the same day due to the long distance and difficult traveling conditions.[4] The Gammelstad Church Town began as a trading settlement, and became the focus of religious observances for farming communities in the region.Such settlements are unique, because they were shaped by the religious and social needs of a regions inhabitants, rather than by economic and geographic forces.The relocation of the commercial centre preserved the unique settlement of Gammelstad, leaving it untouched by the later 19th-century industrialization of the region.Both types of housing surround the late 15th-century church, the district's only stone building, whose size reflects the prosperity of the region.