The Thousand-Year Linden of Torslanda

For eighty years this was the only tree in Gothenburg with a nature monument order on it. The county board made it a naturminne in 1945, and nothing else in the city joined it until four boundary oaks in Orgryte were designated in October 2025. Locally it is the Thousand-Year Linden, and the thousand comes from the church rather than from the tree. The oldest parts of Torslanda kyrka go back to the late eleventh or early twelfth century, and tradition has long held that tree and building arrived together. The sources that have looked hardest, Swedish Radio and the parish among them, put it nearer 800 to 900 years, which is old enough without the folklore. It does not grow as one trunk. Centuries of cutting back left it regrowing from the stool, and it has carried several stems for as long as anyone has described it, nine of them by one old account. One of those stems came down in an autumn storm in 2024, fell across Kongahallavagen and struck a passing car. The driver was unhurt. A further section left hanging over the road was taken off afterwards, so expect a tree being actively worked on rather than left to itself. Which lime it is, nobody has recorded. If you know the leaf, tell us.