Fatburen


Fatburen is one of the oldest buildings on the Boo estate. The walls are more than a metre thick at the bottom to keep the summer heat out. Fatburen has three floors on the inside and the roof is tarred and shingled.

The word fatbur or fatabur derives from the old Swedish terms “fat”, meaning clothing or pieces of equipment, and from “bur”, which means shed.

This kind of building was used for storing clothing and other valuable items in earlier times. Fatburen was always a special building. It was a construction made to be as safe as possible to resist fire, burglary and looting, as it contained valuable objects (hence the small windows and the thick walls).

The precise age of fatburen is a disputed matter, but it was probably built during the latter part of the 17th century. Fatburen also served as a fireproof construction for storage of the parish sowing seeds and perhaps even the bread grains. These were well protected against fire in this stone building, during a time in which most buildings were made of wood.