Stora Pölsan Fyr

The 1934 lighthouse

The station was established in 1934 as an unmanned leading light on the Marstrandsleden, the fairway running out from Gothenburg toward Marstrand, sitting in the offshore band between the great light at Vinga and the kasun light at Hätteberget. The tower itself is a compact 9.7 m, painted white with a single black belt, its light carried about 18 m above the sea.↗

Over the decades the light grew quietly more modern: a gas-driven fog bell in 1946, AGA burners and 4th- and 6th-order lenses by 1954, and eventually an electric lamp fed by solar panels and batteries — so that today a slender white finger on the horizon keeps its own 8-second rhythm without anyone stationed there.↗

The keeper's presence is long gone, though. Those who climb the tower report a rusted ladder, weathered ironwork and a building left to the birds and the sea — atmospheric and historic, but worn, and to be explored at your own risk rather than as a maintained museum.↗

A wartime echo: the submarine Ulven

Stora Pölsan is also tied to one of Sweden's most poignant maritime disasters of the war. On 15 April 1943 the Swedish submarine Ulven vanished on a secret patrol; the search that followed, involving some 1,500 people — navy, lifeboat crews and fishermen — was the largest rescue effort of its kind at the time.↗

On 5 May the fishing boat GG Normy out of Hälsö located the wreck southwest of the skerry, at about 52 m depth: the submarine had struck a German mine, her bow torn open and all 33 crew lost. The salvage that continued into August left a deep mark on the coastal communities. The waters off Pölsan still carry that memory.↗↗

Landing and the view from the rocks

This is a place for boat owners and long-distance paddlers with good sea legs and weather judgment. Visitors describe the final approach across open water — often a chop — and a landing on the lee side of the skerry being the main event; once ashore, the reward is solitude, a blazing sky at sundown, and curious seals surfacing to watch you.↗

From the rock the panorama is the real prize. Looking south you can pick out the silhouette of Vinga light; to the north lie the Carlsten fortress on Marstrand, the Pater Noster shoals and the kasun beacon at Hätteberget; eastward the chain of islands and the mainland fade back toward Gothenburg. It is, in short, one of the best places to look across the whole northern archipelago and read its lights.↗

Around the area

If you base yourself on Rörö — a car-free island nature reserve just a few kilometres to the east — the landing area around Stora Pölsan sits among other worthwhile archipelago stops: the former coastal fort on Hyppeln, the lighthouse at Stora Oset, the light at Lekskär, and a notable glacial erratic boulder, all within a short sail or paddle.↗