Bonnstan dates back to the 17th century, and one of the oldest known depictions of the church town is given by Carl von Linné when he describes his visit to Skellefteå in 1732: inwid kyrkian Siällefte, an innumerable hoop of houses, as well as a polite town, with white chimneys, built on the 2nd streets, with cross streets consisting of 350 to 400 houses.

The polite city that Linnaeus describes was used as a place to spend the night by the parishioners who lived far outside the city. It was simply not possible for them to travel both to church and home again in a single day and they needed somewhere to sleep. In each house there were a number of chambers, and to accommodate all the parishioners, the best we see today was once three times as large.

As so many people gathered in one place, it became a natural gathering place for the inhabitants of the area. Here you could meet relatives and friends who lived in other villages, and many met their future spouse here. There are many stories of young men wandering around Bonnstan on weekend evenings to find love. Each group was led by a person who selected a girl to court. They stood outside her room and recited courtship rhymes from memory, hoping that the girl in question would respond to the feelings. If luck was on their side, the boy in question was allowed to come in and lie down fully clothed on the girl’s bed, and talk all night long. Sometimes the nightly visit led to marriage in the end, but most of the time the boy got the nob and the group then moved on to other houses.

But Bonnstan has not only been a place for meetings and romances, but darker moments have been preserved. In the 1980s, a clogged door was found in one of the chambers, and once the door was opened, bloody rags were found in an otherwise untouched room. After much questioning, it was finally revealed that two brothers had ended up in a fight in the room 60 years earlier. One brother later died of his injuries, and in an attempt to forget what had happened, the room was closed again by the mother and the brother who remained.

The chambers in Bonnstan are still used by private individuals and during the summer the church town comes to life again. Midsummer celebrations and markets of various kinds are held here every year, and the worn facades of the houses are a popular backdrop for photographing loved ones.