Smygehuk lighthouse and the keepers’ houses. Photo by Håkan Dahlström, CC BY 2.0.

A white iron tower at the end of Sweden, bought for 8,740 kronor in a contract with a late-delivery fine, and sleeping guests in the keepers’ houses beside it.

The paperwork survives, transcribed from the archives on a local history site. On 23 December 1882 the Royal Pilotage Board signed a contract with Ludvigsbergs Mekaniska Werkstad in Stockholm for a tower of iron to a design by Gustav von Heidenstam, with lantern and lens, for 8,740 kronor all in. The walls were to be clad in Bessemer ship plate, the work was due for inspection by 1 June 1883, and every day of delay would cost the workshop 50 kronor. The tower was to stand fully assembled at the workshop for inspection, and the contractor had to supply six fitters at Smygehuk, at 6 kronor for a 12-hour day. The light was first lit on 15 October 1883. Fyrwiki says it was built with the same appearance and dimensions as the Stenkyrkehuk lighthouse on Gotland.

The setting is the point of it. Smygehuk is the southernmost point of Sweden. Visit Trelleborg explains the name: huk is Dutch for headland, and smyge is Scanian for a narrow passage or hidden nook. The headland also holds nine of the ten original limestone kilns, and shore stones with 100-million-year-old sea urchin fossils.

The light was staffed until 1970, then automated, and it went dark in October 1975 when the offshore Kullagrund lighthouse took over. It was relit on 30 April 2001, after an initiative from Trelleborg municipality, the Swedish Lighthouse Society and others. It is modest now. According to English Wikipedia the lens no longer rotates, and the light serves mostly pleasure boats and local fishermen; sources disagree on the lamp’s strength and range. The same article notes a weather station here whose last report went out in April 1984, with an old instrument housing and rain gauge still standing east of the tower.

You can also stay. The keepers’ quarters became a hostel, run today as STF Smygehuk Fyr, where guests sleep in the former keeper’s house or the woodshed and, in summer, sometimes take coffee in the foghorn house. The tower is beside it, and STF calls the view from it magnificent.

Some details are loose. Wikipedia and Fyrwiki give the tower’s height as 17 metres; Visit Trelleborg says 18. The listing that surfaced it called the plates riveted, which none of the sources checked say. Visit Trelleborg gives no opening hours or admission for the tower, and its office is open only on weekdays. Check with the hostel before you drive to the end of the road.