“I can’t say exactly,” answered the old man, in an innocent manner, “but it is long a way, you will find, for it is seven years since I left there, and I have worn out all these shoes on the way.”
“Then let him who will, go there, but I will not,” said the giant, and threw the stones from him to the ground with such force that they rang as they struck it.
The stones lie there by the roadside even to-day, but the most remarkable circumstance is that they turn over whenever the church bells in Orebro are rung. [[153]]
Rugga Bridge.[1]
In the last years of the fourteenth century there lived in Strengnäs, the well-known bishop, Konrad Rugga, or Bishop Cort, as he was called by the people. Holding his office at a time when the glory of Papacy was at its height, it is natural that his power was great and influence unusual. Yet tradition has not been content with this, but has magnified his endowments to the almost supernatural.
In order to maintain discipline and order in his bishopric he was wont to travel from place to place in his diocese, always visiting in these journeys the convent of Riseberga.
During one of these official tours he purchased in Tangerosa, three small farms, and made of them a large domain, which he improved and called Trystorp—three farms—but from Riseberga to Trystorp it is a long distance, and as the Bishop was not unskilled in constructing underground ways—he having already completed one such under the Mälar from Strengnäs to his residence, Tynnelsö—he tunneled a passage from the monastery to Trystorp under Logsjö. For the [[154]]public he built a road above ground, which is the same that now leads to Trystorp around the north shore of Logsjö.
Over a stream, or at that time a little river, which, just below Riseberga, runs from the south in a northerly course, he built a substantial bridge of sandstone. The bridge is even to-day called Rugga’s bridge or more commonly Ruggebro.
Not long after the death of Bishop Cort the Papal power was forced to yield in Sweden to the doctrines of Luther and Riseberga to share the fate of other convents in the land.