Meet the 74-year-old ‘night watchmen’ who’s truly the last of his kind: A ‘cultural marvel’

The narrow cobblestone streets of Ystad, a remote village in southern Sweden, looks like something out of an advent calendar.

Watching over the half-timbered homes and Gothic architecture is a 13th-century church “whose dark spire towered over the medieval market town like a witch’s hat,” writes Eliot Stein in his new book, “Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive” (St. Martin’s Press), out now.

And at the very top of that church tower, 14 stories up and reachable only by a rickety spiral staircase, is 74-year-old Roland Borg, one of the world’s last night watchmen.

His job, writes Stein, is to blow a “haunting, bellowed cry” with a four-foot-long copper horn, “reassuring the town’s 29,000 residents that all is well.”

He repeats this musical announcement “every fifteen minutes from the tower’s four windows in a north-east-south-and-west order between 9:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m., just as he has done for the past 57 years.”

Sweden’s night watchman is just one of the handful of “cultural marvels on the edge of disappearance” that Stein documents in “Custodians of Wonder.”

He travels to the mountains of Italy to watch women make su filindeu, a 300-year-old pasta recipe called “the threads of God.”

He visits a Peruvian craftsman who continues to weave “the last remaining Inca suspension bridge out of grass.” And he befriends practitioners of an ancient African percussion instrument called a balafon that’s more than 800 years old.

These aging craftsmen and fading customs are worth our time, Stein writes, because they “remind us how much there still is to discover.”

There’s also something fascinating about watching a person do something “that nearly nobody else in the world knows how to do,” Stein writes. “It’s like watching a secret.”

Borg’s secluded office perch definitely feels like a secret, but it’s anything but deluxe.

There’s no bathroom, kitchen, central heat, or even Wi-Fi. He’s got a sole IKEA chair, a plug-in radiator, a TV and DVD player, and a touch-tone phone to call the fire department in case of emergency.

But he’s brought a personal touch to his tiny hovel, decorating the walls with posters of Elvis Presley and artwork from his grandchildren.

Borg’s commitment to his post is a curious thing. Especially in, as Stein notes, “an age of smoke detectors, street lighting, and video surveillance.” At a time when technology can see almost everything, is it just respect for tradition that keeps Borg employed? Or does he serve a deeper human need? 

Whatever his reasons, Borg isn’t in it for the money. He earns 137 SEK ($12.55) an hour, well below the national average of 193 SEK ($17.70). “Roland is considered an hourly employee,” Stein writes. “Meaning he has no vacation and few benefits.”

Even though he doesn’t get paid on Christmas, he shows up anyway. Borg has even created his own holiday tradition, watching his well-worn “Lady and the Tramp” DVD alone in the tower on Christmas Eve, with one eye on the lights of the town below.

On New Year’s Eve, “he brings the boom box over to the eastern window and blasts Elvis as revelers in the square below countdown to midnight,” Stein writes.

Night watchmen have been around for almost the entirety of human existence, at least as long as “people first learned to become afraid of the dark,” Stein writes. During the 9th century, cities and towns across Europe hired nightly guardians to look out for invading enemies, storms, or fires.

But today, “Europe has lots of watchmen reenactors but very few actual watchmen,” Stein writes.

They still exist across Europe, but nothing quite like Ystad, whose night watchman stands guard 365 days a year. “In other cities, it is more ceremonial,” Johannes Thier, the head of the European Guild of Night Watchmen and Tower Guards, told the author. “But in Ystad, it’s a job.”

It’s been that way for the last 500 years, and for the last 103 years, the post has belonged to a Borg. Roland Borg’s grandfather, Fritz, became the night watchman in 1921, and his wool coat “still hangs in a corner of the keep’s rafters,” Stein writes.

Twenty years later, Fritz’s son, Helmer, took his place in the tower. “My grandfather told my father, ‘Okay, it’s time for you to take over now,’ so he did,” Borg told the author.

Borg, the youngest of eight children, started visiting the tower when he was just 5. He watched his dad work, learning how to blow the horn correctly (so it always created the same distinctive tone), and in some cases, greeting visitors like King Gustaf VI Adolf, who “couldn’t believe that a night watchman still existed somewhere within his country,” Stein writes. 

Borg took over the post in 1971 after Fritz learned he had terminal cancer, but it wasn’t an easy transition. For one thing, he realized he was terrified of the dark. “When I was with my dad, we were two, but when I was by myself, I heard everything creaking and thought, ‘Oh, what was that?’” Borg told the author.

There have long been rumors that the tower is haunted by a ghost named Johanna, “the headless daughter of a priest from the 1600s who was said to drift through the walls in the rain,” writes Stein.

The headless ghost aside, Borg has dealt with a real threat.

In 2000, a man named Ulf Borgström “began systematically setting fires across southern Sweden,” writes Stein. He was suspected of burning more than 200 buildings, always managing to evade capture.

In 2003, he attempted to burn down several buildings in Ystad, which Borg quickly spotted and alerted the local fire department.

Borgström has been arrested and released several times, and because he was frequently captured in Ystad (thanks to Borg’s eagle eyes), he has vowed to burn it to the ground. “Revenge is what I live for,” he reportedly told Swedish journalists from behind bars. “It will burn in Ystad.” Borg will be waiting if (or when) he attempts it.

Other than the notorious arsonist, Borg says he’s only alerted the town of real danger maybe 20 times. “When nothing out of the ordinary happens — often for years on end — his job is to lean out the window every fifteen minutes; float a long, hanging note in the air; and reassure people, ‘You’re okay,’” Stein writes.

And that may ultimately be the real purpose he serves. As Stein observed, even when the temperatures in Ystad fell below freezing, the townspeople still cracked their windows open. “They can’t sleep when they don’t hear it,” Stein was told. “It gives us a special feeling, a comfort. We get used to it as children, we love it.”

Borg’s son, Robert, is unlikely to become the fourth generation of his family to become the town’s night watchman. “He works as a security guard in Landskrona,” Borg told the author, with more than a hint of disappointment. 

This begs the question, will the municipality hire another watchman when Borg inevitably retires, or replace him with infrared cameras? It remains to be seen, but at least for one more Christmas Eve, Borg will be on top of Saint Mary’s spire, watching “Lady and the Tramp,” listening to Elvis — and keeping his fellow Ystadians safe from serial arsonists.