Our History

Rindi's History In Years

 

1989 Studentsföreningen Rindi is formed.
1991 The student union gets its first gathering place.
1994 The student association is moving into the middle floor of the hot tub building. The university education (predecessor to the university) moves to the harbor quarters.
1998 Studentföreningen Rindi becomes its own student union and is then called Gotlands student union Rindi. The University of Gotland becomes an independent university.
1999 The student union moves into the upper floor of the hot tub building.
2007 The student unions operational activities are gathered in one mastery from having previously been distributed among six to seven masterys.
2013 In June, the University of Gotland merges with Uppsala University and becomes Uppsala University Campus Gotland. Rindi is chosen as the student union for Campus Gotland.

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Rindi Castle

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Water and gardens

In the Middle Ages, Almedalen formed the city's port. The place where the corps house is now located was the inner part of the harbor and in the 13th century had a wooden jetty that ships could dock at to load and unload goods. By the middle of the 17th century, when the water had receded, cabbage farms and gardens were planted here by the residents of the inner city. In the 18th century, stables were built in the area and a brandy distillery located on Strandgatan had a wood storage here. The stables with attached warehouse buildings probably remained until the beginning of the 20th century.

 

The thermal bath house is being built

Around Sweden, at the beginning of the 20th century, bathhouses were built with the aim of strengthening the citizen's cleanliness and physical fitness. In 1912, the Visby city council decided that a thermal bathhouse should be built where the stables stood.

 

Visby's thermal baths were inaugurated in 1914. It was a valued place right from the start, because now Visby residents could wash in warm baths all year round and learn to swim in safer ways than in the sea. The bathing water was pumped by steam engine from the Baltic Sea.

 

In the basement of the house there was the men's second-class section for bathtubs and a laundry room with electrically powered washing machines and mangles and a drying room. On the middle floor there were changing rooms, a sauna and the men's first class bath section. On this floor was also the pool, which was located on the surface that in the lower bar is bounded by the brown posts and the outer wall facing Almedalen.

 

The basin is still under the floor.

Upstairs there was the ladies bathtub and a sunbath (an open area where you can sunbathe - today's atrium) and a residence for the bath attendant.
The attic space had water cisterns for cold and hot water.

 

Steam engines provide water to fire hydrants

The houses steam engines supplied the city's fire hydrants with water. Until 1925, when Visby received running water via buried pipes, the basin was a water reserve for firefighting.

In the 1940s, the upper floor was rebuilt to provide more space for the lifeguards residence. Half the atrium, or the sun bath as it was then called, was built in to become a kitchen.

The bath house and laundry remained active until 1961 and 1966 respectively.

 

Manufacturing and abstract art

Now the house was rebuilt quite heavily inside to suit a new tenant. While waiting for a factory premises to be arranged elsewhere in the city, LM Ericsson manufactured electrical components for a few years on the middle and upper floors of the building.

 

During the first half of the 60s, the building also housed a screen printing company and a company that manufactured signs. In the late 60s, parts of the middle floor were used as an art gallery for abstract art.

 

Clothing manufacturing and bicycle rental

In 1970, some time after LM Ericsson moved to its new factory premises, a textile company established itself in the building to manufacture women's underwear. The textile company was not alone in the house: it is alleged that during parts of the 70s a men's club occasionally met in the attic to drink alcoholic beverages and play with a large car track. During the 70s and the first half of the 80s, a smaller part of the house was used to rent out bicycles in the summer.

 

When the textile company left the hot bath house in 1990, it was only used for clothing sales during the summer.

 

The thermal bath house will be Rindis

In 1994, the hot bath house and the student association Rindi came together when parts of the house came under the care of the student association. The basement floor was used for some time back by the municipality's park administration, which remains there to this day.

 

How Rindi got Rindiborgen

 

A first, small one, Rindiborg.

The student association Rindi was formed on 12 April 1989. The association did not have its own premises. A collaboration with a restaurant in Visby inner city meant that the association had pub operations one evening a week. Administrative matters were handled at the home of one of the board members.

 

At the end of 1990, the student association got its first house on Havdervägen (on the edge of the A7 area). The house, which soon came to be known as Rindiborgen, was small and in poor condition and was renovated by a set of enthusiastic members. It was inaugurated in 1991 but had no space for the administration so it had to continue to be managed at the homes of the board members.

 

The second Rindiborgen

In the fall of 1992, the search for a new Rindiborg began. The number of members had increased rapidly and the house had therefore become too crowded. In addition, within a few years, the university education would move to new premises in the harbor quarter, where the school's main building is now located.

 

Both Rindiborgens neighbors and Gotland municipality wanted the association to move its operations. The student association was offered to rent a brick house at the tax authority or a floor in a restaurant in the harbor. The association was not interested in either. The most interesting location was a building that was close to the new college and where there were few neighbors nearby who could be disturbed by the activity. The building was the hot bath house.

 

The municipality of Gotland initially did not want to let the student association move in as the building was intended as a future conference facility.

 

After intensive lobbying by the student association's board, the municipality finally decided to let the student association use one of the hot bath houses three floors. At the end of 1993, professional craftsmen with the support of students began a renovation and rebuilding of the house. Parts of the work were greatly accelerated and this may have been why the ceiling of the men's toilet fell during the opening party in May 1994.

 

Small bar

The bar was then located in the room known as the "Red Room". Today's lower bar was a sitting room and the association office was in the room that is now a liquor store. After some time, the bar moved to the room it is still in today and the old bar became a discotheque. The walls were painted dark blue and the windows were covered with wooden boards and glass wool to reduce the risk that the discos high sound volume would disturb the surroundings.

 

The basement floor was rebuilt to accommodate the activities of the municipal park administration. On the upper floor, for a year in the late 90s, the Universitys business cooperation Innova is located. Parts of the floor were used as unplanned storage by the student union, while other parts are completely empty.

 

In 1998, the student association Rindi received the status of a student union and became the Gotland Student Union Rindi. In the same year, a sitting veranda on the middle floor was converted into the still existing laundry room. But the big event for the house itself was that the remodeling of the upper floor now began, to provide much needed space for the growing student body. Via the design of the bar, they wanted to link to the buildings origin as a bathhouse. The upper floor would not only provide a new bar, but also give the subject associations a place in the union building and the union administration larger spaces. In connection with the

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Ivy as plant and symbol

 

Murgröna has, as is known, given its name to the student union on Gotland (Rindi means Murgrönan). But ivy is also Gotlands landscape flower and has been so since 1909 when Professor VB Wittrock chose landscape flowers for many Swedish landscapes.

 

Ivy is a vascular plant and not really a flower. It is evergreen, it flowers in autumn, it is a vine and its leaves can have two different appearances: the female flower is oval while the male flower is lobed. The tabbed shape is the shape the student union chose to have in its emblem.

 

Diffusion

• Around Europe

• Southern Sweden and along the east coast.

• It is rare, except on Gotland. It is also protected in several counties, but not in Gotland County.

 

The toxicology of ivy

The ivy is considered poisonous.

 

The whole ivy contains saponin, which can cause stomach upset. The saponin also means that the leaves can cause skin irritations.

 

The berries, which are small and black, can cause nausea and diarrhea.

 

Crushed ivy leaves were used in the past to clean wounds and soothe burns. The berries were used as emetics and laxatives (this is especially interesting because part of the treatment for someone who has eaten ivy berries is to try to get them out quickly).

 

The ivy symbol

As a plant, ivy symbolizes faithfulness, friendship and eternity.

 

In the early Christian era, a bed of ivy was placed in graves to remind that life did not end with burial. There are folk traditions that say that a yard that has an outdoor ivy will remain prosperous as long as the ivy lives. On the other hand, ivy should not be grown indoors: a proverb claims that "where ivy thrives, home comfort does not thrive there".

 

It is unclear how the student unions predecessor, the student association Rindi, got the ivy as its name and symbol. With a high probability, they wanted to connect to the place where they were (and still are). It is conceivable that the ivy it symbolizes (see above) was considered appropriate for a student association.

 

After a conversation with the first treasurer, it has emerged that a vote was taken for the name where Rindi received the most votes and yes it was to connect to Gotland, but instead of calling itself Gotlands student association, they chose Student Association Rindi, or Student Association Murgrönan.

 

Long-lived party god symbol

An age of 300 years for ivy is not unusual. There are also specimens that are 1000 years old.

 

The ivy was associated in antiquity with the god Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of revelry and wore an ivy wreath on his head. Those who want to see something unvarnished about the student unions activities can then be amused by the fact that both the party god and the student union have clear connections to ivy.

 

No exclusive rights to the name

On Gotland, it is not only the student union that uses "rindi" in its name. A restaurant, a dog kennel, an energy company, a music group and a pharmacy also use "rindi" in their names. A botanical association has a members publication called "Rindi" in short.

 

Harmful bacteria linked to Rindi

The name Rindi is not limited to Gotland or even Sweden.

• In the US there is a consulting company for the marketing of films and which trains people in handling the media in a good way.

• In Italy, there is a microbiologist, Doctor Laura Rindi, who has researched a difficult-to-control infectious agent that can cause lung diseases in humans.

• In Ireland there is marine biologist Dr. Fabio Rindi (who may be related to Laura) who teaches at university level in his specialty algae.

alborg celebrations in 1999, the upper floor was inaugurated.

 

The attic as a sitting area

A short time after the upper floor was put into use, interest was directed towards the attic. There, the members wanted a sitting room for smaller groups. However, the reconstruction was seen as too costly and in 2003 the attempts to rebuild the attic were officially ended. In 2004, the idea of rebuilding the attic was revived, but the investments instead went to changing other premises in the house. The wind remains a repository for the subject associations and the masters.
For a while, the park administration considered moving out of the hot bath houses basement, but that is no longer the case. If that were to happen, the whole house could, in the end, become a single union house.

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