Definitive issue

Number by catalogue:  Michel: 711A   Yvert: 692   Scott: 748  

Perforation type: 12 ¾x12 ¾

Subject:

75 ore. Windmills on the island of Oland*

 

Additional:

*Öland is the second largest Swedish island and the smallest of the traditional provinces of Sweden. Öland has an area of 1,342 km² and is located in the Baltic Sea just off the coast of Småland. The island has 25,000 inhabitants, but at midsummer over 500,000 people reside on it. It is separated from the mainland by the Kalmar Strait and connected to it by the 6 km Öland bridge, which opened in 1972.

 

This information has been taken from Wikipedia. You can look also at the FDC for this stamp

_________

In many ways Oland has an individuality that sets it off against other regions of Sweden. Apart from its own natural features — its abundantly fertile shores and the barren yet beautiful expanses of Alvaret — the island owes its special character not so much to its churches, its ancient strongholds and its castles, but rather to the silhouettes of its many picturesque windmills, with their firmly-rooted bases and their sky-embracing sails. Indeed Oland has been called the island of windmills, though the four hundred or more windmills preserved there to this day represent but a small remnant of the former total. The oldest written mention we have of a windmill on Oland comes from 1546, but the golden age of this primitive agricultural labor-saving device occurred after 10 June 1746, when the island's farmers finally got the right to procure sufficient quantities of oakwood for building.

 

This information has been taken from official issue annotation.