Stockholm, Sweden

Spring Break arrived and students left for Italy, Germany, Spain, England, Ireland, and Scotland. I decided to go to Scandinavia. Kathleen (my wife) arrived in Brussels at 8:25 a.m., I met her, and and by 3:00 p.m., we were checking into our hotel in Stockholm. We landed at an airport 40 kilometers north of Stockholm so we needed to take an express train to central Stockholm and a taxi to our hotel. This page is devoted to our tour of Stockholm.

After the airport, our first stop was the Central Train station. This is from where we took our taxi to our hotel. It will also be the place we depart Stockholm for Olso. Stockholm is built on islands and mainland Sweden. It is a very beautiful city. Let's take a look.
This is our hotel - the Hotel Oden. It is located a mile northwest from central Stockholm. We were also lucky that a subway entrance was right outside the entrance of the hotel which meant we were four stops from the center, or about five minutes.
This is the Stockholm Drama Theater (Stockholm's Bolshoi Theater). It is a rather simple, but beautiful building.
The beautiful skyline of central Stockholm. Notice the ice in the water. It was about 5 inches thick.
Another part of Stockholm - a reminder that Stockholm is built on many islands.
Gustov XII, the warrior king, standing in a park in central Stockholm.
We were very interested in learning more about Viking culture, so we visited this museum - the Historical Museum. I particularly liked four short videos that described Viking exploration and settlement in Russia, England, France, and Iceland.
Stockholm is a beautiful city. Here is a look at the skyline from one of the islands. I will show you what was on the island later.
Just up a few blocks from the Central Train station, is this large, open square with very modern buildings around it and a mall below.
We were able to witness this beautiful sunset over Stockholm. It is the spring equinox, so we had twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness. If you look carefully, you can see ice on the water through the hand railings. This channel separated mainland Stockholm from the island on which Stockholm was first settled. It was a defensive postion known as on "off-shore" island site.
While we are here, we will visit this museum. It is the Natural History Museum.
Our first walking tour was the old city found on the island. Like other cities I have toured, there were many narrow, Medieval streets like this one.
There were many very small passageways that lead from one street to another. We couldn't resist this one. Here is Kathleen by one of those passages. Now let's walk around the perimeter of the island.
We are at an area where cruise ships were docked. We are on the island of the old city and in the background is another island. It was on the other island that we eat reindeer - yes, it was very tasty.
All of the water in and around Stockholm makes it a very attractive city. This view shows an island at the right, the island we are on, and the mainland to the left.
This view is to the left of the one above and shows the mainland of Sweden with part of Stockholm.
Of course Sweden, Norway, and Copenhagen are all associated with the Vikings. We found this replica of a Viking Long Ship fairly near the palace. This ship is now used as a restaurant.
There are many palaces in Europe and they are all huge. This is the royal palace in Stockholm. Like others, it is huge, but I didn't find it all that beautiful.
We only saw two guards at the palace. This one was on the north side. Everyonce in a while, he would walk to his right then come back and stand again. He looked like he was about 18 years old or so.
This is one of the government buildings quite near the royal palace. We walked around it then walked along a very long tourist, pedestrian street off to the right.
On another island is a collection of three museums, the Vasa Museum (it contains a 16th century war ship that sank on its maiden voyage), the Nordic Museum, shown here, (it contains exhibits that demonstrate Scandinavian life), and Skansen outdoor museum (you will see photos of it later). Let's take a look inside at a few exhibits.
During the semester, we learned about the Burn-Beaters or the Sami people. These people were Finnic and lived in the far northern coastland of Noway, Sweden, and Finland. This map shows the location where the Sami people live. If you look carefully, you can just make out the name Samer at the top, center. The Sami people would burn trees, plant crops in the ashes, and follow reindeer herds.
This exhibit shows the type of structure Swedes lived in earlier years in northern areas of Sweden.
This big guy represents the early rulers of Sweden. Now, let's go walk through the Skansen outdoor museum.
The Skansen Museum is meant to show all types of Swedish life. The museum contains structures from all over Sweden that represent farming, townlife, manorlife, Samilife, and wildlife. The museum covers about 40 acres and is located on top of the rocky island in the background. Here we go on a long, walking tour of the Skansen Museum.
The Vastveit Storehouse is one of the oldest buildings at Skansen. It was erected in the 14th century. It comes from a farm in Norway and is the only building here that is not of Swedish origin. When the building was acquired, Sweden was still unified with Norway. The union with Norway ended only in 1905.
This Sami camp (a turf shelter, reindeer encloser, and a wood shed) is an autumn and spring camp for the mountain Sami. At shows how the mountain Sami lived at the beginning of the 20th century when they still followed a nomadic existence, moving about with their reindeer. The Sami normally moved four times a year to find pasture for their animals. Nowadays the Sami are no longer a nomadic people, but live in normal houses or apartments.
The Sami used two types of storage sheds, a big one and a small one. The big one, shown here, is on six poles to protect food and clothing from wolves, rats, bears, and wolverines.
This is a small Sami storage shed. You can see the ladder made by notching a log.
The buildings that make up the Finn settlement come from the forest of southwestern Sweden. Finnish immigration to central Sweden increased greatly from the end of the 16th century. The Finns were invited to settle in the crown forests where they built their farms and lived from slash-and-burn cultivation. This represents one of the farm buildings.
More buildings in the Finnish settlement. The settlement consists of a "ria" used for drying and threshing corn, a simple smoke cabin which served as a dwelling, a cooking shed in which food was prepared, and a barn. You can see the dwelling and the "ria" here.
The Skansen Museum also had a fairly large selection of wildlife native to Sweden or the waters off the coast of Sweden. Here is a seal cutting some z's on a rock. You can see some ice in the background. When we flew into Stockholm, almost all of the lakes were covered in ice. It has not yet warmed sufficiently for the ice to melt.
This is a Swedish moose. He has a good life. All he has to do is rest and eat. Maybe he would rather be out roaming through the marshes of Sweden searching for his own food!
The next two photos show an early Swedish farm complex. The building in the background is the house and the building at the left is a barn.
This is a two-story storage shed for hay and corn.
The Skane farmstead is from the fertile plains of the parish of Hog in southern Sweden. The buildings are half-timbered, filled with bricks and the roof is thatched with straw. The oldest part of the farm dates from the 1820s.
The Skane farmstead now functions as a real farm with animals typical of southern farms (Sweden) in the 1920s. There is an ox, cows, calves, and a farm horse. And there are ducks and a small hay stack shown here.
This windmill can be dated to 1750. Windmills of this type were most common around Lake Vanern. The driving gear can be rotated above the actual mill house so that it always faces the wind. This mill was used to grind corn.
The Skogaholm Manor shows what a manor house might have looked likie at the end of the 18th century with its principal building, wings and pavilions grouped around a yard and encompassed by a fence. A manor of this size would have had a substantial farm with barns, stables, and various utility buildings.

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