THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 08, 2016
Three Weekends in the Archipelago
For both sailing weekends, Carl and I took the commuter train and buses to different convenient docks where Carl’s parents could pick us up in the boat. We then motored to a nearby cove and anchored for the night. As always, Carl’s parents prepared a series of delicious multi-course meals—they never cease to amaze as far as what good food can come out of a so compact kitchen! After anchoring for the night, we sailed away through the archipelago to the next night’s bay. While Carl’s dad usually has some sort of a plan, the wind dictates where we end up at the end of the day.
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| Carl preparing and dropping the anchor for the night |
All three weekends, the weather constantly shifted between patches of sun, cloudy skies, misty drizzle, and solid rain. Our second sailing weekend was also extremely windy—so windy that we could only sail with about 1/3 of the sail area out lest the boat be blown over in a gust. Never-the-less, we managed to keep up quite a pace and sail quite a distance. That weekend we sailed through part of the archipelago that was new to me, and Carl and I spotted some ideal kayaking areas.
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| One evening we had a full moon on one side of the boat and incoming fog on the other side. |
The sailing weekends ended at Carl’s parent’s marina where we unloaded the boat, loaded up their car, and caught a ride back into the city.
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| Marina |
Our third archipelago weekend found us on a four-hour long ferry ride from Stockholm out to Eva’s island Svartlöga. Svartlöga is a fairly large island, but it is just about the last island before one arrives in the Outer Archipelago which consists of thousands of quite small islands. Svartlöga is also unusual because it is covered in a very extensive deciduous forest—not only unusual for the archipelago but unusual for Sweden in general.
In the summer, about 100 people live on Svartlöga, but only a few residents stay year-round. There are no stores or services on the island, so even picking up a jug of milk requires boat transportation. The island’s original farming and fishing way of life is still very much in evidence with barns at the edges of meadows
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| Helicopter photo of the harbor and village from http://www.svartloga.com/Pages/Starten.html |
Svartlöga is car-free,
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| Each household keeps its own cart at the boat dock to more easily cart all their food and belongings to their cottage. |
Eva’s cute cabin sits in the middle of a clearing in the forest and is modest in size. The point of the cabin isn’t to hang out in the cabin—it’s really only meant as a dry place to sleep after a day spent out in the water, in the forest, and in the garden. While simple, the cabin is cozy, especially at night when it is lit only by candles and a kerosene lamp.
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| Eva's cabin and the view from her flower draped front porch. |
After our walk around the island, Eva treated us to a traditional Swedish crawfish feast complete with the traditional archipelago-themed drinking songs. What a delicious treat!
All too soon it was time for the three of us to make our way back to the ferryboat landing. I was sad to leave Svartlöga, but I always do have fun sitting on the ferry, drinking warm coffee, reading, watching all the islands float by, and dreaming about which of the beautiful island houses I would love to someday own.
Thank you for fantastic weekends Ylva, Anders, and Eva!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 07, 2016
Summer Sort-of Vacation
One of the reasons we bought a bigger apartment was so that we could finally, five years after we moved, bring our stuff over to Sweden. Emptying out our storage unit became the impetus that finally got us over to the US for more than a layover--we’ve been wanting to get back to visit friends, but July in the US isn’t pleasant in most cities, let alone Texas. And since I can’t choose when I take vacation, the heat has scared us away every time we talk about summer vacation plans.
While we were all the way over there doing boring, practical things anyway, we decided to see if my mom wanted help clearing out her storage unit, too. She took us up on the offer, so our first stop was to the popular tourist destination of...Detroit!
We were really surprised when a good number of people (who did not know each other) from our Stockholm to New York flight joined us on the flight to Detroit. And even more surprised when they all were at the baggage carousel picking up their luggage. What on earth were all those Swedes doing on vacation in Detroit?
We spent a week helping my mom go through her storage unit in a town about 30 minutes outside of Detroit. It certainly wasn’t the most exciting or relaxing or adventurous vacation ever, but it did feel good to get it done. We didn’t have time for much fun, although we did have some of the best Indian food I have ever eaten in my whole life. And after we dropped my mom back off at the airport, Carl and I had a few hours to drive through downtown Detroit. The surrounding neighborhoods really are apocalyptic—the city very much reminded me of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and the slow dissolution of civilization. Downtown Detroit was also apocalyptic with blocks upon blocks of beautiful, 70-story Art Deco skyscrapers that have obviously been empty for a very long time. On the positive side, however, most of the empty skyscrapers seemed to be under renovation and the downtown area was teeming with construction workers on their lunch break.
From Detroit, we flew to Dallas and spent a long weekend with Mia. The three of us share a love of and a history of seeing art together, and we spent much of the weekend exploring Fort Worth’s museums
(Louis Kahn!
Tadao Ando!)
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| This was probably the most awesome art installation I have ever seen :) |
Much of the rest of the weekend was spent hiding from the 105 degree heat watching the second season of Outlander. Since Mia first introduced me to the books and gave us the first season of the show, watching the second season together was more than appropriate! While in Dallas, we also had a great evening out with Mike and Sara and enjoyed a tasty Italian dinner, drinks at Alamo Drafthouse, and good catch-up conversation.
From Dallas, we rented a car and drove south to Austin, stopping along the way at Czech Stop, a highway gas station/bakery that is famous for its sweet and savory kalaches. Yum! In Austin, we stayed a few days with Jennifer and spent a good amount of time hiding from the heat chatting in Jennifer’s living room, watching movies at our favorite eat- and drink-in movie theater, enjoying ice cream at our favorite ice cream joint, and playing giant-sized pub games with Green.
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| Jenga! |
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| At least half of downtown's tall buildings did not exist when we left Texas five years ago! |
Jennifer and Alex also put up with me as I took the opportunity to visit the city’s new Central Library, which I helped to design before we moved to Stockholm. The library is still under construction, so I could only see the perimeter, but it was really cool to see the work-in-progress! We also had lunch with Sunshine, who is now the project manager for a non-profit organization that builds and runs low-income housing. The apartment buildings are really cool because not only do they provide housing for people in need, but they are small in scale, urban, well designed, and sustainable—not an easy to-do list for a non-profit organization! Sunshine took us on a tour of one of his projects that is under construction. It was a really impressive project, but it was extra cool that Carl got to come along since he’s obviously never with me when I take hard-hat tours of construction sites for work.
After a few days at Jennifer’s place, we moved to stay with Brian and Eva in their newly built hill country residence. We forced ourselves outside for another 105 degree walk, this time along a creek way out in the hill country. The walk was pretty, but again, we were very thankful to return to the air conditioning afterwards! We immediately jumped into Brian and Eva’s backyard pool in hopes of cooling off, but the pool water was 90 degrees so it was more like taking a bath than taking a swim! We spent much of one evening sitting in the pool and chatting with our hosts and another house guest, and another lovely evening was spent over hamburgers at a riverside restaurant.
While our friends in Austin were at work, Carl and I spent too much time shopping. Neither of us are big on shopping, in fact, we both more-or-less hate it, but everything is SO much cheaper in the US that we had been storing up a very long shopping list for years. We both bought jeans and pants, underwear, socks, I stocked up on bras and camisoles, Carl bought running shoes, I bought hiking boots, we both bought casual shoes as well as shoes for work, I bought several basics for my work wardrobe. We bought fabric for curtains for our new apartment, fabric to reupholster a reading chair, and fabric to reupholster all of our dining chairs. We went to our favorite local book store in Austin and tried our best to limit the number of books we took home. We bought hiking pants and I bought a new hiking rain coat and hiking socks. Not only that, but we had sent tons of stuff to Mia’s apartment—books, shoes, my favorite face soap and moisturizer, a new scanner, and a 2 TB hard drive, and we even sent a 1500 watt transformer to Brian’s house (so that we can run our American kitchen appliances in Sweden). We spent thousands of dollars, but we also saved thousands of dollars since all of it was stuff we would have had to buy eventually, anyway.
From Austin, we continued our journey southward to San Antonio where we stayed with Rebecca and Brian in their beautiful Antebellum style house. In addition to catching up with our hosts, we also spent lovely evenings catching up with Tenna and Bill as well as Cameron and Jonathan on Rebecca and Brian’s incredible front porch (thank goodness for a steady breeze!) I also spent most of a day visiting my old office, stopping at everyone’s desk to say hi and having lunch with Vicki and Laura. I was surprised by how many faces I didn’t recognized at the office, but it was so, so good to see and to chat with the people that I had worked with a lifetime ago. I have really and truly missed that office, the projects that I was so privileged to contribute to, and most of all the community of coworkers that made every day so much more meaningful than just work.
The better part of one day was spent at our storage unit, mostly being useless as the three moving company guys moved our stuff out of the unit, wrapped it up (the furniture anyway, they didn’t really do much to the boxes), and took it down to the truck. From San Antonio, the container made its way down to Houston, across the Atlantic, and it’s supposed to arrive in Stockholm at the end of this week. After going through a customs and toll inspection, the container will be emptied into our apartment, probably next week. We do hope that everything arrives in one piece... And that everything fits...
In San Antonio, I also took the opportunity to visit another architectural project of mine that had been under construction when I moved—several mixed use apartment buildings in the redeveloped Pearl Brewery area. The buildings turned out handsomely, but I was even more struck by the beautiful landscape design—it didn’t take long for the entire area to grow up into a lush, urban jungle. Even better, the cafes, restaurants, and stores seemed to be very well patronized and the outdoor seating areas were teaming with life despite the crushingly hot weather. Seeing the success of the project made me so happy!
From San Antonio, we started making our way northward again, stopping for a night to visit with our friends Austin and Kim outside of New Braunfels. We spent most of the afternoon soaking in their 90 degree pool and chatting and catching up, and in the evening, they prepared a lovely grill dinner for us.
The next day we drove back up to Dallas, and after one last all-too-short evening with Mia, we headed to the airport and home.
It was so, so lovely to see my mom and our friends. With a few exceptions, we managed to see many of the people whom we love and care about the most, and whom we manage to see all to infrequently these days. While I don’t want to give up my wonderful life in Stockholm, I deeply miss having these wonderful people in my daily life.
However, both Carl and I left the US with a sense that we are done with the country. Being in Texas in July certainly confirmed that we do not miss the climate there, but it was more than just the heat. It’s about quality of life. During our three weeks in the US, we were slaves to our rental cars. We spent much of our time surrounded by suburban interstate ugliness. While the US certainly has a large number of awesomely, incredibly, awe-inspiringly beautiful spots, most of daily life is spent surrounded by man-made ugliness. Life in Stockholm is not like that. Here, the backdrop of my daily life is natural and man-made loveliness. I had always suspected that being surrounded by beauty is vitally important to my soul, but now I am sure.
Thank you to my mom and to my friends who are American beauty: Mom, Mia, Mike, Sara, Jennifer, Alex, Green, Sunshine, Brian, Eva, Rebecca, Brian, Tenna, Bill, Cameron, Jonathan, Laura, Vicki (and all the others at Lake Flato), Kim, and Austin. (And to all the other American beauties I didn’t get to visit with on this trip--I really miss all of you, too!)
WEDNEDAY, AUGUST 31, 2016
3000 Year-Old Rock Carvings in Tanum
The rocked carvings were carved over a 1300 year span from around 1800 B.C. to about 500 B.C. At that time, sea level was considerably higher, so the water reached much farther inland. While the rock carvings are several miles inland today, they were originally at the point where land and water met. That is actually one of the main ways that researchers find new rock carvings in the area—by following the waterline from 3000 years ago. Additionally, the carvings tend to be in places where water runs over the bare rock after a rain, so rock-carving hunters also use the contours of the land to figure out where small, temporary rivulets and thus rock carvings are located. We’re not 100% sure why the carvings were located under running water, but they do stand out better when wet, so maybe the rainwater acted like a magic pen to reveal the carvings only occasionally under certain conditions.
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| Some of the figures are really quite large--this boat is about 10 feet long, but most of the images are much smaller. |
There are 510 known groups of rock carvings dotted around the area, and each grouping contains several hundred known figures. In other words, these carvings were either a very common or a very important part of life in this part of the world during the Bronze Age. Today, we of course are not 100% certain about why the images were carved, who carved them, or what they mean, but we do have guesses. Because the carvings generally don’t show images from everyday life like farm fields or houses, we guess that the carvings are mystical or ceremonial in nature instead of serving as a record of ordinary events.
The most common carving is a small, round dot. We generally have no idea of what these mean, but in one instance the dots seem to form a barrier between two warring parties.
Researchers have been able to piece together the stylistic evolution of the images and can therefore date the images with a fair amount of accuracy. Boat images, for example, evolved from having inward-curving bows to having outward-curving bows. The later boats look a lot like Viking boats, but Vikings didn’t appear until almost 2000 years later. The continuity of Scandinavian boat design is fascinating!
Warriors with axes, shields (?), and swords are also common images, and sometimes these warriors are on horseback.
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| Hunting with a bow and arrow at the top, hunting with a spear below. |
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| Supposedly a four-wheeled cart. |
Many of the images are more mythological or ritualistic in nature and are therefore harder to understand. It seems that this society believed that the sun was pulled by horses, and such “sun horse” images are not uncommon among the images. We believe that some images show shamanistic ceremonies, and gymnastic feats and dances seem also to have been part of the ritualistic imagery.
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| Gymnastic feats seem to involve flipping from one boat to another, or flipping over a boat. |
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| Both of these men are interpreted to be shamans. |
One of the more famous images is interpreted to be a marriage ceremony which is presided over by a priest or shaman. We know that these three figures belong together because groupings of very similar figures occur in several places. These wedding images are even more interesting because women were not often depicted.
Footprints are another fairly common image. Sometimes the foot is shod in a sandal, sometimes the foot is bare. My favorite print image was a line of paw prints going up a rock face.
Dating the images have also helped researchers to understand that the same rock was often carved for many generations over a period of a thousand years. Sometimes, the carvings from a later period interrupt carvings from an earlier period; sometimes later carvings incorporate later images.
Many of the carvings are now filled in with red or white paint to make them easier to see. There is no evidence that the images were originally painted—instead, they were probably viewed in conjunction with temporarily running water and/or low lighting conditions, both of which accentuate the carvings.
We of course did not have time to see all of 510 of the groupings, but we did see about ten different areas. Many of the areas were easily accessible from the car, but several of them required a few miles of hiking. Sadly, time may be of the essence to see the rest of the areas before they disappear—acid rain is eating into the rock faces and the carvings, which had survived with basically no deterioration for 3000 years, are rapidly disintegrating. In many cases, researchers have been forced to cover the carvings back over with earth in order to protect them from the acid rain.
Nearby one area of carvings, an archeological dig revealed a bronze-age farm. The buildings have been reconstructed on site. We know how big the buildings were, but the form and construction of them is a lot of guesswork. Never-the-less, you do get a good feel for what it would have been like to live on a farm in Sweden 3000 years ago.
A nearby hilltop was the site of two Bronze Age burial mounds consisting of large piles of stones. The view from the top is far-reaching and it is probable that the stone mounds would have been visible from quite a distance since the high hilltops were not covered in forest at that time. Although it is impossible to know for sure that the farm, the burial mounds, and the carvings were used by the same group of people, it is interesting to see so many pieces of the culture in one small geographic area.
We stayed in a cute hostel which is literally on the water of a small fjord. The building was originally a bathing resort from the 1800’s. I wish we had had more time to relax in the beautiful location and to enjoy the watery view from our room, but we were really more focused on seeing the rock carvings on this trip.
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| View from our hostel |
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| Freshly caught smoked seafood in Grebbestad |
On the way back to our hostel from our shrimp dinner, we happened to notice a field of standing stones off in the distance. Being the rune stone junkies that we are, we of course swerved off the road to investigate. In the enchanted, nearly midnight sunlight of midsummer in Sweden, the undulating field of pre-historic grave mounds and standing stones was like stepping into a magical, fairytale land. Or like landing in the past, Outlander style. These graves are much younger than the nearby rock carvings and date from about 200 to 600 A.D.
As if that wasn’t enough, further down the road, we swerved to another stop to check out a roadside chambered barrow. The roof stone has collapsed and broken into three slabs, but it was still a very impressive sight, especially considering that the giant slabs were somehow lifted into place 5000 years ago!
The many visible layers of history is one of the things I most love about living in and exploring Sweden. World-renowned Classical architecture from the 1930’s, castles from the middle ages, Viking rune stones, Iron Age burial mounds, Bronze Age rock carvings...the list of sites to explore and cultures to learn about is truly endless here.
THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2016
Art in Dalarna
Each of these explanations is accompanied by a fascinating collection of sights and places of interest, but a few weekends ago, we decided to focus on the art. Our first stop was the Zorn house and museum. The house and museum were awesome but Zorn’s story is equally interesting:
Anders Zorn was born and raised in Mora, deep in Dalarna, to a penniless single farm maid mother. Zorn’s biological father admitted Ander as his son—Anders was allowed to take his father’s surname, but his father did not otherwise have a roll in the child’s life. Zorn’s poverty turned when his biological father died without heirs, leaving Zorn a modest inheritance. This inherited money allowed Zorn to attend school, and his artistic talents were discovered in the classroom. He was accepted into the Academy of Art in Stockholm but ran out of money after just a year or two of art school. It turns out that a year or two of art school was all he needed.
Zorn began his career as a portrait painter. He made enough money in Stockholm to live off of but his income was modest. Too modest to be allowed to marry his sweetheart, Emma, whom he had met while painting a portrait of Emma’s nephew. With borrowed money, Zorn set off to London where he bought himself fancy suits, set up a fancy studio in London’s most fashionable neighborhood, and proceeded to convince the British aristocracy that he was the hottest artist of the century. Emma helped Zorn through the tricky social side of things and coached the country bumpkin in table manners and chivalry through her letters. Zorn set his portrait prices so high (about $6000 each, and that was in the 1880’s!) that he couldn’t not be a desirable, famous artist, and he was swamped with commissions. Zorn was smart with his money and his investments, and it didn’t take long before Zorn was one of Sweden’s wealthiest men.
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| Once Zorn settled in Dalarna, his studio was of a much simpler nature than his London studio. He moved a farm shed that had been built in 1292 to his property in Mora and converted it into his studio. |
He returned home after several years in London and was finally allowed to marry Emma. Zorn wanted to return to his roots in Mora. They bought a lot on the edge of town, moved Zorn’s grandfather’s small log cabin to the property, and proceeded to expand the cabin into a large, National Romantic mansion.
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| The large hall |
Toward the end of her life, Emma had an art museum built on the grounds, and she proceeded to buy back many of Zorn’s paintings. Today, the museum has an excellent collection of Zorn’s watercolors and oils; the paintings are so beautiful that they made my heart ache.
We also visited the Carl Larsson house. I’m not sure which artist is better known, but both Zorn and Larsson were extremely successful, prolific painters in their time, and both occupy the highest of positions in today’s cannon of Swedish artists. Like Zorn, Larsson was also born poor, but Larsson was born in the middle of Stockholm. Larsson also managed to marry above his station, but he never achieved great wealth like Zorn. When Larsson sold an important painting, the family lived well for a time, but the money soon ran out and times were meager again. It didn’t help things that Larsson became a bit obsessed with buying expensive Japanese prints (Frank Lloyd Wright also frittered away large sums of money on this obsession).
Carl Larsson’s wife, Karin, inherited a small farmhouse in the small but charming Dalarna village of Sundborn,
Karin Larsson’s rooms, however, are light, bright, simple, and groundbreaking for their time. Karin’s interior decorating more-or-less single-handedly spawned the light and simple style that would take over Scandinavia later in the 20th century. Much of IKEA’s design, even today, is inspired by Karin’s rooms. Karin’s interior decorating style became so well known because Carl often painted scenes from his home and his family life. Nearly 150 years later, Karin’s style is still an inspiration for many Swedes.
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| Karin Larsson's sitting room, and one of Carl Larsson's many paintings depicting the room. |
While the focus of our weekend was art, we did spend one beautiful evening wayyy out in the middle of nowhere at Axi Fäbodar. In Sweden, livestock is traditionally kept inside during the long, harsh winters. This requires a massive amount of hay, so instead of letting livestock out into nearby fields in the spring, the animals were traditionally driven way out into the forest, up into the hills, and away from the farm’s hay fields. The grazing lands were often so far away that shepherds couldn’t return home in the evenings; instead, the farm built simple, summer shelters out in the grazing lands. These buildings are called fäbodar, or “livestock sheds”.
In Dalarna, grazing land was generally collectively owned instead of being owned by individual farms. This meant that several farms could build summer fäbodar nearby each other. Shepard work in Dalarna was not a lonely affair; instead, lively, closely-knit summer communities were built up through time. Some of these communities were so well-established that they started to resemble villages, complete with smithies and other specialized handcrafts which served the seasonal settlements.
Axi Fäbodar is one such long-established summer grazing village. Several of the log cabins have been dated through dendrology back to the 1300’s, but there are nearby gravesites dating back at least another 300 years. The village was used for its original purpose through the 1950’s; today the cabins are used as summer cottages.
Despite having a lovely, fulfilling weekend, there was a darker side to our trip. It’s not just the cultural history that makes Dalarna stand out in the mind of an average Swede, but also the natural landscapes –people get almost teary when they talk about Dalarna’s mighty rivers, the low, rolling mountains, the deep forests, the patchwork farm fields, and the glittering lakes. But this isn’t the Dalarna that we saw and experienced. I have to agree that the cultural landscapes with age-old farming villages are unique and beautiful, but the natural landscapes leave a lot to be desired.
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| Left: I've never driven on a train/car bridge like this one before! Right: our farm hostel. |
During the weekend, we drove something like 800 kilometers on Dalarnas highways and byways, on gravel roads up over mountains, on historic roads through its valleys, beside lakes, and through forests. Forests were always in view, either in the foreground or in the background on the other side of farm fields, across lakes, and up on the mountainsides. But not a single moment of forest was in any way natural. They have literally all been clear-cut and planted with rows of pine trees. The entire region is a monoculturist’s delight. The distant view of deep forest across the sparkling lake—fake! Upon a closer look, you notice that all of the trees, all of them for miles and miles around, are planted in rows. Huge, bald swaths scar the distant mountainsides and the roadside scenery alike.
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| A grave marker in Leksand's churchyard. |
It makes me wonder—does the average Swede just not notice all of the clear cutting and “forest” monocultures? Or do they view the forests as just a larger scaled wheat field? How do Swedes reconcile their deep-rooted love for Dalarna’s nature with the reality of Dalarna as one enormous clear-cut? I can only conclude that while the idea of Dalarna as the most “Swedish” of Swedish regions is recognized as National Romantic mythology, the idea of Dalarna’s natural beauty hasn’t yet been admitted as mythological and instead still rings as truth.
Carl and I were deeply saddened by the state of Dalarna’s un-nature. But if you allow your focus to soften, to allow the straight lines of trees to blur into a background of deep green forest, and focus instead on the foreground of charming medieval farming villages, you can join the Swedes in their awe and love for this beautiful cultural landscape.
TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2016
Secret Gardens in a Watery Paris
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| Brilliant adaption of an all-glass orangerie to house priceless works of art. |
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| Like many of Paris's hôtel mansions, the main house is set back from the street, and a gatehouse separates inner sphere of the courtyard from the public sphere of the street. |
For the most part, these secret gardens are the courtyard gardens or backyard gardens of the neighborhood’s many historic 17th century mansions. They are now public parks and are impeccably manicured and impressively well used by local Parisians. You have to either be in-the-know or extremely curious like Carl and I, because many of these parks are not obviously open to the public until you’re already in them. Sometimes it really pays off to snoop!
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| After passing under a building and past a ruin, this park opens up into several garden areas, each with different plantings and a different atmosphere. |
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| These private gardens are visible from some of the public gardens. |
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| Ok, this one isn't a garden, but it is a beautiful "secret" passageway through the St. Paul area. |
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| To the left: Gatehouse on the street and courtyard garden. To the right: courtyard garden and the walkway connecting various wings of the very large mansion. Beyond the walkway is an inner courtyard garden. |
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| Inner courtyard garden. |
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| Another courtyard between main house and street. |
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| I don't really know why, but this house and garden made me think of Great Expectations. |
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| Even the simplest of gardens feels elegant with the backdrop of a 17th century mansion. |
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| A "secret" passage from an arcade into a garden. |
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| The passage is to the right in this photo. |
A few of the parks aren’t hidden at all, like Place des Vosges which I fell head over heals in love with.
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| Entry from "everyday" Paris to enchanted Place des Vosges |
Place Vendôme was a similar square entirely surrounded by matching facades, although without the green park in the middle. After seeing this octagonal square, I now understand what the octagonal Copenhagen Royal Palace was modelled on (see “Easter in Copenhagen”).
Hotels in Paris are expensive, and both weekend trips now we’ve tried to balance the outrageous prices with a reasonably comfortable and clean standard. Both times we’ve had adequate but not so special rooms, but we’ve lucked out with small balconies. This trip, the balcony views of St. Paul’s Church and several medieval townhouses were just beautiful.
We had reservations one evening for a special French dinner in Paris’s oldest brasserie and enjoyed our oysters and duck under a colorful Art Nouveau glass dome, much like a gigantic upside-down Tiffany lamp. The food was tasty if not spectacular, and the setting under that dome was enchanting, although I guess I really am acclimating to Swedish life because I couldn’t help but wondering why it was so bright in the restaurant and where were the candles? Swedes dine almost exclusively by dim, shimmering candlelight and the bright French atmosphere felt almost surgical in comparison.
I love Paris’s historical over-the-top architecture, each mansion and palace trying to outdo the next. The tall, steep roofs leave a lot of “blank” space for ornamentation, and this trip I noticed some really fun dormer windows.
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| Pantheon and Place Vendôme |
After two weekends in Paris, we’ve barely scratched the surface of all the museums we’d like to visit, the neighborhoods we’d like to explore, and the restaurants we’d like to dine in. It’s about time to book our next weekend trip...
MONDAY, MAY 16, 2016
Weekend in Landsort
We somewhat randomly picked the village of Landsort on the island of Öja as our destination because a) we hadn’t been there before and b) the photos in the tourist brochure looked awfully cute. The tourist photos didn’t lie and Landsort just might be the cutest little village ever. The island of Öja is about 5 kilometers long but it’s only about 500 yards wide. The island’s granite bedrock is punctuated by natural inlets that have been utilized for millennia as protected natural harbors.
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| The village's Western Harbor |
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| The village's Eastern Harbor |
Landsort is a small village of about 50 houses straddling the ridge between two of the island’s best harbors. This part of the island has basically no topsoil, and the houses are wedged into crannies between granite bulbs in a seemingly random manner. Just about everything on the island was burned down by the Russians in 1719, so most of the houses are from the 1800’s. Larger, more ambitious houses of the bourgeoisie are scattered together with small sheds and fisherman’s shacks, making for a lively, colorful, haphazard, and just darn cute village.
Aside from the obvious fishing trade, Landsort has (and still does!) support itself through shipping pilot privileges. At least since the 1300’s, all ships have been required to hire a local pilot to navigate through the complex archipelago into Stockholm, and Landsort has always been one of a very few locations where those pilots are based. Several pilots and pilot boats are still based on the island today—an incredible example of historical longevity! Additionally, Landsort was a toll station for international cargo, and the island’s location at the edge of the archipelago also made it a natural place for the storage and reloading of goods.
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| Some of the island's more modest houses. |
The one building that the Russians didn’t burn is the island’s lighthouse. It was built in the mid 1600’s with meter-thick walls and is Sweden’s oldest surviving lighthouse. It is still in use today.
At first glance, you’d never know that there is more to Öja than the scenic village of Landsort and the historic lighthouse. But the island has a long history of military activity, and it was declassified as recently as 2013! Bunkers, pillboxes, and camouflaged artillery installations were built in the 1930’s but were luckily never needed during World War II. With a clear view toward Russia, the network of bunkers and tunnels was expanded during the Cold War into one of Sweden’s largest but most invisible military installations with a permanent live-in population of 325 men. These bunkers, too, were never used, but the installation wasn’t decommissioned until 2009, and foreign visitors weren’t allowed onto the island until 2013. Today you can crawl into several of the bunkers, but most have been sealed and blend so well into the surrounding granite that you can barely tell that you’re climbing on one.
North of Landsort, the island’s middle has enough soil to support a narrow forest. During our visit, the forest was literally carpeted in vitsippa (wood anemones). Breathtaking!
The sailboat guest harbor, hostel, and camping field (free and basic and shared with the island’s sheep) are clustered around another natural harbor at the north end of the island. Carl and I spent most of our first afternoon sitting up on a cliff, reading and overlooking the sea, and we spent most of our second afternoon clambering around the cliffs out on the north point of the island.
Our time on Öja was short but very sweet, and I am more than a little bit jealous of those who get to spend their summers in one of Landsort’s uber cute houses!
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| Some of the island's fancier houses. |
SUNDAY, MAY 08, 2016
Arctic Adventure
We took the night train from Stockholm and arrived in Abisko, way up in Northern Sweden, 18 hours later. At the Abisko fjällstation or mountain station, we rented touring skis which are wider than regular cross country skis and have steel edges which help grip in icy and steep terrain. We enjoyed a fabulous three course dinner of mostly local ingredients before heading off to bed, enjoying a private room for the last time for the next week.
Day One dawned partly sunny, wind still, and not too cold. The Kungsleden begins in Abisko National Park and follows a river upstream.
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| The start of the Kungsleden at Abisko |
The quietness did get annoyingly interrupted, however, by dozens of people out on snow-mobile joy rides. Parts of the cross-country ski trail join up with snow-mobile trails, and the snow-mobiles really disturbed the area’s wildness and peace. I know that snow-mobiles are essential in this part of the world for getting food, supplies, and firewood up into the mountains, but I firmly believe that the use of snow-mobiles should be limited to necessary trips and that joy riding should not be allowed.
We did our best to ignore the snow-mobiles (I must admit that the drivers were for the most part polite and contentious that there were skiers on the trail, too) and to focus on the beauty of our surroundings. Through clearings in the birch trees we caught glimpses of the surrounding ridges and of the increasingly dramatic peaks ahead of us.
The Kungsleden is marked by thousands upon thousands of red X’s. The idea is that the X’s are spaced close enough together and are bright enough in a snow storm that a skier should be able to always see the next X in all but the very worst of weather conditions. The X’s started out perky and bright near Abisko, but as we got farther along the trail, they became sun-bleached and nearly grey. They have even blown away and haven’t been replaced along long stretches of the trail. Between two of the huts, we saw only two or three X’s the entire day! Carl and I chose the Kungsleden for our first winter tour in part because of the security that all those red X’s give, so we were a bit concerned that they became harder to see and in places disappeared completely. Luckily, it never became a problem for us on this trip.
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| The trail's first red X on the left, red X's marking the way up to Tjäktja Pass on the right. |
The last six kilometers of the day’s trail were across a long lake. Even though the trail was completely flat, I somehow felt like we were going slightly uphill the entire time. Finally, though, we reached the hut of Abiskojuare where the warden greeted us with steaming cups of hot, sweet cider. Even though we weren’t especially cold or tired, it was the perfect pick-me-up after a day out on skis.
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| Carl skiing on the lake toward Abiskojuare |
The huts along the Kungsleden are surprisingly comfortable and spacious. They sleep at least 20 people in bunk beds, but most of them are actually quite a bit bigger and have bunk beds for upwards of 70 or 80 guests. There are no prior reservations and the beds are given out on a first-come-first-served basis, but each hut also has a stash of 40+ mattresses so that they can accommodate extra guests on the floor. No one is ever turned away from a hut, and in long periods of bad weather, the huts can nearly burst at the seams with drenched guests and all their gear. During our tour, however, only one of the huts was full and in two huts Carl and I even got an entire room to ourselves.
In addition to providing shelter and a bed, the huts even offer gas stoves, cookware, dishes, pillows, and blankets, so you don’t need to carry very much gear. However, in the winter, it would be pretty stupid to be caught out in a blizzard without a stove or a warm sleeping bag, so we ended up carrying a good bit of gear, anyway. The huts are warmed by wood stoves and are generally quite toasty. Many nights I had to sleep with my sleeping bag unzipped because the hut was so warm!
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| The huts at Abiskojuare |
While the huts are cared for by volunteer wardens, much of the daily work is carried out by the guests themselves. It is up to the guests to chop their own firewood, to carry out dirty dish water, and to fetch fresh drinking water. Fetching the drinking water was perhaps the craziest part, considering that all of the rivers and lakes are frozen over with ice. But at the beginning of the winter, the wardens chop holes in the ice and install large three-foot diameter tubes through the ice to keep it from freezing back together. The tubes are capped by a large lid so that no one accidentally falls though to the open water below. Some mornings, you have to break up the ice at the bottom of the hut with a pick. At some huts, the ice was only a couple of feet thick, so you could push the communal water jugs under the water with your (freezing) hands. But at other huts, the ice was upwards of five or six feet thick, so you have to use a long pole to fill up the jugs. Once full, you then have to pull the heavy jugs across the ice and back up to the huts—at some huts this isn’t such a terrible task, but the water at others huts is down a 100-foot steep ravine, meaning that it takes a lot of effort to haul the jugs back uphill.
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| Carl collecting water at a hole in the ice, me dragging the 25 liter container across the ice. |
At Abiskojuare, we spent a couple of hours enjoying a sunny bunch in lee of the wind. Eventually we got motivated enough to get back onto our skis for a short little tour around the area, and I’m so glad we did because we saw two moose trotting along at the base of the mountains!
As we were on the Kungsleden over Easter, several of the hut wardens had decorated for the holiday with Sweden’s traditional Easter feathers. What a nice and homey touch! At Abiskojuare, the wardens had even made candle holders out of ice, and they set out candles to light the paths between the cabins at night. Beautiful in the snow!
Day Two also dawned partly sunny, and it was so warm that we skied in only our long johns. Carl skied in a short sleeved shirt! After another kilometer or two through the birch forest, the Kungsleden leaves the valley and climbs up and over the shoulder of a mountain. I was a bit nervous about doing this climb on skis, but it went really well with the help of skins. It didn’t take us long to climb past the tree line, and soon we were saying goodbye to the trees—we wouldn’t see another tree for the next week! This part of the trail had been socked in with rain clouds when we walked it in the summer, but this time we could see and enjoy the increasingly dramatic scenery around us.
The downside to all that sun and warm temperatures was that the snow started to stick under our skis, meaning that we constantly got large clumps of snow stuck to the underside of our skis. We stopped a few times to try to remove the clumps, but we soon gave up because the clumps came back after just a few seconds. We ended up spending large portions of the day walking with the heavy, snow-laden skis on our feet because we couldn’t glide. It made for frustratingly slow and tiring progress. At one point, the sticky snow even caused a rather nasty fall—I was enjoying some glide down a little slope when my skis suddenly stuck and stopped, but my momentum caused my body and backpack to continue moving forward. It resulted in me and my skis and my poles and my backpack in a tangled heap on the snow. Luckily, I didn’t get hurt, but the fall did leave me with a few mean bruises!
Once we got up above tree-line, the wind set in. Luckily, the wind was blowing from the side and not directly in our faces, but it was a fairly fierce wind. At times, it gusted with such force that it was difficult to move forward without toppling over to the side. The wind didn’t exactly feel dangerous, but it did take away the margin of safety we felt due to the sunny skies and warm temperatures. Suddenly, with all that wind, I felt exposed and the landscape suddenly felt huge and endless. Even in the day’s relatively good and safe conditions, I began to understand how one tiny little mistake can escalate into an emergency situation. I became very grateful that we were carrying the “extra” weight of our warm sleeping bags, our stove and fuel and pot, our extra food, our shovel, and our bright red wind sack (wind proof nylon—kind of like a tent without poles for keeping warm in emergency situations).
The second half of the day’s trail was along another long lake. We caught our first glimpse of the huts about six or eight kilometers before we reached them, and it was psychologically detrimental because it felt like we never got any closer. We continued marching toward them, for forever, it seemed like, but the huts were still tiny dots on the horizon. I ended up resorting to counting the red X’s as we passed them, assuring myself that as I reached several hundred X’s that we were definitely making progress, even if it didn’t seem like it.
We did, of course, eventually make it to the hut of Alesjuare, where the wardens greeted us again with warm juice. The trek between Abiskojuare and Alesjuare was to be our week’s longest stretch at 22 kilometers, and we were quite glad that we wouldn’t have to ski that far again. In that kind of wind, 22 kilometers was quite enough! We arrived at Alesjuare without much reserve energy, and it felt amazingly good to arrive at the warm hut. We were pretty exhausted, but we were also pretty proud of ourselves for making it in relatively good form.
The hut at Alesjuare is extra luxurious because it has a wood fired sauna. Not only that, but the sauna stove even heats a constant supply of water, meaning that you can “bathe” by throwing potfuls of warm water over your body, soaping up, and rinsing off with more warm water. The hot sauna did feel good on my tired muscles, but I have to admit that getting clean was definitely the best part of the experience. We shared the sauna with the other guests which included a group of Spaniards, and they delighted in doing it the “Swedish” way by cooling off by rolling in the snow. Only a couple of the Swedes joined them out in the snow. I was definitely not one of them!
Day Three was our most “adventurous” day, and looking back, we probably should have just stayed in the cabin and not gone out on skis. Already the night before, the wind had picked up, and the wind speed just increased and increased all night. By the time we got up at around 6:30 that morning, (6:30, yes, we never actually relax and take it easy on vacation!) the wind was so extreme that it was a major adventure just to walk to the outhouse and back. The wind had shifted, too, so instead of blowing from the side, it was blowing directly from our destination, meaning that we would be skiing directly into the crazy wind all day long. Never-the-less, we decided to try it out and see if it was possible to make any headway in that wind, so we skied off from the hut and along the valley toward the next cabin.
The wind was extreme and made for slow going, but after an hour, we checked our gps and saw that we were actually making decent progress despite the wind. We decided to continue toward the next hut. Unfortunately, the wind increased as we went, getting stronger and stronger until we could make very little headway. The clouds lowered and began to cut off the peaks, and it began to snow, meaning that now our visibility was reduced to only one or at most two red X’s. Because the wind was coming at us directly from the front, the wet snow was driven toward our faces, and we both ended up with frozen sheets of ice covering us from head to toe. We hesitated and wondered if we should turn around and go back to Alesjuare, but when we checked the gps again, we saw that we were exactly half way between the two huts, so it was just as good to continue forward.
The wind was so cold and the conditions so marginal that we pretty much didn’t stop the entire day. We knew that stopping in that kind of wind would only freeze us, and I felt like if I were to stop moving, it would be very difficult to get going again. We did pause, standing on our skis, for about five minutes when we shared a bar of chocolate, and we did take our skis off one time in order to put our skins on at the base of the day’s big climb. Other than that, we forced ourselves to keep skiing, to keep moving forward, to keep making progress toward the hut. We didn’t even stop to take a single photo during the trip.
Skiing in that wind, without taking breaks, and without much food was utterly exhausting. It didn’t help that the day’s trek ended with a steep and long uphill climb. I was so exhausted on the climb that my skis kept crossing and I fell three times, despite our very slow progress. Each time, it was more and more difficult to get up. Even Carl fell once due to exhaustion. But we eventually made it to the hut at Tjäktja, whole and with all of our fingers and toes. Needless to say, I was very, very relieved when we first caught sight of the hut and even more relieved when we finally arrived. Once again, the hut warden greeted us with warm juice.
We were the first of the day’s guests to arrive at Tjäktja. Because of our manic must-keep-moving must-keep-moving mantra, we made the trek between Alesjuare and Tjäktja much faster than any of the other groups that had left Alesjuare at about the same time as us. I had started to get a bit worried about the other groups when they began straggling in later that afternoon, each group with its own war story about the horrendous wind and the scary conditions. We were not alone in being indescribably relieved to reach the hut at Tjäktja, and each group second guessed their decision to go out in that wind. Happily, everyone made it without any real incident, but we were all hyper aware that the slightest of accidents would have made for a very serious survival situation.
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| The huts at Tjäktja |
As worrisome and exhausting and scary as the day had been, I was very proud of myself for making it, for surviving, and for being tough enough to be out skiing in that kind of weather. I spent most of the day at the boundary between “ok” and freaked out, and I was very proud that I had stayed cool and calm and didn’t let the freaked out side of me take over.
It seemed like a divine reward for our toughness and our efforts when the sky cleared that evening and when parts of the sky began a shimmering green dance of the Aurora Borealis, otherwise known as the Northern Lights. I had never seen the Aurora Borealis before, and it was magical and hauntingly beautiful and literally breath taking. It started as a dim glow which became stronger and stronger and then began to dance in waves across the sky, much like a lace curtain dancing in the breeze. The show culminated in the entire sky being lit with dancing color, with yellow and red flashes accompanying the steady green glow. I tried to take photos but they don’t even come close to showing the amazingness of the show.
Day Four arrived and the wind had died down considerably during the night. However, the wind prognosis was actually for even worse wind than the day before, so we were pretty nervous about continuing. But because the actual wind was actually quite ok, we decided to head toward the next cabin despite the forecast, and I am so glad that we did! A robust wind did accompany us most of the day, but it wasn’t anything like the day before and it didn’t feel scary or threatening at all. Between the scenery and the sun and our relief at the reasonable wind, it was our best day of skiing yet.
From the huts at Tjäktja, the Kungsleden continues uphill to Tjäktja pass and then down a very steep mountainside to the valley below. I wasn’t too worried about the uphill portion of the day because I now knew that the skins were a reliable help for uphill treks, but I was very nervous about getting downhill on the other side with skis that aren’t made for turning. How on earth were we going to get down without turning? What if all that wind had created a solid sheet of ice on the other side of the pass?
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| Carl skiing up toward Tjäktja pass, the emergency shelter at the top of the pass. |
Getting up to the pass proved to be no problem, and the views were incredible. We ate a cozy, warm lunch in the emergency shelter and then continued on our way down the other side of the pass. Luckily, the snow was deep and fluffy, and the combination of our skins and the fluffy snow meant that we had more than enough breaking power to get safely down to the valley without any problems at all. Instead of being scary, the descent was actually really fun and enjoyable, and I even managed to make a few wide, arcing turns on my touring skis.
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| Me skiing down from Tjäktja pass into the U-shaped valley |
Even after we made it down the steep slope, the trail tended downhill and the rest of the day’s journey required very little effort. After climbing for three and a half days, we could now coast down to the next cabin! In addition to the relatively easy trail, the incredible landscape made for an incredible memorably wonderful day. The glacier-carved valley is deep and lined by peak after peak rising three thousand feet straight up. It is a stunning landscape that is too big to properly capture on film.
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| On our way down from the pass, we met two skiers pulling sleds on their way up. |
We made it to the hut at Sälka in time for lunch and spent a good part of the day relaxing inside the hut with hot chocolate and books, reading and chatting with our hut mates, several of which we had spent every evening with since the beginning of our journey. By this time we were starting to really get to know and like some of our companions. Unfortunately the wind was still strongly blowing and the sun was hiding behind clouds, so it was too cold to sit outside, but we did enjoy the scenery through the hut window. We also spent part of the afternoon chopping wood—I had never chopped wood before but Carl taught me how and now I can add it to my list of practical outdoor skills.
Sälka also has a luxurious wood-fired sauna with wood-fired hot water heater, so it was a wonderful feeling to be able to get clean again. We sat in the sauna and chatted with our new friends as well as with a group of Belgians that had arrived earlier that day on dog sleds and with several people from the Spanish group. It was quite the international crowd!
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| The huts at Sälka are spread out along a ridge with mountain views in every direction. |
Day Five was another lucky day with a good bit of sunshine and very little wind. The past few days we had been forced to ski in ski goggles in order to protect our eyes from all the wind, but now it was calm enough to just have sun glasses on.
The trail continued every downhill through the same valley, and this stretch from Sälka to Singi was the easiest part of the whole journey. Although we did have to climb a bit now and then, the downhill stretches were definitely dominant, and several of them were at the absolute perfect angle that we could just stand up on our skis and let gravity carry us downhill. At the same time, the angle wasn’t too steep, so we never got going scary fast and we rarely had to zig zag in order to safely make it down a hill. I especially remember one amazing stretch where we could just stand and cruise along on our skis, with no effort at all, for at least two kilometers. It was amazing!
The conditions were so good that we were able to enjoy a couple of sit-down snack and lunch breaks without freezing. It was absolutely wonderful to get to sit and enjoy the magnificent scenery. One of our breaks was at the base of a side valley leading to a very narrow and dramatic ridge called the Dragon’s Back. In addition to the dramatic mountains surrounding us, the sun was dramatically shining between the clouds, making the wind-packed snow glisten, looking almost like molten silver.
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| In this overscaled landscape, the huts at Singi look like rocks. |
Along the trail, we even saw a couple of small groups of reindeer that had escaped the autumn round-up. They were busy nosing their way through the snow to the vegetation below and didn’t seem to really mind our presence.
Despite our several breaks and many photo stops, it didn’t take us long to reach the hut at Singi, and we spent several hours sitting outside in the sun in the lee of the wind. It wasn’t until the sun’s warmth started to wane and afternoon melded into evening that we left the company of the surrounding peaks and joined our new friends inside the cabin.
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| Views from Singi |
That evening our group was joined by a Swiss couple that we hadn’t met before because they were skiing at a much more hard-core rate than we, and they skipped every other hut. We spent a good part of the evening hearing stories about their three year journey around the world on their bikes. What an adventure! They tented many nights but were also taken in by helpful, curious locals all over the world and spent about a quarter of the nights sleeping in stranger’s homes. They had interesting stories from just about every continent, but I was most intrigued to hear about their impressions of the US and of Americans. They assumed that I was Swedish since I had been speaking in Swedish with the others in the cabin, so the Swiss couple felt comfortable being candid about their impressions from the US. They mentioned several times how good the US is at marketing themselves positively, how the entire world envies Americans and wants to live like Americans. But what the US doesn’t tell the world, and what the rest of the world doesn’t know, is that life is actually really tough in the US. Most Americans don’t have it easy, and life in the US is not as good as the rest of the world believes. Amen.
Day Six was another lucky day weather-wise with a good amount of sun breaking through the clouds. The wind was a bit stronger than it had been, but it was still quite manageable, especially in comparison to our scary day on the way to Tjäktja. The trail from Singi starts by going up to a low pass, but the climb really wasn’t too bad. From the pass, it’s a long downhill slide into the very narrow valley toward Kebnekaise Fjällstation (mountain station). This valley was by far the most narrow one we had skied through so far—the scenery literally became more and more dramatic every day of our trip.
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| Carl and I skiing up and over the pass above Singi |
The only downside to the trail is that we had joined back up with a snow mobile trail, and while there weren’t as many people out for joy rides as there had been near Abisko, there were definitely too many needless snow mobiles out and about in my opinion. We did, however, see several useful snow mobiles which were out hauling fire food and food supplies to the back country huts.
After a couple of kilometers, the almost canyon-like valley opened up into a much wider, broader expanse of bog lands. I remember walking through those bogs in the summer, and it was definitely a muddy and wet business. This time around I was pretty thankful to be able to glide right on top. The wind had blown away most of the snow cover, so all that was left was sheer ice. It made for some challenging skiing, but there were a couple of moments when the wind at our backs was strong enough to push us across the ice without us having to do anything. It was a marvelous feeling to just stretch out my arms and to let the wind take me along with it. It’s strange, because even though the wind steered me and I didn’t really have a choice in where I was going, it was an utter feeling of freedom, almost like flying.
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| Skiing into the narrow valley, and the view out the other side |
As we got further down the valley and left the bogs behind us, we entered back into the land of small, stubby birch trees. We hadn’t seen a single tree since the second day of our journey, and I have to admit that I was sad to see the vegetation again because it meant that our journey was nearing its end.
Between the extreme winds and the unseasonably warm temperatures (we were back to skiing in nothing but long johns and tee shirts), there were actually patches of bare ground. At one point, we even had to take our skis off and walk for about 30 meters!
Reaching Kebnekaise Fjällstation was bittersweet. While the mountain station is still 19 kilometers from the nearest road, it is an outpost of civilization with its electricity, mobile phone coverage, and three course dinners. We just weren’t ready to be finished with our journey—the scenery was just too beautiful and we were having too good of a time. But while we were there, we made the most of it. We luxuriated in taking a real, hot shower. We relaxed in the sauna. We lounged in the old, historical part of the lodge, drank coffee, and chatted with our new friends. We all ate a lovely three-course meal with delicious paired wines and even enjoyed drinks from the bar after our meal. And, we got to sleep in a private room, if still in a bunk bed.
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| Kebnekaise fjällstation |
Day Seven started with an enjoyable restaurant breakfast with lots of coffee and then a goodbye to our new friends. They were heading back out to civilization, but Carl and I had two extra days to play in the mountains. We had given ourselves the extra time so that we wouldn’t have to worry about missing our flight if bad weather held us up, but we hadn’t used up any of the extra days along the journey. We decided to spend our time up in Tarfala, a cirque about 9 kilometers up a side valley from the mountain station.
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| Leaving the valley at Kebnekaise fjällstation |
The journey back up above tree line and up to Tarfala wasn’t too tough, but we did have skins on almost the entire journey because the trail was so icy. In less icy conditions, we probably could have skied up much faster without the skins for most of the trip, but the ice made for tricky skiing.
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| Carl taking off his skins near the top of the Tarfala valley |
The sun poured down on us all day, and we stopped for a long, relaxing lunch about 2/3 of the way up to the hut. From our lunch spot, we could see the peak of Kebnekaise, Sweden’s tallest mountain as well as one of the glaciers that spill down from it. The views were magnificent!
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| The views on the way up to Tarfala kept getting better and better. |
There is a both a backcountry cabin and a glacier/artic research station at the end of the valley at Tarfala. What an amazing place to conduct research! The scenery at Tarfala is incredible—360 degrees of craggy peaks and tumbling glaciers. You could be in the Alps, the scenery is so impressive. There are many beautiful spots in Sweden, but Tarfala just might the most impressively beautiful of them all.
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| The research station at Tarfalla on the left, the tourist cabin on the right |
The hut warden welcomed us not only with an entire jug of warm juice, but also with an invitation to join him on the “sofa” that he had dug out of the snow. Facing the sun and covered in rubber sleeping pads, the sofa was quite warm and we spent several hours lounging like lizards in the sun, drowsily chatting and enjoying the craggy view. Eventually, a group of four backcountry skiers came into view, and we watched them as they skied down the glaciers toward us. They joined us on the snow sofa and lounged in the sun with us, telling us about their skiing adventure up and over Kebnekaise. They had also left the mountain station that morning, and suddenly Carl and I didn’t feel quite as tough as we had.
When the sun began to cool off, we strapped our skis back on and did a little loop uphill in order to warm back up and to take in the scenery from another view. Gorgeous, gorgeous. When we got back to the cabin, two new groups had arrived—one had skied over the pass and down the glacier, and the other had snowshoed over the pass and then down the glacier. Carl and I my 9 kilometers up the valley were definitely shown up by the other group’s feats. Next time, I would love for it to be us that skis hut-to-hut through such dramatic terrain, instead of sticking to the relatively tame marked routes through the valleys! There is one big downside, however, to such dramatic adventures, and I can’t say that I was jealous of the others having to make their way to the outhouse in stiff ski boots!
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| Left: the scenery dwarfs the huts at Tarfala. Right: Carl admiring the cirque. |
Because the sky was so clear, we stayed up relatively late to see if the Aurora Borealis would give us another show. Unfortunately, we waited in vain.
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| Daytime view from Tarfala hut |
Day Eight was another relatively easy day. Because we only had to ski the 9 kilometers back to Kebnekaise Fjällstation, we weren't in a rush to get up and get out the door. We slept in until the late hour of 7:30 and then ate a leisurely breakfast. After packing up our things, we were too sad to leave the beauty of Tarfala, so we decided to ski a loop around the frozen lake at the base of all of the glaciers. It was a good way to see the glaciers more close-up, and we even skied past a chunk of glacier that had fallen off and crashed onto the lake ice below sometime during the night.
Eventually we did force ourselves to head back downhill and toward civilization, but it was definitely not the direction we wanted to head deep in our hearts. We really would rather have headed up into the mountains and toward the passes, but alas, we didn’t have the right kind of skis for that.
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| Lunch on the way back down the valley--reindeer flavored cheese from a squeeze tube. |
The journey down the valley was actually a bit challenging because the trail was too steep for a controlled descent, and we ended up having to do massive amounts of zig-zagging to keep our speed in check. I was pretty frustrated by our non turn-able skis, and was pretty ready to trade in the comfort of my touring boots for a pair of carving skis. Especially since my boots weren’t really all that comfortable in the first place! By the second day I had developed a quarter-sized blister on my right heel, and it got rubbed freshly raw every day. The blister was painful, but actually, in comparison to some other blisters I have experienced on past adventures, this one was relatively survivable.
On the way down the valley, we ended up having to cross some more bare patches where we saw several grazing reindeer. Back down at the mountain station, we repeated much of our routine from our previous visit—lounging in the historic lodge, enjoying a three-course dinner, sleeping in our own room. We did enjoy the comfort of the mountain station, but we were very sad that we would be ending our adventure and skiing back to civilization the next day.
Day Nine turned out to be a bit more adventurous than expected. It was a relatively long stretch at 19 kilometers, but it’s basically all slightly downhill, following a wide valley and a meandering river with relatively little exposure to the wind. What made it more adventurous than expected was that spring set in in the Artic six weeks early. All along the trail, we had been hearing stories from the hut wardens about the unusually warm and early spring. The hut warden at Alesjuare told us that the week before, guests had to ski through 10 inches of water on top of the lake’s ice in order to reach the hut. Another warden, at Sälka, told us that most of their snow mobile deliveries had been delayed because there was too little snow in the valley. The beer delivery had managed to get through, but not the pasta or the oatmeal! At Singi, the warden told us that firewood delivery was behind and that they were having to burn some of next year’s still green wood.
The trail between Kebnekaise Fjällstation and the road is heavily used, both by private skiers and snow mobilers and by the mountain station crew which drives a snow cat up and down the trail, literally dragging a trailer of food supplies behind it on a sled. The crew had built up a wide “road” of snow through the bare patches so that the snow cat would have enough snow to travel on, so we didn’t have to walk across bare sections despite the lack of snow beside the trail. However, the trailer had broken though the ice at several points crossing the meandering river. We could easily see and avoid these spots, but I was terrified. Additionally, at times, we could hear how thin the ice was under our ski poles—it sounded hollow in comparison to the usual solid thunck. Falling through the ice is probably the scariest way I can think of to die, so I was on high alert the entire trek.
Further down the valley, the river widens into a long, wide lake filling the valley. Here, the ice was stable and solid, and I was able to calm down and even enjoy this part of the journey. At the bottom of the lake, the river narrows again into a rushing stream, and this far down in elevation, the river had completely broken through the ice. We could see the old cat track which had crossed the river until just a few days prior, but that bridge of ice was now long gone.
 |
| The solid lake and the melting river |
We were passed by several skiers on the way down to the road at Nikkaluokta, but we still arrived to the tiny village (population 22) several hours before our bus was due. We ate a hardy, celebratory meal of reindeer casserole and moose meatloaf and lingered at our table over several coffees. Eventually, we put our ski boots back on and walked up a nearby hill to the local chapel which was built in 1942. The interior is decorated with local Sami (the native people in this area are called Sami) crafts and featured reindeer hides in various forms. There’s a good view up the valley from the chapel’s hill, and Carl and I gazed wistfully back toward the mountains, wondering how long it will be until we’re able to adventure in the mountains again.
Back at the cafe, we turned in our skis and ski boots to be shipped back to Abisko and then hopped on the bus which took us to Kiruna. From the bus station in Kiruna, we shared a taxi to Kiruna airport, and suddenly, around midnight, we were home in Stockholm again, waiting at the bus stop in our slippers since we had returned the only “real” shoes we had had on the journey. We were back at work the next day, already longing to be out in the mountains again.
In a way, this hut-to-hut journey was the culmination of a lot of “training” we’ve been doing over the last few years—honing our cross-country ski technique in Orsa Grönklitt, learning how to telemark ski in New Zealand, honing our downhill ski skills on various ski trips throughout the years, and learning how to read avalanche conditions with UCPA in the French Alps. On the other hand, I hope that this trip is just the beginning of a lifetime of backcountry ski adventures. Now that we know that we are capable of and really enjoy this kind of relatively mild ski adventure, I am really excited to keep raising the bar and to try more advanced adventures on skis.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2016
Skiing in Tignes, France
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| The town of Tignes is down in the bowl. |
First of all, the weather was just about perfect. It snowed a meter the day before we arrived, so there was tons of powder to play in the first few days. (I seriously don't know if I've ever seen so much snow in my whole life, the path to the UCPA center's front door was edged on both sides by about 6 feet of snow.) Then we had six straight days of sunny, nearly cloudless skies. The temperatures weren’t too cold, but the slopes never got melty and icy. We couldn’t have asked for better conditions!
Tignes is connected to the adjacent ski area Val d’Isere, and together the two resorts have 300 kilometers of runs. There’s a good balance between easier runs and steeper runs, although only two of the black slopes are groomed. All of the other black slopes are mogul runs! As the town of Tignes is above tree-line, the majority of the runs are also well above tree-line. Pistes range from 3456 meters all the way down to 1550 meters, from glacier runs to tree runs.
As you’d expect from the Alps, the scenery was magnificent. Ridge after ridge of jagged peaks piercing the sky, separated by glaciers flowing from the peaks into the valleys. You can even spot famous mountains like Mont Blanc from the resort.
Carl had an awesome experience in his off-piste group. They didn’t do tooo much walking and climbing this year,
I had a much better experience than at Val Thorens last year. My instructor was top-notch and my group was pretty unified on what skills we wanted to focus on. On the second day we skied down an ungroomed black mogul run, and no one in the group could ski it well. Our instructor gave us some pointers along the way, but once wasn’t enough for improvement. We asked him if we could do more equally challenging runs, and he hesitated, saying that he didn’t want to break us!
But then, the next day, we spent nearly the entire day skiing ungroomed black mogul runs. Never-the-less, I still wasn’t really getting it. But after two more days of focusing on such challenging pistes, I was beginning to get the hang of it and could string together several good turns in a row before getting stuck. But by that time, my legs were screaming, and when I tried to do another such run on our last day, I ended up in tears. I guess my instructor ended up breaking me after all. Hopefully the skills I gained during my week in Tignes will remain imprinted in my muscle memory for next year!
On the last day, my group voted to eat lunch at a small, slope-side restaurant that serves typical regional dishes. A group-mate and I shared a dish where you grill your own meat over an open flame, and then top the thin slices of beef with a range of sauces. The food was delicious and copious, but we all tried desserts with our coffees, anyway. The setting was too beautiful and the sun too warm to resist sitting there for another hour.
The UCPA hotel at Tignes wasn’t anything too special, but the rooms were newly renovated, clean, and relatively comfortable. The food was better than at other UCPA centers, and we were glad to see that the French cheese buffet was standard at every meal at Tignes, too.
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| Our view from our window |
This year, we didn’t travel with our adventure friends from Stockholm. We missed spending time with them, but it did give us the opportunity to get to know some new people. We made particular friends with a couple that also lives in Stockholm, and I really hope that we manage to keep in touch!
When we got home, I was utterly exhausted and my legs were in intense protest against all those mogul runs, but we were so, so satisfied with our week on Tignes’s slopes. We’re already excited and ready for more skiing next winter!
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| Carl and I on the slopes |
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016
Going to Winter
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| It snowed and blowed quite a lot during our ski loop on Saturday, so the wind shelter was a welcome spot for a lunch break. |
Orsa is in the middle of Dalarna, Sweden’s most “Swedish” county. There is a LOT to see and do in the area as far as culture, art, history, and natural landscapes are concerned, but we’ll have to make the journey back there again another time. This weekend, we were focused on cross country skiing!
While Orsa Grönklitt’s downhill skiing isn’t super impressive, they have 80 kilometers of perfectly groomed cross-country trails in terrain varying from spruce forest to frozen bogs, and from flat open fields to rolling hills.
On the drive up to the ski area, we were pretty worried because the snow cover wasn’t that deep, but the ski area is just high enough in elevation to make a big difference in snow reliability. Once we started climbing up, the snow became a deep and fluffy blanket over the forested landscape.
The ski trails at Orsa were beautiful and well prepared, and the snow conditions were perfect—good glide without being icy. I loved being out on the trails and out in nature. Unfortunately, however, I had a cold and not a whole lot of energy, so I didn’t end up skiing as much as Carl. While he was out doing extra loops, I was cozied up in the ski resort’s cozy cafe drinking hot chocolate and reading novels. I was disappointed not to have the energy to take full advantage of the ski opportunity, I did enjoy my relaxing reading time.
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| Sunday skiing after the big snow storm. |
Our technique lesson was short but really helpful. While Carl and I have been able to shuffle ourselves around various cross-country ski loops, we’ve always been VERY slow and we know that we haven’t really been skiing correctly. While we are out on skis to enjoy nature and winter more than to get aerobic exercise, we have felt the need to work on our technique for safety reasons. You never know when the weather’s going to turn, and being able to get quickly and efficiently back to civilization in the event of a sudden blizzard seems like a prudent skill to have.
The instructor broke the complicated motions of cross-country skiing into bite-size chunks for us to master, and she showed us various drills to train each part of the movement. While I feel like I got a pretty good grip on the individual movements, putting them all together in the right rhythm still feels pretty complicated. Hopefully I’ll manage to remember how the correct technique feels the next time we are on cross country skis!
This trip was my inaugural rental car trip after finally getting my Swedish driver’s license last fall (see I FINALLY got my Swedish Driver's License!!!). This particular trip wouldn’t have been possible by public transportation, so it was super fun to have the flexibility to rent a car and leave town for the weekend. We did, however, miss being able to sit back and let someone else take care of the driving after an exhausting weekend on skis.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 24, 2016
Skiing under the Matterhorn
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| Carl (right) and I (left) skiing under the Matterhorn |
This year, Carl, his Aunt Eva, and I spent nine wonderful days over Christmas and New Year’s skiing under the Matterhorn in Zermatt, Switzerland.
After so-so Christmas snow conditions every year for the last 4 years, we did a lot of research to figure out which European resorts are the most snow-safe at Christmas time. Zermatt, due to its high altitude and due to its glacier skiing, topped the list. We felt pretty confident booking a Christmas ski trip to Zermatt, but snow conditions all over Europe turned out to be extra abysmal this year. Many resorts in the Alps didn’t open at all for Christmas! None-the-less, Zermatt did a good job of entertaining us—about half of Zermatt’s 360km of runs were open (none of them black). Below a certain level all of the snow was man-made, but up on the glacier, the snow was natural.
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| When you're skiing on the glacier, you don't really notice the gaping crevasses beside the runs. It's not until you look across or back up the glacier that you notice the icy slope-side traps. At the top of the glacier runs, signs warn you not to ski off piste lest you fall in crevasse. |
Despite the lack of snow, we had a fantastic ski week. The runs at Zermatt are incredibly varied from long, looping runs through trees down toward the villages to steep, exposed runs up among the jagged peaks. Some of Zermatt’s historic runs were blasted into sheer mountainsides in order to connect two areas of the mountain, and still other runs up on the glacier are seemingly endlessly wide and long since there are no trees or buildings to break up all of that white.
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| Left: A very narrow run blasted into the mountainside. Right: Wide open views up on the glacier runs. Both: Amazing mountain views wherever you look! |
Even though Zermatt doesn’t have a cool circuit like the Sella Ronda in Val Gardena (see Christmas Skiing in the Italian Dolomites and Christmas Skiing in Val Gardena, Italy), Zermatt’s longest runs cover 20km and 2400 vertical meters, making for lovely, long runs that just keep going and going. I love that feeling of not just yo-yoing up and down but of actually traveling somewhere on skis. At Zermatt, the feeling of traveling by ski is exaggerated by the fact that half of the resort is in Switzerland and half the resort is in Italy, and that you often find yourself crossing the border by ski.
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| Panorama from the top of the highest lift. Italy is to the left of the Matterhorn and Switzerland is to the right. Zermatt is down in the deep, shaded valley to the right of the middle of the image. |
Seven of nine days dawned cloudless with bright sunshine and very little wind. The far-reaching views were awe-inspiring, and the sunshine warmed enough to allow for sun-drenched picnic lunches and snack breaks as well as outdoor après ski just about every day. It was very lucky for our wallets that the conditions were so amenable to picnic lunches because slope-side lunches in Zermatt are ridiculously expensive, a minimum of about $35 per person not including drinks! Popping over the border to Italy was a much better deal where a tasty, filling meal could be procured for about $15. Zermatt doesn’t have the same food culture as Val Gardena, and we definitely missed the charming slope-side cottages offering gourmet meals complete with white tablecloths and candlelight for a reasonable sum.
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| Lunch and fika in the sun. |
We did have one memorable gourmet experience dining out in Zermatt. We cooked very tasty dinners in our apartment most days, but one evening the three of us went out for cheese fondue in a charismatic historic restaurant. The fondue was delicious and filling and warming, and it was so fun dipping the bread, pickles, mushrooms, tomatoes, pears, and prosciutto into the gently bubbling cheese!
Because the altitude varies from 1500m at the lowest village to 3900m at the top of the highest lift, the temperatures varied from about +5C to -14C over the course of one long run. It was hard to dress for such varying conditions, and no matter what we tried, we invariably ended up freezing at the top and sweating buckets by the bottom.
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| Many days we didn't have to wait at all in lift lines, which helped us not to freeze too much. |
We skied practically from sunup to sundown every day, averaging 40km (25 miles) and 6812 vertical meters (22,300 vertical feet) per day. As I mentioned above, I was a bit disappointed that none of Zermatt’s famous steep black runs were open, but we did find a few challenging red slopes that we fell in love with and repeated over and over and over again. My skiing technique definitely continues to improve, and this time I found myself able to ski long, steep runs without even having to stop. It felt so good!
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| After all that skiing, we didn't feel guilty about taking a little time in the afternoon for a slopeside or fireside après ski. |
It’s not news, but I just love downhill skiing. I love being outside all day, every day. I love the constant sweeping, majestic views. I love the challenge, and the pronounced improvement in my skiing capabilities from one ski trip to the next. I love the sense of accomplishment when I gracefully ski down a challenging slope. I love that skiing demands my full attention, and that I am in the moment from dawn to dusk, and that my everyday life drops completely away. I love the physical activity, and that at the end of the day my body feels pleasantly tired from all the exertion.
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| The views are a big part of my love for downhill skiing. Left: Mt. Rosa is actually higher than the Matterhorn, but its peak isn't nearly as dramatic. Mt. Rosa's glacier, however, is quite impressive! |
A large majority of Swedes take a yearly "sol semester" or "sun vacation" in order to escape the often dreary Swedish winter. The "sun vacation" is exactly the same concept as the American "beach vacation" with sun, sand, and poolside umbrella drinks. My version of the perfect "sun vacation" involves sunny slopes, snow in lieu of sand, and warm spiced wine instead of umbrella drinks.
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| My version of a sun vacation. |
While we didn’t get to experience some of Zermatt’s famed runs, we did get to experience the legendary Matterhorn which is seen from just about every angle and perspective from all the different ski slopes. Around just about every bend is a new view of the Matterhorn, and we found ourselves stopping to photograph it constantly. The other surrounding mountains form a gorgeous, jagged backdrop, but the towering Matterhorn definitely takes center stage. It is rare that a mountain actually looks like the stereotypical cartoon drawing of a mountain, but the Matterhorn really does.
We also enjoyed the renowned experience of the village of Zermatt itself. Originally a sleepy farming village, it is now quite ritzy and expensive. However, the village is almost exclusively visited by people who love hiking and skiing in the outdoors, so though glitzy, the atmosphere isn’t overly snobby. Zermatt’s charm is partly due to the fact that cars are forbidden. There are electric busses and taxis, but the village is still at a very walkable scale with bakeries, butchers, cheese stores, and grocery stores mixed into the bar and shopping scene.
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| The Matterhorn frames just about every view from the town of Zermatt. |
Zermatt’s church features a ceiling fresco of Noah’s ark as well as heaven and hell; a skiing devil in hell makes you wonder if the church found skiers ungodly or unrighteous?
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Zermatt was that there is such an abundance of historic log cabins still integrated into the glamorous urban fabric. Some of the smaller log cabins date back to the 1500’s! We were so busy skiing that I didn’t take time to photograph these areas during good lighting conditions, but I swooned every time we walked by one of these charming cabins. Several of them are available as rental apartments—I’m sure they’re outlandishly expensive but if we ever go back to Zermatt I will have to check them out!
Our apartment was functional and clean, but it certainly wasn’t as charming as one of the little log cabins. However, we did have a wonderful balcony overlooking almost the entire Zermatt valley, and it proved to be a delightful viewpoint on New Year’s after Eva’s decadent five course dinner. I’m sure that the village provided a fireworks show, but the private fireworks were so grandiose that we couldn’t distinguish the village’s show from all of the private shows all over town. I have never seen so many large-scale fireworks like that—it was gorgeous but I think a sure sign that many of Zermatt’s visitors have a little too much expendable cash. The downside to all of that firework craziness was that there was a small forest fire on the mountainside directly across from our apartment. As we stood there on the balcony, we watched the fire blaze up and spread, and then watched as the fire-fighting crews climbed up the steep slope and extinguished the fire. As they put out the fire, the fireworks shows continued for a good half an hour after the clock struck midnight.
The trip from Stockholm to Zermatt involved a flight with one layover and then a four hour train journey, the last bit on Switzerland’s classic Glacier Express. The Glacier Express has huge windows and the glass even continues up in the ceiling so that you can see the peaks almost directly overhead. My first glimpse of the Matterhorn took my breath away—finally I have seen the famed mountain! And now I have even spent nine full days skiing under its shadow.
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| The Glacier Express train car. |
Thank you Carl and Eva, I really love spending the holidays skiing with you!
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 06, 2015
Weekend in Paris
I
was a little at a loss for what to give Carl for our wedding
anniversary this year. We don’t really gift stuff unless it’s something
we need, but a new pair of jeans just doesn’t say “I love you, thank
you for your love and support, it’s so wonderful being married to you.”
Often we give each other tickets to a performance of some sort, but we
had just bought season tickets to the ballet, so more performances
didn’t seem quite necessary. Instead, I decided to give Carl the city
of Paris—what could be more romantic than that!?!
Carl had never been to Paris (the airport doesn’t count!) and it seemed like high time. But we tend to use our vacation days on active vacations like skiing and hiking and kayaking, so there didn’t seem to be time for a week in Paris. Instead of gorging on Paris for a week and still not seeing everything on our list, I decided that we could take the city in bite-size weekend portions since there’s a convenient, reasonably priced 2.5 hour direct flight from Stockholm that makes weekend trips easy. For our first weekend in Paris, we decided to give ourselves something to look forward to toward the end of dreary November. And it worked! This November hasn’t felt nearly as depressing as previous years, although a drastic increase in the amount of sunshine might have also played a big roll.
We flew into Paris Friday night, exactly one week after the bombings. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, but we knew that the minute we thought about staying home, the terrorists would have won. It seems that most people in Paris had similar thoughts, that life must go on and one cannot change one’s life out of fear of crazy, irrational bad people, because when we came up from the subway at around midnight, the streets were filled with revelers, the sidewalk cafés were brimming, and the sound of party music filled the air.
Carl decided to make a day at the Louvre the focal point of our weekend, so I booked us a hotel and a dinner in the neighborhood. Our hotel room was adequate, but nothing to write home about except for the balcony. Despite the chill we spent a while enjoying the views and enjoying being in Paris.
Our only jaunt outside of the neighborhood was to the catacombs. I didn’t want to give us museum fatigue before we even stepped foot into the Louvre, but I knew that outdoor activities in November were probably not advisable. The catacombs seemed like a good compromise, especially since I hadn’t seen them before.
I found the history of the catacombs more interesting than the actual bones themselves. The tunnels were dug as limestone mines starting in the 1300’s, and as the limestone was mined, the tunnels were successively abandoned throughout the centuries. A series of cave-ins in the 1700’s prompted the city to investigate the abandoned tunnels, and hundreds of kilometers of old mine tunnels were mapped and shored up to prevent future collapses. More or less simultaneously, Paris’s cemeteries began to overflow, causing major health risks to the surrounding areas. Throughout the next 150 years, the city removed about six million skeletons from the cemeteries and deposited them in the tunnels. It was jumbled chaos until Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury began stacking the bones, creating a organized walkways and even incorporating patterns.
Paris’s catacombs slightly pre-date the Victorian cult of the dead, but I think that they are part of the same romantic phenomenon of the grotesque. When you enter the catacombs, you are greeted by a sign saying “Stop! You are entering the empire of the dead.” Stones with death-themed poetry are placed throughout the catacombs—I was surprised to even find a stone with two Swedish poems and French translations. The catacombs were never meant as a place for grieving. First, they were the solution to an acute problem, but they quickly became a singular phenomenon and a tourist attraction.
Lunch after the catacombs was at Angelina’s, a gorgeous grand café famous for its thick hot chocolate. For my main course, I ordered chestnut truffle soup. Oh my goodness, it was seriously one of the best things I have ever eaten. For desert, we drank hot chocolate and shared a Mont Blanc pastry which is basically a cream puff with a nest of extruded chestnut cream on top. It is very, very rare that I find desert to be too much or too rich, but I couldn’t finish my hot chocolate or my portion of the pastry.
Unfortunately, it was pouring after lunch, so our afternoon walk wasn’t quite as relaxing as I had hoped. I had taken the November weather into consideration and so planned a walk that took in several of Paris’s 19th century covered galleries, but the walk between galleries was wet to say the least.
Saturday night we dined at a Lyonnaise restaurant. We shared a pumpkin soup, and then Carl had stewed hare for dinner while I dined on an extravagant dish consisted of several types of fois gras and pâté layered into a ball, then then wrapped in pastry and baked. Thank goodness my stomach was up to the task after not being able to finish my hot chocolate! With dinner we drank this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau (the season officially started two days before we got to Paris) and with desert we tried a cognac and an apple calvados. For desert we tried a delicious quince tart. My stomach is growling now as I recall the delicious meal.
We spent all of Sunday at the Louvre, mostly in the galleries but also meandering outside, taking in the grand architecture and I.M. Pei’s brilliant pyramids. Although we did stop in to see the Mona Lisa and a few other Italian masterpieces by Canaletto, Arcimboldo, and Caravaggio, we spent most of the day going through the French galleries from the 1400’s up until about 1850. I fell in love with an 1841 painting by Biard depicting the northern lights during his trip to the Artic and with Fragonard’s portraits from around the 1770’s which seem to slightly foreshadow the intimacy of Impressionism.
The exterior of the Louvre is of course almost as scrumptious as the works of art displayed on the interior. Each wing is 700 meters long, making for a pretty good workout just circling the palace. Every surface is richly detailed, and I particularly love the exquisite chimneys. Even the drainpipes are richly decorated! I love how prominent the Louvre’s roofs are—ever since Neoclassicism in the later 1700’s, architects have been almost shame-facedly hiding roofs, but I love the Parisian styles which have almost always embraced the roof and flauntingly embellished it.
The sun was setting as we walked back to our hotel to collect our luggage and head to the airport. It was a short and sweet weekend, and now that we have whet our palates on the grace and pomp and food and art of Paris, we can’t wait for our next weekend trip there!
Images are mine except for
Angelina's and Catacombs map, which came from Wikemedia Commons
Aux Lyonnais which came from http://auxlyonnais.com/
Art images came from the Louvre database
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2015
A Golden Weekend in Tuscany
Carl had never been to Paris (the airport doesn’t count!) and it seemed like high time. But we tend to use our vacation days on active vacations like skiing and hiking and kayaking, so there didn’t seem to be time for a week in Paris. Instead of gorging on Paris for a week and still not seeing everything on our list, I decided that we could take the city in bite-size weekend portions since there’s a convenient, reasonably priced 2.5 hour direct flight from Stockholm that makes weekend trips easy. For our first weekend in Paris, we decided to give ourselves something to look forward to toward the end of dreary November. And it worked! This November hasn’t felt nearly as depressing as previous years, although a drastic increase in the amount of sunshine might have also played a big roll.
 |
| I just love Parisian buildings! All out all the time! |
We flew into Paris Friday night, exactly one week after the bombings. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, but we knew that the minute we thought about staying home, the terrorists would have won. It seems that most people in Paris had similar thoughts, that life must go on and one cannot change one’s life out of fear of crazy, irrational bad people, because when we came up from the subway at around midnight, the streets were filled with revelers, the sidewalk cafés were brimming, and the sound of party music filled the air.
 |
| Amazing green wall around the corner from our hotel. |
Carl decided to make a day at the Louvre the focal point of our weekend, so I booked us a hotel and a dinner in the neighborhood. Our hotel room was adequate, but nothing to write home about except for the balcony. Despite the chill we spent a while enjoying the views and enjoying being in Paris.
Our only jaunt outside of the neighborhood was to the catacombs. I didn’t want to give us museum fatigue before we even stepped foot into the Louvre, but I knew that outdoor activities in November were probably not advisable. The catacombs seemed like a good compromise, especially since I hadn’t seen them before.
I found the history of the catacombs more interesting than the actual bones themselves. The tunnels were dug as limestone mines starting in the 1300’s, and as the limestone was mined, the tunnels were successively abandoned throughout the centuries. A series of cave-ins in the 1700’s prompted the city to investigate the abandoned tunnels, and hundreds of kilometers of old mine tunnels were mapped and shored up to prevent future collapses. More or less simultaneously, Paris’s cemeteries began to overflow, causing major health risks to the surrounding areas. Throughout the next 150 years, the city removed about six million skeletons from the cemeteries and deposited them in the tunnels. It was jumbled chaos until Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury began stacking the bones, creating a organized walkways and even incorporating patterns.
 |
| This map shows just the catacombes, which take up just as small percentage of Paris's underground tunnels. |
Paris’s catacombs slightly pre-date the Victorian cult of the dead, but I think that they are part of the same romantic phenomenon of the grotesque. When you enter the catacombs, you are greeted by a sign saying “Stop! You are entering the empire of the dead.” Stones with death-themed poetry are placed throughout the catacombs—I was surprised to even find a stone with two Swedish poems and French translations. The catacombs were never meant as a place for grieving. First, they were the solution to an acute problem, but they quickly became a singular phenomenon and a tourist attraction.
Lunch after the catacombs was at Angelina’s, a gorgeous grand café famous for its thick hot chocolate. For my main course, I ordered chestnut truffle soup. Oh my goodness, it was seriously one of the best things I have ever eaten. For desert, we drank hot chocolate and shared a Mont Blanc pastry which is basically a cream puff with a nest of extruded chestnut cream on top. It is very, very rare that I find desert to be too much or too rich, but I couldn’t finish my hot chocolate or my portion of the pastry.
Unfortunately, it was pouring after lunch, so our afternoon walk wasn’t quite as relaxing as I had hoped. I had taken the November weather into consideration and so planned a walk that took in several of Paris’s 19th century covered galleries, but the walk between galleries was wet to say the least.
Saturday night we dined at a Lyonnaise restaurant. We shared a pumpkin soup, and then Carl had stewed hare for dinner while I dined on an extravagant dish consisted of several types of fois gras and pâté layered into a ball, then then wrapped in pastry and baked. Thank goodness my stomach was up to the task after not being able to finish my hot chocolate! With dinner we drank this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau (the season officially started two days before we got to Paris) and with desert we tried a cognac and an apple calvados. For desert we tried a delicious quince tart. My stomach is growling now as I recall the delicious meal.
 |
| Angelina on the left and Aux Lyonnais on the right. |
We spent all of Sunday at the Louvre, mostly in the galleries but also meandering outside, taking in the grand architecture and I.M. Pei’s brilliant pyramids. Although we did stop in to see the Mona Lisa and a few other Italian masterpieces by Canaletto, Arcimboldo, and Caravaggio, we spent most of the day going through the French galleries from the 1400’s up until about 1850. I fell in love with an 1841 painting by Biard depicting the northern lights during his trip to the Artic and with Fragonard’s portraits from around the 1770’s which seem to slightly foreshadow the intimacy of Impressionism.
 |
| Biard on the left, Fragonard on the right. |
The exterior of the Louvre is of course almost as scrumptious as the works of art displayed on the interior. Each wing is 700 meters long, making for a pretty good workout just circling the palace. Every surface is richly detailed, and I particularly love the exquisite chimneys. Even the drainpipes are richly decorated! I love how prominent the Louvre’s roofs are—ever since Neoclassicism in the later 1700’s, architects have been almost shame-facedly hiding roofs, but I love the Parisian styles which have almost always embraced the roof and flauntingly embellished it.
The sun was setting as we walked back to our hotel to collect our luggage and head to the airport. It was a short and sweet weekend, and now that we have whet our palates on the grace and pomp and food and art of Paris, we can’t wait for our next weekend trip there!
Images are mine except for
Angelina's and Catacombs map, which came from Wikemedia Commons
Aux Lyonnais which came from http://auxlyonnais.com/
Art images came from the Louvre database
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2015
A Golden Weekend in Tuscany
It
seems like another age and another world, but Carl and I were in
Tuscany for a long weekend about a month ago. As soon as my treasured
friend Chad started mentioning attending a friend’s wedding in Italy, I
jumped on the idea of meeting up for a long weekend after the wedding. I
thought we might as well take advantage while we’re on the same
continent, even if Italy isn’t exactly next door to Stockholm!
Conveniently enough, the wedding was on a Wednesday, so Carl and I flew down to Pisa late Thursday night. We spent the night in a little airport hotel and then picked up our rental car early Friday morning and wound our way on the back roads of Tuscany to the hilltown of San Gimignano where Chad and Tom met up with us.
Conveniently enough, the wedding was on a Wednesday, so Carl and I flew down to Pisa late Thursday night. We spent the night in a little airport hotel and then picked up our rental car early Friday morning and wound our way on the back roads of Tuscany to the hilltown of San Gimignano where Chad and Tom met up with us.
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| San Gimignano to the left, Volterra to the right |
San Gimignano is a well-touristed town for good reason. Its hilltop location in combination with its medieval wall and towers makes for stunning and evocative scenery. I happen to be a particular fan of towers, so much so that Carl and I call out “tower!” to each other whenever we stumble across one, so San Gimignano has been on my list for a long time. Finally, we had an excellent reason to go!
The town is very well restored and cared for—tourism and the wine industry are the only major income sources, so it pays to keep the town in tip-top shape. The bricks and stones that make up the unplastered, medieval facades are a rich honey color, giving the entire town a golden glow. While the main street is lined with tourist shops and jammed with tourists, the other narrow streets which wind across the plateau are quiet have a much more local flavor.
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| San Gimignano |
Today San Gimignano has 17 towers, but in its heyday, there were 72! It’s hard to imagine so many towers crammed on top of such a small town; just about every other building must have been a tower! Everywhere you go in the town, you are within sight of at least one picturesque tower, and in places you feel surrounded by them. One of the towers is part of the city museum and is open to the public. We lucked out with a gorgeous, sunny afternoon, and the views from the tower were sumptuous.
We stayed at a nearby agritourismo, or farm. The land is still productive growing grapes and olives, but the farmhouse and outbuildings have been converted into a bed and breakfast.
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| Agriturismo Poggiacolle |
The
rooms were comfortable and handsome, but the showstopper was the
location and the view over the valley to San Gimignano. We couldn’t get
enough of the view and photographed it in the sun, in the rain, in the
fog, at night, from the pool’s edge, from the house’s tower, from the
garden, from our rooms...
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| View from the agriturismo's infinity pool and at night |
Our first evening in San Gimignano we bought picnic supplies—local cheeses, sausages, wines, olives, bread—and tramped out into the vineyard at sunset. Chad and Tom had even brought a picnic blanket with them from the US! The sky blazed candy-apple red and we felt like we were in a film as we toasted each other, Tuscany, the vineyard we were sitting in, and every other good thing under the sun(set). What a magical moment.
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| Never thought about it before but black olives and red grapes are the same color! |
One day we drove to Volterra, another nearby hilltown. Instead of the main road, we chose to take “blue highways” and ended up driving through gorgeous farms and forests along a pitted dirt road which pitched directly up and down the Tuscan hills. At regular intervals, Tom, who is a chef, got out to dig around the oaks in a random effort to find truffles. It was truffle season, after all, and amazingly enough he even found one!
Volterra is a bit bigger than San Gimignano, and while it is enclosed by a medieval wall (the fortress is STILL used as a prison today!), it does not have any towers. The Volterra region is known for its alabaster, and while the town’s churches are quite understated compared to many Italian churches, the baptistery had a magnificent alabaster alter.
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| Volterra's baptistry |
We
spent the day wandering Volterras medieval streets, picnicking in a
sunny olive grove, and enjoying magnificent views out over the Tuscan
countryside.
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| Volterra |
Another
muggy warm day we walked from our bed and breakfast through the Tuscan
countryside to San Donato Winery. Once the proprietors learned where we
were staying, we were treated to a nine wine and three grappa tasting
along with lessons in local history, the history of wine, the benefits
of different grapes, wine processing methods, the influence of climate
on wine grapes, and local gossip. I have never felt so welcome in my
life! The portions of each tasting were more like half-glasses than a
couple of sips, so by the end of our two-hour tasting we were toasted.
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| The winery's gorgeous complex of buildings |
We hadn’t planned our hike very well, and it was about 2 p.m. and we had drunk about 2 bottles of wine each but had eaten no lunch. We begged the proprietors for something to eat, and even though they don’t have a restaurant, they scrounged up delicious sandwiches on fresh bread with local soft cheese and ham. And, of course, a bottle and a half of wine. The net effect of the lunch on our sobriety was probably null, but with the sandwiches in our stomachs, we felt ready to wobble our way through the vineyards, forests, and olive groves back to our hotel. Back at the agritourismo, we immediately stripped down and hopped into the pool.
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| Lunch! |
While the vineyards imprint a clearly man-made corduroy texture upon the landscape, I was surprised by how much of the Tuscan countryside is wild forest. My picture of Tuscany was of grapevines, olive trees, and sunflowers, but that is only half of Tuscany’s reality. Despite thousands of years of cultivation, much of the land is seemingly untouched. Our trip coincided with the beginning of fall, and the forests were just beginning to turn. The grapevines, however, were brilliantly yellow. The yellow vineyards in combination with the low angle of the sunlight turned the entire landscape golden and magical.
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| Views from our walk to the winery |
It was so, so wonderful to see Chad and Tom, but four days together was just not enough. Although we had a magical time in Tuscany, the trip left me feeling a bit sad because I miss my friends in the US so much, and we so rarely get to see each other. Infrequent visits across the ocean are just not enough!
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 04, 2015
Cabin Weekend in Nynäs Nature Reserve
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| The nature reserve stretches from the Baltic Sea (left) inland to forests and lakes (right). |
Carl
and I very rarely take off on spontaneous trips, but last weekend we
decided at the last minute to head about an hour south of the city to
Nynäs Nature Reserve. Like many of Sweden’s other nature reserves,
Nynäs is more than just “nature.” The cultural and historical aspects of
the reserve are just as important as it was originally a huge estate
complete with palace and a number of tenant farms in addition to
forests, lakes, and meadows. We know that the area was farmed at least
as far back as the Bronze Age due to several pre-Viking grave fields,
but it isn’t until the 1328 that Nynäs as an estate is first encountered
in the written historical record. The Nynäs estate was in noble hands
from before the 1300’s until 1967 when it was donated to the county as a
reserve.
The palace that is visible today was built on the foundations of the original moated medieval castle. By the mid-1600’s, the castle was hopelessly old fashioned and the current owner tore it down to build a more modern and more prestigious palace. Strangely, the new palace seems to have built in an already out-of-date Renaissance style with steep roofs and stepped gables according to a 1665 drawing by Erik Dahlberg.
It was at this time that the palace’s well-known intricate stucco ceilings were created.
In the mid-1700’s, the palace underwent an extensive
modernization, probably under architect Erik Palmstedt. The steep roof
was replaced by a more modern mansard roof, the tiny windows were
replaced with much larger ones, and the facade was plastered and adorned
with classical details like the pilasters and the quoins as well as the
balustrade and balcony. Very little has changed since the
1700’s—electricity and plumbing don’t go past the ground floor up to the
main living areas, and the facade is untouched since Palmstedt’s
renovation.
The estate was more-or-less fully self-supporting and in addition to tenant farms, the estate had extensive kitchen gardens, an orangery, a distillery, a water-driven saw mill, and a flour mill. All of this is interwoven into a gorgeous rural landscape of fields and meadows dotted with happily grazing cows and horses as well as red barns and log-cabin farmhouses.
The edges of the reserve are wild in contrast to the cultural farmland landscapes. Deep, lush forests enclose a series of secret-feeling lakes. Small, fern and moss-covered gorges alternate with high bulbs of glacier-smoothed granite. And everywhere, mushrooms. Without even going off the path to hunt for them, we picked several kilograms of edible mushrooms along our hikes.
Tenting is not allowed in the reserve, so we rented a very reasonable log cabin for the night. Firewood and candles were even included in the price, so we had quite the cozy candle-lit, fire-side evening. We even cooked some appetizer mushrooms and roasted foraged desert apples over the coals! Delicious, on both accounts!
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2015
Camping with the Vikings at Birka and Hovgården
Birka has been at the top of our Stockholm
sight-seeing list since before we even moved here, but we never managed
to make it until this year. But this year we managed to keep a summer
weekend free from other commitments and Saturday morning found us on the
boat out to the island of Björkö and the archeological site Birka. We
camped on the island and enjoyed a tourist-free evening wandering the
UNESCO World Heritage Site before returning to Stockholm with the boat
Sunday afternoon.
Birka was the regional trade center during Viking times from the 700’s until the late 900’s. It did not grow organically from a village or due to a crossroads but was purposely founded by a king so that trade would be concentrated in one place. In this manner, the king could keep trade under his control and reap the benefits of taxes. The island of Björkö was chosen partly because it was far enough from the Baltic coast that the Vikings would have plenty of warning in case of attack. Another important ingredient was that the city was directly across the bay from and within sight of Hovgården.
Directly translated, Hovgården means Court Farm. Because there was no real centralized seat of government, the king had to continually make rounds throughout his territory, keeping an eye on things and reinforcing relationships with locals. For this purpose, the king owned several estates which were sprinkled around his domain. Hovgården, directly across from Birka, was one such estate. By siting the new trade center within sight of one of his estates, the king could easily keep tabs on what went on in the town of Birka.
Who were the Vikings? Our tour guide mentioned that visitors come to Sweden wondering where the “Viking Reservation” is, as if Vikings had been contained to one place by a later government like Navajo or Cherokee Indians. Others wonder why the Vikings died off. In reality, “Viking” is more of a time period, a culture, and a an activity than a group of people. Because the oldest son inherited everything, younger sons were forced to leave their home and make their own fortune. These Vikings “went on viking” and sailed to foreign lands to plunder and trade for treasure. Vikings from Norway headed west and south to Iceland, Scotland, Ireland, France, and beyond. Vikings from Sweden headed east and used Russia’s great rivers to travel to the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, and to the Mediterranean. Istanbul was the ultimate prized goal.
During the Viking period, the Vikings had the advantage of superior boat technology and of relatively disorganized conditions in mainland Europe. The Viking age began to wane as others caught up in boat-design technologies and as trade routes became more controlled or closed off entirely due to strengthening kingdoms. The rise of Christianity in Scandinavia also played a big roll—suddenly mainland Europeans were not “others” and therefore suitable for attack. Not only did the prevailing religion change, but Christianity and its ideals such as the abolishment of slavery, the strict adherence to monogamy, and the debasement of women changed the entire Viking way of life. It was a slow but sure evolution from one culture to another; eventually, only the Norse language was left.
There has always been great debate on what the term Viking actually means and how it came about, but the current theory seems quite probable to me. Because “viking” has always been used as a verb, as in to “go viking” or to “go on viking,” it is now thought that the origin comes from the verb “avvika,” or “to diverge.” It was the Vikings who diverged from the status quo, leaving home and seeking adventure and riches.
Vikings brought the luxury goods they had stolen or bartered for home where they were in turn traded in Birka’s market. Foreign traders also frequented Birka, trading continental goods such as glass and fabrics for furs and iron which came from the interior of Sweden. Birka’s permanent population was around 1000 people, but during the yearly market which was held in February on the ice between Birka and Hovgården, the population swelled.
Today, it’s hard to imagine the hustle and bustle of a relatively large town at Birka. Even understanding that there was a settlement there at all takes quite an imagination. Although archeologists have found quite a lot during their various digs, there is no visible above ground evidence of a city—today, the city is just a beautiful farm field stretching to the water’s edge. Only archeological excavations have revealed that the city was purposely designed and organized with straight streets leading down to the water and ending in docks which extended the street out into the water. Through archeology both on land and in the harbor we also know what the inhabitants ate, a little about their jewelry and clothes, what their boats looked like, and about various trades such as blacksmiths and carvers.
While the city itself is invisible, there is visible evidence of habitation in the area. About half of the city wall is still discernible, although the wall seems to have been more of a boundary than a defensive structure because it had seven (or eight?) entrances.
There are about 3000 small grave mounds surrounding the city, the highest concentration of anywhere in Scandinavia.
There is also a hilltop fort which is partly defended
by a natural steep cliff and partly defended by a man-made wall. When
the town was under attack, residents would flee the town to the fort.
We know that the fort was attacked several times, but we also know that an attack didn’t spell the end of Birka. Instead, the abandonment of Birka seems to have been a fairly quiet affair. It is likely that just as the king had ordered the establishment of Birka, he also ordered its abandonment in favor of a new, more modern city.
The power center in the region has shifted over time. Around 500 A.D., the power center was Gamla Uppsala. It then shifted to Birka. And then to Sigtuna. And then to Uppsala. And now, of course, it is Stockholm. The reasons for all of these shifts is strategic–the geography was in constant flux as islands rose farther and farther out of the water, and the coastline was constantly shifting. But geography is certainly not the only factor as we know that human factors played a big role in the establishment of Birka which was purposely founded and developed. The current theory is that the shift from Birka to Sigtuna was just as purposeful. As Christianity became more and more prevalent, a new city was needed to reflect the new way of life. Furthermore, it is believed that mainland Europe eventually pressured Scandinavia into Christianity by refusing to trade with pagans. Building Sigtuna, a Christian city with several churches purposefully integrated into the city fabric, was a way of advertising that the area was now Christian and that mainland Europeans could resume business with the Swedes.
While Birka faded into memory soon after the 900’s, Hovgården, just across the water, remained important for several more centuries. We are not certain where the original Viking longhouse “palace” stood, but we can certainly see where the graveyard was—several large “King Mounds” or Kungshögar are quite visible in the landscape.
There is also an interesting rune stone which marked the entrance to what was once the harbor.
The need for royal estates dotting the landscape didn’t fade with the Vikings—it remained important for medieval kings to travel around the domain, to build relationships with locals, and to have visible, grandiose palaces that reminded the locals who was boss. King Magnus Ladulås, son of the founder of Stockholm, built a palace at Hovgården in the 1200’s.
In 1279 and 1280, a series of extremely historically significant meetings were held at the palace, and the result was an early type of Constitution and Bill of Rights. First of all, it was decreed that farmers had a right to monetary payment when guests stayed and ate with them, no matter how important or lowly the guest. Secondly, murder was declared illegal and murderers were to be killed at the earliest possible moment by anyone who found them; a murderer’s estate was to be divided equally between the king, the county, and the victim. Rapists, those who break a contract, those who maim others, and those who inflict a bodily injury at court were also judged to be criminals deserving of death. The last article forbids landowners to extract higher than the established level of payment from serfs, or to demand additional services from them.
The most historically important clause of the Alsnö stadga more or less formalized the hierarchical structure of society. The nobility was already in existence in practice, and they already enjoyed many privileges, but the clause formalized their existence by decreeing that all those in service to the king upon a war horse were exempt from taxes. Priests were also exempted from taxes. All others were to support the king, the nobility, and the priests through taxes.
The formal establishment of the nobility gave Hovgården’s island a new name. It is now known as Adelsö, or Nobility Island.
The palace at Hovgården was burned down in a moment of civil unrest in the 1300’s, and now there is just the tiniest ruin in its place. A church from the 1400’s is now next the site, but the area is otherwise very quiet and rural—it’s hard to imagine that it was once such an important place frequented by royals.
The palace that is visible today was built on the foundations of the original moated medieval castle. By the mid-1600’s, the castle was hopelessly old fashioned and the current owner tore it down to build a more modern and more prestigious palace. Strangely, the new palace seems to have built in an already out-of-date Renaissance style with steep roofs and stepped gables according to a 1665 drawing by Erik Dahlberg.
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| image from here |
The estate was more-or-less fully self-supporting and in addition to tenant farms, the estate had extensive kitchen gardens, an orangery, a distillery, a water-driven saw mill, and a flour mill. All of this is interwoven into a gorgeous rural landscape of fields and meadows dotted with happily grazing cows and horses as well as red barns and log-cabin farmhouses.
 |
| The saw mill and the distillery |
The edges of the reserve are wild in contrast to the cultural farmland landscapes. Deep, lush forests enclose a series of secret-feeling lakes. Small, fern and moss-covered gorges alternate with high bulbs of glacier-smoothed granite. And everywhere, mushrooms. Without even going off the path to hunt for them, we picked several kilograms of edible mushrooms along our hikes.
 |
| In addition to about 8 other kinds of mushrooms, we found a ton of yellow foot mushrooms |
Tenting is not allowed in the reserve, so we rented a very reasonable log cabin for the night. Firewood and candles were even included in the price, so we had quite the cozy candle-lit, fire-side evening. We even cooked some appetizer mushrooms and roasted foraged desert apples over the coals! Delicious, on both accounts!
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2015
Camping with the Vikings at Birka and Hovgården
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| Tent view and sunset from our campsite. |
Birka was the regional trade center during Viking times from the 700’s until the late 900’s. It did not grow organically from a village or due to a crossroads but was purposely founded by a king so that trade would be concentrated in one place. In this manner, the king could keep trade under his control and reap the benefits of taxes. The island of Björkö was chosen partly because it was far enough from the Baltic coast that the Vikings would have plenty of warning in case of attack. Another important ingredient was that the city was directly across the bay from and within sight of Hovgården.
 |
| Out on the water on Lake Mälaren |
Directly translated, Hovgården means Court Farm. Because there was no real centralized seat of government, the king had to continually make rounds throughout his territory, keeping an eye on things and reinforcing relationships with locals. For this purpose, the king owned several estates which were sprinkled around his domain. Hovgården, directly across from Birka, was one such estate. By siting the new trade center within sight of one of his estates, the king could easily keep tabs on what went on in the town of Birka.
Who were the Vikings? Our tour guide mentioned that visitors come to Sweden wondering where the “Viking Reservation” is, as if Vikings had been contained to one place by a later government like Navajo or Cherokee Indians. Others wonder why the Vikings died off. In reality, “Viking” is more of a time period, a culture, and a an activity than a group of people. Because the oldest son inherited everything, younger sons were forced to leave their home and make their own fortune. These Vikings “went on viking” and sailed to foreign lands to plunder and trade for treasure. Vikings from Norway headed west and south to Iceland, Scotland, Ireland, France, and beyond. Vikings from Sweden headed east and used Russia’s great rivers to travel to the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, and to the Mediterranean. Istanbul was the ultimate prized goal.
 |
| A reproduction of a Viking boat that would have been used for local transport and fishing. |
During the Viking period, the Vikings had the advantage of superior boat technology and of relatively disorganized conditions in mainland Europe. The Viking age began to wane as others caught up in boat-design technologies and as trade routes became more controlled or closed off entirely due to strengthening kingdoms. The rise of Christianity in Scandinavia also played a big roll—suddenly mainland Europeans were not “others” and therefore suitable for attack. Not only did the prevailing religion change, but Christianity and its ideals such as the abolishment of slavery, the strict adherence to monogamy, and the debasement of women changed the entire Viking way of life. It was a slow but sure evolution from one culture to another; eventually, only the Norse language was left.
There has always been great debate on what the term Viking actually means and how it came about, but the current theory seems quite probable to me. Because “viking” has always been used as a verb, as in to “go viking” or to “go on viking,” it is now thought that the origin comes from the verb “avvika,” or “to diverge.” It was the Vikings who diverged from the status quo, leaving home and seeking adventure and riches.
Vikings brought the luxury goods they had stolen or bartered for home where they were in turn traded in Birka’s market. Foreign traders also frequented Birka, trading continental goods such as glass and fabrics for furs and iron which came from the interior of Sweden. Birka’s permanent population was around 1000 people, but during the yearly market which was held in February on the ice between Birka and Hovgården, the population swelled.
Today, it’s hard to imagine the hustle and bustle of a relatively large town at Birka. Even understanding that there was a settlement there at all takes quite an imagination. Although archeologists have found quite a lot during their various digs, there is no visible above ground evidence of a city—today, the city is just a beautiful farm field stretching to the water’s edge. Only archeological excavations have revealed that the city was purposely designed and organized with straight streets leading down to the water and ending in docks which extended the street out into the water. Through archeology both on land and in the harbor we also know what the inhabitants ate, a little about their jewelry and clothes, what their boats looked like, and about various trades such as blacksmiths and carvers.
 |
| This field was once the site of bustling Birka town. |
While the city itself is invisible, there is visible evidence of habitation in the area. About half of the city wall is still discernible, although the wall seems to have been more of a boundary than a defensive structure because it had seven (or eight?) entrances.
 |
| What is left of the wall today is visible but not so imposing. |
 |
| Two of the grave fields on the island. |
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| Left: what's left of the hilltop fort ring wall. Right: an entrance through the wall. |
We know that the fort was attacked several times, but we also know that an attack didn’t spell the end of Birka. Instead, the abandonment of Birka seems to have been a fairly quiet affair. It is likely that just as the king had ordered the establishment of Birka, he also ordered its abandonment in favor of a new, more modern city.
 |
| After the abandonment of Birka, the island became a farm, still active today. |
The power center in the region has shifted over time. Around 500 A.D., the power center was Gamla Uppsala. It then shifted to Birka. And then to Sigtuna. And then to Uppsala. And now, of course, it is Stockholm. The reasons for all of these shifts is strategic–the geography was in constant flux as islands rose farther and farther out of the water, and the coastline was constantly shifting. But geography is certainly not the only factor as we know that human factors played a big role in the establishment of Birka which was purposely founded and developed. The current theory is that the shift from Birka to Sigtuna was just as purposeful. As Christianity became more and more prevalent, a new city was needed to reflect the new way of life. Furthermore, it is believed that mainland Europe eventually pressured Scandinavia into Christianity by refusing to trade with pagans. Building Sigtuna, a Christian city with several churches purposefully integrated into the city fabric, was a way of advertising that the area was now Christian and that mainland Europeans could resume business with the Swedes.
While Birka faded into memory soon after the 900’s, Hovgården, just across the water, remained important for several more centuries. We are not certain where the original Viking longhouse “palace” stood, but we can certainly see where the graveyard was—several large “King Mounds” or Kungshögar are quite visible in the landscape.
The need for royal estates dotting the landscape didn’t fade with the Vikings—it remained important for medieval kings to travel around the domain, to build relationships with locals, and to have visible, grandiose palaces that reminded the locals who was boss. King Magnus Ladulås, son of the founder of Stockholm, built a palace at Hovgården in the 1200’s.
 |
| Left: only a small fragment of the basement wall remains of the palace. Right: The three-story palace, high on this hill, would have been visible to all who passed by on the water which was the main thoroughfare until recent times. |
In 1279 and 1280, a series of extremely historically significant meetings were held at the palace, and the result was an early type of Constitution and Bill of Rights. First of all, it was decreed that farmers had a right to monetary payment when guests stayed and ate with them, no matter how important or lowly the guest. Secondly, murder was declared illegal and murderers were to be killed at the earliest possible moment by anyone who found them; a murderer’s estate was to be divided equally between the king, the county, and the victim. Rapists, those who break a contract, those who maim others, and those who inflict a bodily injury at court were also judged to be criminals deserving of death. The last article forbids landowners to extract higher than the established level of payment from serfs, or to demand additional services from them.
The most historically important clause of the Alsnö stadga more or less formalized the hierarchical structure of society. The nobility was already in existence in practice, and they already enjoyed many privileges, but the clause formalized their existence by decreeing that all those in service to the king upon a war horse were exempt from taxes. Priests were also exempted from taxes. All others were to support the king, the nobility, and the priests through taxes.
The formal establishment of the nobility gave Hovgården’s island a new name. It is now known as Adelsö, or Nobility Island.
The palace at Hovgården was burned down in a moment of civil unrest in the 1300’s, and now there is just the tiniest ruin in its place. A church from the 1400’s is now next the site, but the area is otherwise very quiet and rural—it’s hard to imagine that it was once such an important place frequented by royals.
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| Adelsö Church |
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