Impressions of Sweden: Odds and Ends

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

 

Every day at noon at the Royal Palace, there is the changing of the guard. Twice we had the opportunity to see this. The first time was when we disembarked from the boat tour we took our first day in Stockholm; actually, we missed the first part of the parade and only saw the marching band. The second time, just as we were leaving after the Royal Palace tour, we caught it from the beginning.

On the inner courtyard of the palace, it gets quite crowded from all the people (tourists) crowding in to see, hear, and get pictures/take videos.

First comes a standard bearer and then the guards.

Next come two guards on horseback. At the end of the video, you can hear the clip-clop of the horses' hooves.

Last comes the marching band.

 

BIRDS

 

Swedish geese

Swedish gull

Swedish crow

Växjö, Sunday lunch. The people at the table next to us hadn't been gone a minute before this bird swooped in.

 

BUTTERFLIES

 

On our tour of the Småland countryside, there was a multitude of these little butterflies. Usually, butterflies won't land anywhere long enough to get a picture, much less being so obliging as to land on someone's hand.

RIVER TOUR

 

Things we saw on the river tour of Stockholm.

Kayakers

Houseboats

Sailboats

Duck boat

Wooden boats

SOUVENIR

 

I bought my daughter an "I [heart] Stockholm" sweatshirt. We saw magnets and mugs, but we already have plenty of those, and just didn't see the point of buying something just for the sake of a souvenir.

The one thing that I did purchase was this butterknife that I saw in the gift shop at the Nordiska Museet. The little moose motif appealed to me.

I had previously seen a similar silhouette in the artwork of a postcard for sale at the information desk in the Central Station when we inquired about where to buy our Stockholm cards. I had thought I would like to go back later and get one, but then I never did.

As you can see, it's already been put to use, hence the darker stained wood where it's been in the butter.

ONE LAST MUSEUM

After leaving Stockholm, my sister and brother-in-law spent a couple days in Copenhagen. While there, they visited the National Museum of Denmark. Whereas the Swedish National Museum, judging from its website, appears to be an art museum, the Danish one focuses on Danish history — more akin to the Swedish Historiska Museet.

At the Danish museum, this display case full of lurs caught my sister's eye.

Here is what they sound like.

Museums, part 3a: The ABBA Museum

[My husband, Tim, felt that the ABBA Museum deserved a post of its own. Herewith, is a guest post.]

If you visit Seattle, take the underground tour, visit Smith Tower, take a Duck Tour, go to the Market. If you come on a weekday, go to the Starbucks on the 40th floor of Columbia Tower.

And if you visit Stockholm, see the ABBA Museum, an experience the likes of which you will never have outside of Sweden. 

Mamma Mia! The ABBA Museum was bright and noisy — from the ticket line at the beginning, down into the Waterloo Eurovision exhibit:

Right through to Jim Henson’s Creature Shop’s Muppets appearing in The Last Video:

They had lots of ABBA costumes and an exhibit about costumes — and the costumes were pretty wacky. They had a room full of gold records - and gold cassette tapes, if you can believe that.

Shiny things everywhere!

I did learn a few things, though.

For instance, all the members of ABBA were established pop stars when the group formed. They all had professional gigs and some recording contracts before they started performing together.

They were doing music videos (then called “promotional films”) long before they became hip - and even required - in the late 1970s.

There was an exhibit about ABBA’s recording studio and how they worked together, trying out different lines and tunes and finding things that work as songs. Apparently, the order of battle is that the male members of the group wrote the songs and the girls did the singing - and the girls’ voices were instruments of music, like other instruments.

Which brings up an interesting point — do pop songs need to make sense?

“Dancing Queen” would never have been written by an American pop band (or British, I suspect). Teenage girls do not refer to themselves as “Queens,” you do not look for a place that “plays the rock music”, and what you’re doing is not “jive.”

Or take my get-drunk-and-fix-your-resume-song, “Super Trouper.” Nobody would say “super trouper.” I don’t know why. They just wouldn’t. And being bummed out that you’re on a concert tour where everybody screams and adores you — that is so far beyond being a First World Problem (FWP) that words fail me.

Nevertheless, I guarantee you, play this song on a loop and drink some red wine, and you’ll be ready for a new job.

But never mind — the ABBA museum has music and gold records and lots of other shiny things and it’s fun and you should go! Yes, YOU— because, dig it — you’re the DANCING QUEEN (oh yeah!)

Impressions of Sweden: Musems, part 3

After our visit to Växjö, Tim and I took the train back to Stockholm for the last 2-1/2 days of our trip to Sweden.

Feeling more familiar with where things were and how to get there, we purchased two Stockholm cards, each good for 48 hours from the time of activation. I had already made a list of various museums that we might go to, and the number of metro trips we might be taking. We decided it was worth the investment, and this did prove to be true — even more so than I anticipated. In addition to giving us free admission to enough museums to make it worth the price, we ended up using it more than planned for public transportation.

The cards were activated with our first T-bana ride to Södermalm at about 2:30 pm, to the room we'd reserved.

If we thought the first hotel room was small, this one was even smaller.

Calling it a "hotel" is being generous. I'd describe it more as a low-budget hostel. But it was perfectly adequate for the two nights we were there. All we really needed was a place to sleep.

After checking in, we backtracked to Gamla Stan to go to the Royal Armory. This turned out to have a greater variety of exhibits than I would have guessed. In addition to arms and weapons, it included carriages, clothes, and various information about Swedish royalty and history.

After dinner, we went to Fotografiska, a photography museum. The main exhibit there was one we had seen featured in many posters around Stockholm, "Genesis" by Sebastião Salgado. His photographs were stunning and amazing — and numerous. As I mentioned in a previous post, Swedish museums seem to like to make their exhibits exhaustively inclusive — which can make them somewhat exhausting to view.

 The next day, Tuesday, July 8, we visited the Nordic Museum, the Abba Museum, the Outdoor History Museum, and the Modern Art Museum.

At the Nordic Museum, there were — once again — many, many exhibits with many, many things to see — clothes, home furnishings, textiles, an exhibit about the Sami (formerly known as the Lapps) to list but four. Museum fatigue, indeed.

The Nordic Museum

Statue of Gustav Vasa in main hall at Nordic Museum

The ceiling of the main hall

The floor of the main hall

There was an English translation, something along the lines of "Why are you not on Facebook?"

I believe we ate lunch at the museum cafe, to re-fortify ourselves before heading to our next destination, the ABBA museum, which was a good respite from all the high-minded, public museums.

Being a privately-owned museum, admission was not included as part of the Stockholm Card, nor was photography allowed inside. Good, kitschy fun, nonetheless.

Next, we briefly visited the Outdoor History Museum, but were less than impressed. It was also a rather warm afternoon to being walking around a lot outside.

Last for the day, the Modern Art Museum, featuring an exhibit of painting by Nils Dardel. Many paintings, interesting to look at, but the class I took in modern art, I still haven't really developed a liking for much of it.

The next day, Wednesday, July 9, we had until 2:00 or so before our Stockholm cards expired. Before even checking out of our "hotel," we took our suitcases to the Central Station and stowed them in lockers. Then back to Södermalm to check out.

Our first stop of the day was to the Sky View, something Tim had found. Think the Space Needle, but round.

Starting up

The other "car" coming down

Passing in the middle

The view from the top of the world's largest spherical building.

Heading back down

Then back to Gamla Stan to tour the Royal Palace (former royal residence, now used only on formal state occasions), the Treasury (crown jewels), and the Tre Kronor (what's left of the original castle, located underground). You would think there is a connection between the name of the castle and the fact that the official emblem of Sweden is three crowns, but it seems to be coincidental.

Impressions of Sweden: Växjö och Museer, del två (Växjö and Museums, Part 2)

In Växjö, there is a complex near downtown called the Kulturparken that included the Smålands Museum, the Swedish Glass Museum and the House of Emigrants.

After we all arrived in Växjö on Friday, July 4, my sister and I took a walk down there to take a look around.

We located the museum buildings, and also saw some other interesting things.

Some buildings with lawns for roofs.

Apparently, this is a traditional type of roof, and does not mean that the building is neglected and derelict. Unlike the house across the street and down a couple houses, when we moved into our house back in 2009. The elderly lady who had formerly resided there had been unable to properly maintain it. Consequently, various types of vegetation had decided to make their home on her roof. We called it the Hobbit House. It was demolished one week in October when we just happened to be out of town on vacation. The lot sat vacant for a good two years or more, until it was finally cleared and a new home constructed last year.

But I digress.

The other fun and cool thing we saw was a disco ball on Växjösjön (Växjö Lake). 

The thing it most immediately brought to mind for both of us was some Christmas ornaments our parents gave us one year when we were kids.

It also revolved, as seen in this video.

On Sunday, Palma and I visited the museums in the Kulturparken.

At the House of Emigrants, the emphasis was on the experience of Swedish emigrants arriving in America and their experiences there -- rather than on the political, economic, and cultural climate in Sweden that might have prompted them to leave, which would have been of more interest to us, personally.

There was also this kind of strange and weirdly creepy and off-putting exhibit of photographs called "Purity." Here is the description from the website: "Photographer David Magnusson has photographed and interviewed participants in 'Purity balls' in the United States. These balls are a ceremonial rite that leads many to raise their eyebrows. At the prom the daughters promise their fathers 'purity' and that they will remain chaste until they marry. Fathers promise in turn to protect their daughters."

Yeah, I definitely raised my eyebrows. I'm sorry, but those photos look like some sort of incestuous bridal photographs.

In an interesting juxtaposition, there was another exhibit in the Smålands Museum called "Secret Love," described thusly: "In Secret Love more than 150 works of art by 24 contemporary artists are presented. They are united in the desire to give visual expression to taboo love, and by the interest in subjects that in China and many other parts of the world are loaded, such as sexual orientation, lust, and gender identity."

However, the Glass Museum was awesome!

Again, it was a little too dim inside to take good photographs. But I did manage to get one.

Coming from an area of the planet that is dominated by Dale Chihuly and his style of glass art, it was refreshing to see other representations of the art form.

Impressions of Sweden: Museums, Part 1

There are A LOT of museums in Stockholm.

During our time there, we managed to visit several of them.

Our trip to Sweden had three parts to it. Not including travel days, we spent two days in Stockholm, two days in Växjö, and then about two-and-a-half more days in Stockholm.

The first stay in Stockholm, we were kind of getting a sense of the city and how to navigate around in it. Stockholm has an excellent, well-integrated public transit system of trains, subways, trams, and buses. In Stockholm, the center of this activity is the Central Station. We bought an Access card to use on the subway, or T-bana (short for Tunnelbana).

The first museum we visited was the Vasa Museum, devoted to everything archeologists had learned from the excavation of this ship called the Vasa that had sunk on its maiden voyage ion 1628, after sailing only 1300 meters. Its location at the bottom of Stockholm harbor was unknown for about 300 years. In 1956, it was rediscovered and salvage efforts began. A major reason it was so well preserved is because there are no shipworms in the brackish water where it sank.

There were two things I noticed about the Vasa Museum, two features it had in common with other museums we visited: (1) the Swedes like their skeletons, and (2) Swedish museums are thorough and inclusive. In the course of excavating the Vasa, the remains of many of the people who died when the ship sank were recovered, and several of these skeletons were duly exhibited with what information could be gleaned about their lives and places in society.

It was hard to take pictures inside the museum, because it was so dark. I'm not sure what their policy on flash photography was — it seems like I did see some flash, mostly from smartphones — but I tried not to use flash on my camera. I did manage to get a couple of decent pictures, though.

In addition to all the interesting stuff to be seen inside, the building itself is really cool, and very distinctive, as you can see in this picture from Wikipedia.

Our second day in Stockholm, we visited the History Museum and toured Parliament.

Like the Vasa Museum, the History Museum also had a fair number of skeletons on display, with explanatory text, and also included *a lot* of things to look at in their exhibits. Their main exhibit during our visit was about the Vikings. What I found most interesting was how the exhibit examined how the popular concept of "the Viking" has changed, depending on the cultural and political climate of the time.

(A side note: pretty much all the museums included English translations of the exhibit text.)

The tour of the Riksdag (Parliament building) was interesting for a couple of reasons. For one, we had toured the provincial Parliament building in Victoria, B.C., a few years ago, and also, we had recently finished watching all three seasons of a Danish show called "Borgen," that revolved around Danish politics, sort of like a Danish version of "The West Wing."

(You can take a virtual tour here.)

Sweden used to have a bicameral legislature, but in 1971 changed it to a unicameral body. The tour guide (a young woman who spoke very good English) described the various political parties, discussed proportional representation, and outlined the process by which bills get passed.

Tim asked her if the Swedish king was allowed to come to Parliament whenever he wanted. When we were in Victoria, they made a big thing about how the English king isn't allowed to visit Parliament without an invitation, because of the shenanigans of Charles I which resulted in the English Civil War.

Also of particular note was where she told us about how the chamber for the unicameral body was built over the Bank Hall and how the structural beams were left exposed to illustrate how the new was build on top of the old.

Impressions of Sweden: They Like Their Statues

Maybe this goes along with being an older, European city. But there were lots of statues in Stockholm.

Also sculptural details on buildings, as well as more more modern-type public art. What's represented here is not everything that I saw — there were a number of pieces that I, regrettably, did not photograph.

I also didn't do the best job of documenting the names, locations, and other details. Some I did take a picture of the plaque detailing such information; others, not. Some I was able to locate relevant web pages; others, not, such as this one.

If I ever go back to Stockholm, I'd like to visit the sculpture garden for this artist, Carl Milles.

Orpheus Group by Carl Milles

This next one, I saw during a boat tour of Stockholm.

At The Opera House

At the Nordiska Museet.

In honor of Astrid Lindgren, author of the "Pippi Longstocking" books.

Two different fountains.

How to strangle a fish

How to kill a dragon

Seen as we were leaving the Royal Palace after our tour.

Also at the Royal Palace, near the front promenade.

In a more modern vein, there was La Mano.

And "Sjaan" (1987) by Sigurdur Gudmundsson (b. 1942).

And in a lighter vein . . . Bananas in Trees . . .

 . . . and Plastic Balls in Trees.

Little Dancing Man by the Water.

In Växjö, "Durus och Mollis" (2008)  by Monika Gora.

And last, but certainly not least . . . because it's all about the yarn . . .