Stockholm Boats

Looking across to Soder(southern)malm, a large island of Stockholm, from the island of Skjepsholm, which has naval barracks and a fort that guarded central Stockholm.

Skjepsholm has an enormous marina with dozens upon dozens of antique boats, like this gorgeous old sailboat.


A flotilla of rowboats, made in traditional Swedish style.
This is the inside of a wooden rowboat, showing how they are built with overlapping boards. Aren't the curved connector pieces beautiful?
a sailing ship for tourists. By the way, one of the hostels in Stockholm is a large sailing ship, anchored off Skjepsholm. It's pretty cool, and if I were having to pay for my living space while on holiday, it is definitely the place I would stay. it has its own restaurant, and is open even in winter.

awesome museum, Saturday August 28

Me, having a very large mug of tea after a long day of museum-treking.
Happy Birthday, Paul!!!! (for those of you who don't know, Paul is my youngest brother, who lives just north of Baltimore. He's in a different decade of age from me :)

A number of years ago, when Nick and Anna were still quite young, we went to Toronto for a few days for the American Sociological Association's annual meeting (and when will it be held there again, I ask?). I was doing rather poorly, and needed to be in a wheelchair much of the time, and so was ostensibly at the mercy of Anna and Nick, who were pushing me around. I got it in my head that we needed to go see the Bata Shoe Museum (Mr. Bata was a Slovak immigrant who made it big in shoes, and the museum is dedicated, I kid you not, to footwear. I know, I know, my kids laugh every time they think of it, too).
http://www.batashoemuseum.ca/collections/permanent/index.shtml
(the above link will get you to their page of permanent collections, none of which is exactly what we saw that day)
Now, being who we were at the time, none of the three of us were interested in either the very popular temporary sports exhibit, which seemed to be mostly about basketball, nor in the fashion section, which seemed to involve many, many high heeled shoes.
http://www.batashoemuseum.ca/collections/permanent/history_western_fashion/index.shtml

However, there were two sections that the kids allowed me to see--they still joke about how they tried hard to push me through these rooms faster than I wished, and all 3 of us were snorting with laughter at the time, as I pleaded with them to slow down, and they pleaded with me to speed up. One was a temporary exhibit on the history of dance, which was exquisite, and the other, which I swear got Anna subconsciously interested in the topic she pursued for her UNC honors thesis, was a temporary one on Siberian tribal groups, with a special focus on shamanism.
http://www.batashoemuseum.ca/collections/permanent/circumpolar/index.shtml
http://www.batashoemuseum.ca/collections/permanent/north_american_indian/index.shtml

(the first link listed is to one on Inuit clothing and footwear, and for those of you who, like me, just seem drawn to the weirdest ways of accessing indigenous and other cultures, the second link here is to their web page on their exhibit on North American Indians. And for Grace and Doug--I hope you're reading this--they have a special exhibit on SOCKS, called "Between You and Your
Shoes", that shows on their page a pair of Croatian "mukluk" socks that I WANT!!! For anyone who, like me, is a bit crazy, they also have actual online exhibits that let you access audio and video clips. I'm telling you, this museum is AWESOME! )
It turns out that one of the things, among many, that distinguishes various tribal peoples from each other is not only their clothing but their footwear (stop laughing). At the exhibit we saw, each indigenous group had a large glass exhibit case, with video-tapes of real live 20th century shamans performing ritual ceremonies (now you're not laughing, are you?). The viewer was treated to the sounds and the sights of these rituals, and, in addition to the videos, the exhibits also showed the way of life and the clothing of these different indigenous peoples, with a special focus, of course, on their footwear. This exhibit was extraordinary, and if we were visiting it now, my kids would be fascinated with it. However, a shoe museum is not an ideal place to take two prepubescents, I guess.
I tell you this story to make the point that there are certain kinds of museum exhibits that are wonderful. The Smithsonian Museum of American History, a couple of years ago, had one on the history of American Labor that was similarly fascinating, because it focused on real people. For example, in a couple of rooms, the focus was on a real Connecticut factory town, and we learned about the lives of members of the family who owned the factory and the lives of members of a family who worked in the same factory. In another room we followed the route of a traveling Jewish trader as he moved west, and again followed the story of an individual worker's strike. These kinds of museum exhibits are fascinating, and make me wish I had gone into museum curating for a career.
Well, back to Stockholm. As you might guess from this long introduction, Donald and I today went to a wonderful museum. Actually, after being there for about 5 hours, we had only seen half of it, and the last section of that half we did at a run. We'll have to return, as we also must return to the Money Museum, which turned out to be fantastic. As you might guess from this, we both LOVE museums, or at least well-done ones, and we are the kinds of people who read EVERY sign and listen to every word on the audio-tapes, too. Oh--we also get the pamphlets when we go into a church, so we can understand who built it and who painted the paintings, even when we don't recognize a single name. Here are a couple of photos from one of Stockholm's central churches, Hedvig Eleonora--I gather that Lutheran churches don't have to be named after saints, and can be named, as this one is, after the wife of the king who ruled while it was being built. A wonderful choir and group of musicians practising in the church for one of their famous classical music concerts. The acoustics are wonderful in this high-domed 18th century church, dedicated to the Swedish Navy. Sitting and listening is a great way to get a free concert!The gorgeous pulpit. Oh--none of the pillars are real marble. This seems to be common in Stockholm churches--they painted the columns to LOOK like marble.

You can probably guess that we're also the kinds of people who stay until the end of the credits when we see a movie, so we know who made the film, even when we know that we don't know any of them.
The museum was the Historiska (History) Museum, whose main prehistory exhibit is based around the lives of 8 individuals whose graves were found across what is now Southern and Central Sweden, telling the story of about 12,000 years of prehistory. This prehistory ended, from an historical point of view, with the development of Viking culture (we visited this amazing exhibit, too), which is dated as officially beginning with the Viking raid on Lindisfarne, the Holy Isle off Southeastern Scotland/Northeastern England in 793 AD. Stone Age, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Early Iron Age, Roman Iron Age, Viking culture, gold hoards, burials in passage graves, grave mounds, cremations in boats, deities in metal and stone, large rune stones covered in runic writing and pictures, trade goods from Central Europe, Southern Europe and India and China, men's, women's and children's skeletons and grave goods, including dog and horse skeletons, social hierarchy, and even exhibits on how archeologists and anthropologists do their work and attempt to interpret their finds: OH MY! Plus an entire large exhibit of nothing but Norse gold in many, many forms: coins from Arabia, church goods, bracelets, torques, delicate hair circlets, brooches and pins, amazing necklaces that no one could have worn and were made only to be buried with a high status person or offered as a sacrifice and thrown into a swamp or lake--I kid you not! This was a museum to make those of us fascinated by history, pre-history, and archeology and anthropology drool. There were even displays on how Nazi propaganda and earlier Swedish nationalists had used Norse mythology and a made-up Viking history to promulgate notions of Scandinavian racial purity and of a thousands-years-old Swedish nation. As I said, 5 hours, and we got through half of the museum (the rest is on Medieval History, including church history, and a history of textiles, both of which I am looking forward to seeing. I also want to spend a little more time in the Gold Room, and this time listen to the free audio guide that was so helpful in the prehistory section. Oh--and we got, just the two of us, a personal guided tour in English of some of the Viking exhibit, which probably would have covered more of the exhibit's goods except that we--okay, I--kept asking questions.)
Anyway, here is a link to the Museum (with the writing in English). You can click on individual exhibits to see more. I hope you enjoy looking at some of this. I learned a lot about Swedish pre-history and Viking history, the most important bit of which is that the Viking culture was NOT primarily a raiding one, but was primarily a settled, village life with agriculture. There aren't even any helmets among any of the archeological finds from Sweden, never mind any horned helmets--that's an invention from movies and books, and has no basis in reality. They DID, of course, raid and invade and steal and pillage, but their culture was essentially agricultural and settled. Isn't that surprising?

http://www.historiska.se/home/misc/historiska-gemensam/groups/Easy-English/Exhibitions/

Interesting cemeteries

(The Swedish Naval dead)




These are some photos from a fascinating cemetery on Djurgarten, near the Vasa museum. The cemetery is a naval one, and so there are many stones for admirals, captains, and entire ships' crews who perished at sea.

I am including the stone for Olaf Palme, which we came across in a churchyard. Palme is the Swedish Prime Minister who was shockingly murdered in 1986 as he was out on a Stockholm street without bodyguards, as was the norm before his murder, walking home from a movie with his wife (who was also shot but recovered). His murder has still not been solved. He was a hero to many on the global left, who also criticized the Soviet Union for its policies. The list of the issues he supported and opposed reads like that of a man whose only question, when deciding where he stood, was "What is the RIGHT, the ETHICAL and the MORAL thing to believe?" His death was a loss to us all, and was a great shock to Scandinavia for its violence, in a country where shooting deaths rarely occurred.

More architectural delights

This is the church we have been attending every Sunday evening, when this Lutheran (Church of Sweden) church of Saint Jacob, the patron saint of pilgrims, hosts an Anglican/Church of England service in English, which is open to anyone and everyone. It is a wonderful service, and the Anglican priest is terrific. There is quite a bit of Taize chanting along with the broad outlines of the Episcopal mass I recognize from the past 8 or so months of attending our local Saint James Episcopal Church in Greenfield, MA (I figured that when the Pope welcomed Anglicans into the Catholic church with no changes in their mass service, and no other changes, he was saying what seemed obvious to me, anyway: there's no real difference between our service and theirs, as long as it's the "High Episcopal" version. Except that there IS a big difference between the mass as St. James and any of the Catholic churches in Western Massachusetts: the attendees at St. James seem to WANT to be there, and they show it in their singing, praying, and general involvement in the service, as well as being the friendliest bunch of people I have ever met. The Catholic masses I have been to in Western Massachusetts have been depressing and DIS-spiriting, although the priests seem to be working very hard to raise the energy levels).
At any rate, Father Nick Howe seems to recognize that everyone at an English-language service in Stockholm is from somewhere else, and probably from a variety of Christian denominations. Without letting go of the most important parts of the service, he is welcoming and compassionate towards all, and helps us celebrate even those church holy days--such as the Assumption, which in the Anglican church is the Feast of Mary--that he personally does not believe in (his sermon on the Feast of the Assumption was about the Assumption, and what it COULD mean for someone who is NOT Roman Catholic. It was a very generous thing to do.
As an aside: the churches in Stockholm, like most of the buildings, are not particularly old. The king ordered that much of the city be leveled, in order to build a beautiful city, in the late Victorian era. Therefore, most of the beautiful buildings and churches were built in the first couple of decades of the 20th century. They are beautiful, nonetheless. The only part of the city that is old is Gamla Stan, and I will provide more photos of that medieval neighborhood/island in another post.

Update from Stockholm

The main tourist plaza in Stockholm, Kungstradgarten, holds many, many festivals. This one is, as you can see, a Thai festival, with outstanding music and lovely dancing, along with wonderful food, of course. We were heading home for supper, but changed out minds when we came across this happening.

Well, it's been a while since I wrote anything. I was lucky in that I had a spurt of creativity and did some work on my book, plus we had a couple of days of sightseeing that were wonderful. However, my reality is that, while Ireland seemed to be GREAT for my immune system and RSD, Stockholm seems to be hell on both. I have so far been struggling, off and on, with pain and slight disability (a painful limp makes large cities difficult), as well as a stomach virus last week, a sore throat/cold virus this week, and have gotten my first wart (caused by a virus, I know) since I was about 12. The pharmacist looked at my finger and said, "Oh, that looks good: only one." Meanwhile, it turns out that Sweden uses an amazingly effective homeopathic-herbal blend for treating sinus congestion (I will bring lots home),but uses nothing to treat runny noses, other than a "very strong" nose spray that combines a decongestant and an anti-histamine, and can only be used for a few days. The pharmacist said she had never heard of using regular antihistamine pills to treat runny noses ("they are used for a bad mosquito bite or for allergies," she said firmly), and was quite shocked and disapproving when I bought the recognizable British antihistamine loratadine (recognizable because ALL of us got terrible colds while in Ireland a few winters ago) to treat my runny nose. Her attitude seemed to be that runny noses are not a part of colds--only STUFFY noses are. I don't know how to interpret this--all English-speaking countries recognize that runny noses are an intrinsic part of having a cold, and that without treatment, one ends up with a very sore, red nose and a very congested chest, not to mention an even sorer throat. Whatever the supposed nature of Swedish colds, the loratadine worked, along with the homeopathic-herbal concoction, and I am left with a sore throat, hoarse voice (but those who know me will understand that a hoarse voice is a great improvement over the more common alternative)and a compulsion to drop off to sleep every 20 or so minutes, sitting up. Needless to say, I have not been out of the apartment for a couple of days at all, and slept ALL day yesterday.

By the way, those of you who have read "Eat, Pray, Love" will recognize in this story the difference between Donald and myself: Donald is one of those people who, as Gilbert describes them, "could drink a shoe-box full of water from a gutter in Calcutta and not get sick." I am, like Gilbert herself, what Anna and I like to call a damn "princess-and-the-pea;" a person whose constitution is so annoyingly sensitive that ANY thing throws it off and makes me either sick or in-digested or in pain somehow. I hate that about myself, and envy Donald, but it does not seem to be anything I can change--believe me, I've tried. And so I try to accept my body as it is, and also to accept these moments (days)of being "indisposed" with grace and humor, even when they interfere, as they always do, with work or play. But it still makes me want to swear.

The GOOD news is that, in between all of this, we went BIKE-RIDING (yes, we rented bikes and went biking. I was SO proud of my physical stamina and strength, until that night, when I literally was up most of the night in tremendous pain. Next really nice day, we'll have to do it again, so I can build up some tolerance, I guess) on Djurgarten, the island that houses the Vasa museum, the Nordic museum, Tivoli, the amusement park that has multiple nausea-inducing rides, and multiple parks and small palace-museums. (This is the garden at one of them) In other words, it is the pleasure-island of Stockholm, with little there that has to do with the workaday world, besides the stunningly gorgeous Italian embassy, housed in an old palace.(Sailboat from bike path).

Another day, we walked around a few small islands in the middle of Stockholm, wandering and wandering, as it was another beautiful day. (These are the old customs houses, for collecting taxes from boats arriving in the city with various wares.) When our feet would get too tired to continue, we would rest them for a bit by sitting and watching various boats go by, or by watching the Tivoli rides and listening to the screams, with me remembering with awe that there was indeed a time in my life (between ages 15 and 18) when I actually enjoyed riding those things: roller-coasters that spin you upside-down as they turn corners, "salt-n-pepper-shakers", rides that bring you up and up high, and then suddenly drop you with all speed.

Last night I saw 3 stars from our window, and the night before I saw the moon, which appeared to be full. Those are among the few glimpses of the night sky I have seen since leaving Montague, as nighttime seems to be a time of clouds in both Ireland and Stockholm. The weather here changes like it did in Ireland--every 15 minutes or so. You cannot tell what it will be like in a couple of hours, based on what it is like right now. And the weather predictions that I find online for the city seem to be entirely created by throwing darts at a chart: not only do they have little to do with reality, even right at that very moment, but, and this is crucial to an understanding of how weather works here, ALL OF THEM DISAGREE WITH EACH OTHER. So tomorrow's weather prediction may say, on one website, that it will be largely cloudy with a little sun; a second one will say that it will be light rain; a third will say it will rain HARD all day; and a fourth and fifth say that it will be full sun, with the warmest temperatures of the week. This pattern of contradictory predictions continues every single day. They also disagree with each other about the temperature, with the spread being may be 8 degrees Fahrenheit or so. So there is no way to plan when one might take off from work and take a boat to an island, say. I am trying to get my head around the fact that Sweden, of all places, that bastion of modernity and technology, does not care about predicting the weather in a rational way (this is easier to accept about Ireland, since so much is non-rationalized there). I suppose that one must simply accept that, just as in England or Ireland, the weather will be unpredictable, and that one must bring an umbrella wherever one goes, even on the sunniest day.

It all does, however, make one want to go somewhere that is predictably warm and sunny for a few days. NO wonder people here all migrate to southern Europe whenever they can, for long weekends or longer holidays.

#3 Stockholm Observations

1. Weekend nights are wild here. People party very late and loudly, and then walk home loudly :). It is dawn (4:00 am at this point in the summer) when the last stragglers are still partying on their way home, although this morning a man and a woman were having quite an upsetting and angry row, which was so loud that one could hear them for blocks and blocks, which just got louder as they got closer. I only realized that they were not standing in the street outside the whole time when their voices started to get fainter, and I realized they had walked far enough away, still fighting. It felt like college. Of course, I personally moved back home and became a commuter when I realized that that was what college nights were going to sound like!

2. The dogs in Stockholm are well-trained city dogs, who, like their owners, show absolutely no interest in strangers!!!!! I have never known dogs to so completely ignore strange people. It’s additionally strange, after our Ireland experiences with dogs, where every dog—and there were many—wanted to be our new best friend for life. So perhaps it’s true that dogs come to take on the personalities of their owners; think about that the next time you meet a dog.

3. What’s really nice is that the local large park (Humlegarten) has a doggie-enclosure so dogs can be off their leashes and play with each other, if they want. I had great fun the other day watching two dogs—a large young German Shepherd and a smallish beagle-type—chase each other all over the place! They were having so much fun, it was like watching joy.

#2 Stockholm Observations

1. In my last blog, I spoke briefly of good government (giving land for the workers to have summer homes, to get away from the pollution of the city), which assumes that everyone is part of a common endeavor and therefore does what is best for ALL, not just for the elite few. Another example of this here was the taking of a lot of land from the aristocracy, land that had been royal hunting grounds, and turning it into public parks that surround the city and run through it. The king actually himself donated much of the land for this effort long ago, as well as the land for the project I am about to describe. Walking in a very, vary large local park, we came upon a HUGE area of community gardens. Having been involved, over 30 years ago, in the struggle to get vacant lots in NY City turned into community gardens, I have an ongoing interest in this cause, and was excited to see that this one park alone had acres upon acres set aside for public use in this way. The land had been divided up into over 100 individual plots, each of them about 40 by 30 feet (bigger than our big vegetable garden out back at home). Many of them had a small shed on the land, and some even had small decks built.

Many people had planted fruit trees, and many had berry bushes. By far the most common use of the land was a combination of vegetable garden and flower garden. They were SO beautiful.

I thought of the Polish homes Anna and I saw in Southeastern Poland and how so many of them had fruit trees and gardens in their small front yards, and I thought again about my grandpa Tomaskovic and how much pleasure this would have brought him. If he had had such a garden plot in Yonkers, he would never have gone home. I can see him working in the garden, and then sitting in a chair (in his sleeveless undershirt and baggy pants), staying there until it became dark, and even then having a hard time going home. He would have had a card table there, with some beers, and would have played pinochle with Uncle George and Mr. Kelbel. Those of you who knew him: can’t you just see him? And can’t you just feel the pleasure it would have given him to have his own garden plot like that, to grow fruit trees and flowers and vegetables? What angers me is how hard it was, and still is, in the States, to get cities to set aside land for this purpose, especially such large size plots. City land can make money, so it has to be used for commercial purposes or for rental property, etc. Land, in the States, like everything else, is a commodity. Here, it was decided LONG ago, that SOME land should be used to make money, and other land—a goodly amount of it—should be used for PUBLIC good, to make people healthier and happier. This urban public garden program began, as I think I said in an earlier blog about Skansen, during WW I, when the king decided that, given food shortages and workers’ wages that couldn’t keep up with the rising cost of food, he would give land that had been his to any workers who wanted a plot of land to grow their own fruits and vegetables. The first of these programs was on another island, and I don’t know when the one in this park began. But it makes me incredibly happy to see it, and to see the bees and butterflies busy at their work, in the city, pollinating all those beautiful flowers, fruits and vegetables. I wondered if anyone had put bee hives on their plot. It would be a great idea.

2. Oddly enough, this area of the city that is so busy, busy during the week, and late at night on weekends, is quite seriously dead during weekend days. I understand the whole thing about central business districts and how they get less use on the weekends, but a high proportion of those people dressed up nicely and lunching in the local cafes and restaurants midweek are women with babies in strollers (there are a few daddies with strollers, as befits a society that allows men to take the same generous full-pay parental leave as women) but it is mostly women). Where do they go on weekends? If the people who are out on the streets and in the cafes and restaurants on Thursday at 2:00 include business people and mommies, don’t those mommies what to go to cafes on weekends, too? Where do they and their partners go (in northern Europe, most of the couples marry once they decide to have a child) on Saturdays? Maybe they go to another part of the city. Because not only are the people not here, but almost every single café and restaurant is closed. Even in the tourist districts, many of the restaurants and cafes are closed on Sundays, and many close right after lunch on Saturday if they open at all. I walked blocks and blocks in numerous directions Sunday afternoon, and I could not find a cup of coffee!! On Saturdays, most of the shops are closed (unless they are in the heart of the tourist areas). Those that open, close early. I am talking about shops that sell clothing, fabric (there are LOT of fabric stores in Stockholm. A LOT), furnishings, paper goods, lamps, plants, etc. The grocery stores are open, and so are some the bigger restaurants, but on a few blocks near here, the majority of the commercial establishments were not open Saturday, and I THINK that even most of the hair salons were closed. Which leads me to two other observations:

3. There are more hair salons here than can possibly be justified by the population. I have been in many big cities: New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Paris, Chicago…; and many smaller cities: Raleigh, Brisbane, Florence, Krakow…, and I have NEVER seen such a density of hair salons. It is baffling. I’m talking one on each block, at least. I mean it. Sometimes there is an additional one that is for men, making it two, or even sometimes three, per block. I don’t know what this says about Stockholmers or Swedes. Do they all get their hair done weekly? Do they not wash their hair themselves, leaving it to the hairdressers to do so? Do they all actually have dark hair, and keep it that icy blond only by constant visits to a salon? I have no idea. They do not seem to be filled with customers, so maybe there is some sort of odd governmental subsidy for hair salons, making it impossible to fail, even without customers (I hope you realize I am joking).

4. The other thing is how busy the place is mid-day, mid-week. I mean that the cafes, coffeehouses, salons, shops, are FILLED with people, mostly women, but FILLED with people whom one would think would be working. It’s a city, so this is always true, but both Don and I have been struck by how busy the sidewalks, parks, and cafes are at, say, 2:00 pm (14:00 locally) on a Thursday. And there are so many babies in strollers, it looks as if Sweden—or at least Stockholm—is having a baby boom! I know that Sweden has very low fertility, but you would never know it from being here. Of course, most people have only one baby with them, or at most, a baby and a toddler, compared with Ireland, where it was not unusual to see families with four children or even more. But these are, just like Ireland, YOUNG women with babies; they do not look like 30-somethings, but like 20-somethings, and that was NOT expected, either. The place is CRAWLING with babies, in strollers, carriages, snugglies, playing on the park grass, on laps, sharing mama’s food, being walked by grandma and grandpa, crying down the street. It’s wonderful, but totally unexpected in a large, modern, Scandinavian, low-fertility city.

5. There are no face-cloths in the city. Seriously. I cannot find any in any store: department store, swanky shop, discount store (there are one or two of those around). I guess Swedes don’t use them for any purpose. I personally use them mostly in the summer, when I start feeling grungy from the heat and humidity. It’s nice, under those conditions, to wet a cold washcloth and wipe one’s face and neck, isn’t it? I don’t know what Swedes do when that happens. Perhaps they stick their entire head under the kitchen faucet.

More Island Views

My handsome husband from the boat. It looks like he is on a pontoon boat on Long Lake in Maine, doesn't it?

There's a great traditional Swedish summer house perched up on that large rock.


This reminds me of a Hudson River view--you know that part of the river above Tappan Zee where it narrows?

This is Strandvagen, the broad boulevard of gorgeous buildings facing the water, created in the 1800s by the King, who tore down the workers' shanties in order to build a boulevard worthy of a great city. That it is. I wonder where the workers went.

More Architectural Dellights

Part of the Royal Palace on Gamla Stan. This was taken in the evening, when a street musician was playing very moving and beautiful violin music, which was echoing under the arch.

A gorgeous building in my neighborhood.

The Polish Embassy, a couple of blocks from my our apartment.

Just A GORGEOUS apartment building nearby.

And another beautiful apartment building in the neighborhood.

Stockholm Observations, Part 1

Here are some things I am learning about Stockholm.

1. The architecture is glorious, giving me many, many moments of sheer delight. All you have to do is look up. You are sure to see something gorgeous.

2. The setting is stunning. The city of Stockholm occupies a number of islands, and a total of about 30,000 islands, islets, and above-the-water large rocks make up what is called the Stockholm archipelago. Beyond those, to the north and south in the Baltic Sea and in the Gulf of Bothnia (between Sweden and Finland), there are hundreds more, not counting those that lie on the south-western side of the country nor those that belong to other nations. The Baltic Sea is not very salty, and when it enters the Stockholm Archipelago it gets less salty and less sea-like. All of those islands mean that the city is very well-protected from waves, meaning that even the very flat islands don’t have to worry about storm damage (or at least we have been told this. We were told that the land masses of the islands themselves are still rising, as they have been for the last 10,000 years, since the weight of the enormous ice sheet melted at the end of the last Ice Age. At about a meter (about 3 feet) per every century, they are rising faster than the sea levels are, so Sweden seems like a safe place to have ocean-front property). Once you get past a set of locks, on the southern side of the Old Town (Gamla Stan), you are in the large body of water called Lake Malaren, which is only a little bit salty, and Don and I decided it must be fresh water coming from rivers in the center of the country, flowing INTO the Baltic waters through Stockholm, since it is higher than the Baltic. We don’t feel particularly smart for having figured this out, since it is obvious, once we did, but we DID have to figure it out for ourselves! We have not yet gone to any islands in Lake Malaren, but I very much want to go to Birka, which was a Viking trading center in the 700s and has the largest Viking cemetery (with rune stones—Yay!!) in Scandinavia, with about 3000—yes, 3000—graves!

3. The islands that are not central city islands look like Maine (the central city ones look like city; it’s hard to tell what they looked like before that). Some of them look like Maine islands in the ocean, and some of them look like you are on Sebago Lake or Hancock Pond—or Sand Pond—looking at the shore.
Some are rocky and some are really just huge rocks rising out of the sea, with enough soil to have evergreen forests. They all have summer homes on them, many of which have a typical Scandinavian “gingerbread”-style construction. Many are quite small, and look just like Mom and Dad Devey’s lake house in Maine. Others are quite grand, and are either modern, with lots and lots of glass, or are Victorian.
The government encouraged the building of workers’ vacation homes in the early part of the 20th century, as Stockholm had gotten quite polluted and dirty.

Pretty Stockholm and Skansen too

We arrived in Stockholm on Sunday a week ago. We are settled into our lovely little apartment on Danderidsgaten, a tiny little street that holds both the Algerian Embassy and the home of the Uruguayan Ambassador. Around the corner are the Bulgarian and the Polish, as well as the Malaysian Embassies.
(this photo is the view out our window, across the street)As this might suggest, our neighborhood is an up-scale one; people tell us that, of all the neighborhoods with apartments (rather than houses), it is THE most exclusive, expensive, and desirable.

What this also means is that it is rather like living surrounded by many streets that are all like 5^th Avenue and Madison Avenue in New York; lots and lots of very expensive clothing stores, classy interior design stores, up scale bars, cafes, and coffee shops, and very pretty women, men and children. Almost everyone we see locally is dressed in elegant, designer clothing, and is totally and ridiculously gorgeous. At first I felt completely intimidated until I remembered that social class selects for gorgeousness; rich people marry gorgeous people and can also pay for expensive hair care, skin care, body-shaping, and flattering clothing.

Well, to tell you the truth, Swedish women do seem to also have some sort of genetic advantage going, too. They are unbelievably beautiful. I tried to figure out what it is, besides perfect bone structure, slim figures, and white-blond hair (my own gold-blond hair turns out to seem very dark here). Their skin also seems to be completely without any marks or blemishes—no moles, no freckles, no pimples, no scars, no lumps, bumps or discolorations. It glows golden, even when they don’t have much of a tan—though many DO have a tan. They not only epitomize the definition of beauty that too many of us have learned—blond, slim, specific facial structure—but also glow with seeming good health. Many of the women seem to age well, too, at least in this wealthy neighborhood.

The men, on the other hand, are a different kind of story. There are many good-looking young men, but most of them are what I would call “pretty,” rather than handsome (remember the singing group “Hansen””?). They do not have particularly masculine good looks, but instead look like the young male models used by fashion designers—blond, slim, sculpted faces, and pretty. Swedish men do not seem to age all that well, though; maybe cigarettes and drink take their toll.

We have been walking our feet off, walking everywhere, and have visited the university. If it rains we stay inside and work, and if it is beautiful out we are tourists. Summer won’t last much longer here, so we are determined, like most others here seem to be, to enjoy it while it is here.

Today we went to Skansen, the open-air museum of traditional Swedish life. It is composed mostly of farm buildings brought there from all over Sweden, originally built anywhere from the 1300s to the early 20^th century. We saw lots of farm tools, lots of traditional architecture, doors, windows, building techniques, gardens, clothing, cooking implements, etc. We were both in hogs’ heaven, both of us loving these sorts of things.
I can’t wait to visit, on rainy days, the National Museum (with lots of art), the Museum of Nordic Culture, and the Ethnographic Museum. Meanwhile, we are enjoying Swedish pastries and slowly learning the bus system and what various foods are. We are worried we will not learn much Swedish since everyone here speaks English—in fact, Donald says that Swedish English is easier to understand than Irish English!!!

Stockholm 2

Saturday, August 07: So far in Stockholm, the only police officers we have seen were escorting the Royal Guards as they paraded on horseback from the palace to the Armory. In Ireland, we also did not see police officers, but we saw Garda (police) stations in every town, including tiny ones. Here, we have not seen a single police station. We have no idea where Stockholm hides them! I have heard police—or fire—sirens a couple of nights, but that is the extent of their presence here. In the US, of course, there are police everywhere, and we, by all reports, are less safe.

I have been made aware, on other European trips, that European people handle strangers very differently than Americans, British, Irish, or Australians. Here, no one meets the eye of anyone they don’t know. It is a trick—a policing, so to speak, of the eyes—that I do not know how to do yet. I am used to glancing at and smiling at all I pass, and I know that this behavior is defined as part of the friendly American/Australian, etc, character. I remember experiencing this before in Europe, and that it creates tremendous loneliness if you are a stranger. Certainly if you already have family and friends locally, ignoring strangers brings no cost to you. But for those who are new to an area (whether immigrants, tourists, or any other newcomers), the body language suggest a complete lack of interest in getting to know you. What I have also learned in my travels is that most European people are in fact very friendly and helpful once you approach them. I wonder if looking directly at people here is considered American friendliness or rudeness (or both)? At any rate, my spirit rejoices when I see another person whose eyes meet mine and who smiles in reaction to that.

We have taken a sight-seeing boat around the main islands, and today visited the National Museum (art) for a couple of wonderful hours. There was an exhibit, due to close next week, that was Swedish art highlighting domestic interiors. This means that there were numerous examples of Carl Larsson’s paintings, and it was a wonderful exhibit. I also very much enjoyed looking at their collection of miniature portraits. Did you know that miniatures need not be small? But they do need to be painted in with a particular glossy method. Go figure.