Visiting Uppsala and Gamla Uppsala

Tuesday, September 14, 2010:

This past weekend we went to Uppsala, a city (the 4^th largest in Sweden) just north of Stockholm (it’s a 40-minute inexpensive, fast train ride, which is how we got there) that was the capital of Sweden 500 years ago, when Sweden BEGAN, under Gustav Vasa (he united the people in battle against Denmark, which controlled all of Scandinavia at the time. The Danish king had called all the Swedish nobles together for a council meeting, and then had many of them murdered right there at the meeting, to teach the rest a lesson. Among the dead were Vasa’s father and brothers. Like a good Klingon -and he was about the size of one, judging by every image we have seen of him- revenge became his life-goal, but like a human, success became the best revenge. He began a royal dynasty that lasted a very long time (I’m not looking it up right now!), and Sweden not only gained its independence and its sense of itself as a country for the first time, but it also entered into a period of wealth and power, at least at the governmental and capitalist levels (the vast majority of Swedes remained very poor until after WWII, when Sweden, unlike most of Europe, did not need to recover, as they had suffered no damage, after declaring themselves “neutral” and negotiating with Hitler. Like the U.S., they were able to “hit the ground running,” economically, so to speak, and their economy, just like the U.S, boomed).

Uppsala was a great city to visit, much easier to manage than Stockholm, which is so spread-out that it’s hard to get to know at all—there’s always another neighborhood or city island to see. In an Irish village, it’s easy to have “a local” as there is not much—or any—choice. Even in Montague, it’s pretty much a choice between the Rendezvous and the Lady Killagrew. In Stockholm, there’s another café on every corner, and often more than one on each block, and so there’s always another one to explore, even close by. Uppsala is also very spread out, but most of that is either industrial, the university campus, or housing for the masses. The downtown is itself manageable, although still a city. And it is an extremely culturally diverse city (Stockholm is, too, but the non-Swedes are concentrated in the suburbs (here the suburbs are low-cost, and the downtown is the desirable and expensive real estate—like Manhattan vs. Queens, except that it’s as if ALL of Manhattan is desirable), and so there are only some Stockholm neighborhoods—Soedermalm is the one that comes to mind—that have any noticeable ethnic and racial diversity on the streets. In Uppsala, the downtown was hopping with students (it has a large university that attracts students from ALL over), with Muslim women in head-scarves (we saw a lovely mosque, which we have not seen here in Stockholm though I am sure they exist in the suburbs), with Asians, South Americans, Africans, Turks, etc. The shopping was funkier, and we stumbled unknowingly upon their Culture Festival, which was kind of like a HUGE Katonah carnival (for those of you from that neck of the woods), but without the rides. It was night-time, and the city was lit up with booths that sold Thai food, cotton candy, candied almonds being made right there—and boy, did they smell and taste great!!—with art and craft shops that were open (yes, I bought gifts for my ADULT “kids”), with art galleries that were also open (we visited a gallery-workshop where the woman wove large, spectacular portraits of people on her loom, and they looked just like photographs) with music of ALL sorts (we listened to a rock band, to a band playing American country music, to a Turkish group singing, to a wonderful female jazz singer, and to a great swing band, which had a terrific female singer. These were only a few of the many competing outdoor music venues), and the cathedral (more on this later) was lit up so beautifully.

Uppsala was also the center of political and religious leadership by the year 500, having been settled by about 2500 BC. Multiple shipping routes converged on Uppsala, and later, overland roads also went through there. The Uppsala that existed then was actually outside of the present city, and is now called Gamla Uppsala, “Old Uppsala.” There are archeological remains of hill forts and a great king’s hall, as well as the agricultural terraced fields that supported the king’s demesne. Like Birka, Gamla Uppsala has, they believe, over 3000 graves from the 6^th century through the next few centuries, but “only” 250-300 grave mounds have been located. (hopefully the figure of the adult walking in front of these mounds will give you some sense of the size of them) Additionally, the nearby area also holds large numbers of what are called “boat graves,” which are a boon to archeologists as the dead in these were not cremated, and so the bodies, their clothing and jewelry, armaments, and other grave goods yield lots of information about the culture of the time. Archeologists were surprised to find that some of the bodies, as well as cremated remains from the more numerous grave mounds, are female, and that they appear to have been rulers or at least highly important and high status individuals. I suppose that the archeologists see clues of a male-dominated culture, based on strength and ability in battle, given the importance of spears, daggers, bows, and shields, and assume that women MUST have been nothing but chattel in such a system. Given the write-ups in the otherwise excellent and absorbing museums, they continue to have difficulty incorporating these high-status women into their schemata. In fact, there are large “boat grave” cemeteries elsewhere in the country where EVERY body is female. These boat graves contain a body with armaments, signs of wealth and of international trade, animals such as horses, dogs, cows, goats, and packages of food, bowls, etc. They are packed for a long boat journey, and they “carry” what they will need on that journey and when they get to their destination. As usual, we spent hours upon hours wandering the acres of cemetery land and the informative and really well-done museum, as well as the ancient church. It is built around what remains of the original church that was the cathedral, and thus the center of ecclesiastic (church leadership, i.e. bishops, for those of you who don’t know that word) power in Swedish lands when Christianity became a political and spiritual force in those lands. That church appears to be, of course, built on what was originally a pagan temple, part of the royal complex. The church, although now small (a devastating fire hundreds of years ago meant that the cathedral and royal palace were moved to the place where Uppsala now is) was gorgeous, with fascinating remnants of the original paintings of saints and angels (in the entrance porch, there were three saints painted on the ceiling, all of them protectors against the plague). This painting is of St. George and the Dragon.

Oh—one more comment on the burial mounds: just as in Birka, the settlement of people during the time that this enormous cemetery was being built was very close to the mounds themselves. The dead and the living were in closer proximity than you can imagine, being from a culture that puts the dead by themselves in separate spaces, away from the living. The ancient Swedes lived WITH their dead; they were clearly not afraid of them, and it is believed that they would have sought out the council of their ancestors by going and sitting on their graves. The “king’s” hall was situated right smack up against the enormous grave mounds of what MUST have been male and female leaders (these mounds are among those that yielded a stunning surprise to archeologists when one of them was excavated and was first labeled the grave of a man, based on the grave goods, then the grave of a young male, based on the size of a couple of bones that were found to have survived the funeral pyre, and then, much more recently, the grave of a woman, based on more informed bone scans). Their presence must have lent authority to the living leader’s own power and status, reminding the people that s/he came from those earlier leaders and that they were behind her/him. It would have lent both political and spiritual power to the living leader, I think, in the way that having the Vatican sitting literally on top of the tomb of St. Peter, the first “pope,” lends authority to each living pope.

The “new” cathedral in Uppsala, which is STILL the ecclesiastic center of Sweden, even though the political capital has moved to Stockholm, is an enormous, beautiful, impressive place (the largest church in Scandinavia), with tombs of many of the kings and queens of Sweden, including the national hero, Gustav Vasa (who MADE Sweden convert from Catholicism to the Lutheran church). Unlike the important churches here in Stockholm, most of which were built AFTER the Reformation, one can still see Sweden’s Roman Catholic origins in this cathedral. An “amusing” fact is that a set of canons at Uppsala’s castle was trained permanently in the cathedral, so the Lutheran bishops would know the consequences of any protests they made to the Vasa dynasty’s rule, including decisions that affected religion, as the Lutheran church is the state Church of Sweden; thus the king or queen is at its head, the way the queen is vis-à-vis the Church of England.