Stockholm and Uppsala

I entered Sweden through Goteborg, and visited a small museum there, as well as the Museum of Natural History, which boasts the only stuffed blue whale in the world. This guy is a baby boy, measuring some 16 metres (an adult could be over 36!). I think the vast majority of my time in Stockholm was absorbed in the historical museum, and particularly in their Viking exhibit. It is a huge and very impressively put together show. They have some swords, and the one in the middle here is clearly pattern-welded. You can see the visual effect on the blade. They also have a famous and unique iron staff from a woman's grave. This staff was perhaps part of the tool-kit for a sorceress of sorts. You can see the unique house-model on the top, and the basket design in the middle of the shaft.

Stockholm is of course also the site where the Nobel Prize is awarded. The gala and dance happen at the "City Hall", which is a fairly new building (built in the early 20th century) but VERY spectacular. The dance happens in a hall that is entirely coated in gold. It may seem impossible, but the whole hall used only some 14kg of gold.

I am in Uppsala now, and heading back to Stockholm tomorrow, and then to Helsinki tomorrow evening. One of my friends from the summer course in Icelandic is teaching Dutch in Helsinki, and he invited me to visit, and the ferry is fairly cheap (cheaper than a passenger ticket to Victoria from Vancouver I think! But this is a 17 hour trip!), and I'll never be closer than here, so I'm going! I think I may take the train north through Finland and then south through Norway. My trainpass lets me do that, so why not?!

In Uppsala today I saw the famous grave mounds at Gamla Uppsala - these are from around 600AD, the time of Beowulf. I also got to see the much more prolific (in terms of rich goods and treasures) mounds at Valsgard, also from about the same period. There are runestones EVERYWHERE around Uppsala, from about 1000AD. They usually mark the death of someone, and detail the names of the wife, brothers, sons, or other relations, as well as who paid for the stone to be raised, and who actually carved the runes. It is very easy to see them anywhere really, and it gives a neat impression that these stones (and perhaps less lasting runes in wooden monuments and such) may have been the equivalent of modern-day advertisements and such, marking popular river-crossings and high-traffic areas with the idenities of major families and poliitcal powers.