Several people have asked whether or not the weather is getting cooler. Well as they say, a picture tells a thousand words. No, Cathy isn’t setting off on a Siberian trek; we’re just on a boat tour of the Stockholm archipelago. The archipelago is a collection of some 30,000 islands extending to the east of Stockholm. Obviously the tour does not take in all 30,000 islands but it’s just a short boat journey of around 3 hours to get an overview.
Stockholm itself is a very pleasant city; very clean and neat & tidy, if not a bit cool and damp at this time of year. It is home to several museums and attractions the most popular undoubtedly being the Vasa Museum. Generally speaking we are not museum people but we did have this on our Stockholm agenda after a resounding recommendation from Peter Shiskza, thanks Peter. The museum was purpose built to house the wreck of the 17th century man-o-war “Vasa”. Within the museum there is no glorification of the boat herself, which had a rather misfortunate and untimely end just minutes into its maiden voygage, but to recognize the outstanding effort to raise, conserve and restore the wreck.
The story of the Vasa herself is highly amusing. The Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus spent a shit load of time and money building the greatest warship of all time. It sank just minutes into its maiden voyage due to a comedy of errors not the least of which was a major design flaw – the boat was / is more than four storeys high but only approx 12m wide = just a little top heavy. There were two gun decks with 64 of the most powerful cannons available at the time and nowhere near enough ballast in the bottom of the boat. On the day of its maiden voyage a crowd in the tens of thousands, including foreign dignitaries and spies, had amassed on the shores of Stockholm harbour, the king / admiral / captain wanted to show off the might and power of the country and the vessel so they had all the gun ports open in readiness for a salute firing of the cannons. Up comes a stiff little cross breeze and the top heavy ship starts to tip and heel a little, so much so that water starts to run in through the open gunports and everything gets out of hand until the boat sinks in the middle of Stockholm harbour just 2km into its maiden voyage.
It stayed at the bottom of the harbour for over three hundred years until some amateur archaeologist stumbled across it in 1956. Fortunately the wreck itself was in remarkably good shape thanks to the Baltic Sea being especially cool & brackish which inhibits the population of ship worms which eat away at timber wreck in other seas & oceans. It was raised from the floor of the sea in 1961 and after 26 years of restoration & conservation was moved into its current house. The wreck that now stands in the museum is 95% original, the largest timber ship wreck in the world to be raised and restored.
Whilst we were in museum mode, and considering its relative proximity, we popped over to Skansen, the world’s largest open air museum. It is basically a display of traditional Swedish buildings & farmsteads collected from all over the country and relocated to what is now a 75 acre museum. It has a bit of a “fun park” feel about it but it also has a zoo with Scandinavian wild animals like owls, wolves, bears, wolverines, elks and so forth. It was an entertaining way to spend the afternoon.
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| Red squirrel - we were quite surprised to see one of these for the first time in Norway, because they are apparently being overrun by the grey squirrel. Now we're seeing them everywhere.... |
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| Adrian reaches a milestone... |
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| Yep that's actually grass on the roof. It must be an insulation thing...? |
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| Fuel anyone? |
Any excursion to a European city is incomplete without a wander through the old town. In Stockholm’s case this is an area called Gamla Stan. The Royal Palace and the Parliament building are also on the island of Gamla Stan, however we felt at the time that we had seen our fair share of palaces for the time being so we shied away from going inside and went for drinks in the pub instead.
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| Gamla Stan |
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| Gamla Stan |
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| The Royal Palace - from the outside only |
We mentioned above that we are generally not museum buffs, well we are definitely not gallery buffs but we made an exceptional exception and took a short metro ride to the island of Sodermalm to visit Fotografiksa, a photographic gallery. At the time it had an exhibition of work by Nick Brandt, former cinematographer but now full time wildlife photographer. It was a really good exhibition and well worth the exception to our no-gallery rule. Some of his works look more like portraits rather that just photos of animals taken from a distance with a telephoto lens – apparently he actually gets up close and personal with the animals. Check it out at
www.nickbrandt.com
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| Stockholm Harbour |
From Stockholm we decided to make our way towards Poland. But to get to Poland we had to catch a ferry from Karlskrona in Sweden. Karlskrona is Sweden’s only Baroque city and is host to the country’s only remaining naval base and the headquarters of the Swedish Coast Guard. It was also listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list because it is an outstanding example of a late-17th-century European planned naval city. The original plan and many of the buildings have survived intact, along with installations that illustrate its subsequent development up to the present day.
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| Adrian checks out the big guns. |
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| Believe it or not Cathy is risking life & limb for this photo - just below the wharf is a viscous swan!! |
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| Big prizes on offer to the first reader to identify the logic behind this photo |
Far from being a simple ferry departure point it was in fact a rather pleasant place to stop for a day. It’s not huge, Cathy ran its circumference in under an hour, there was enough to see & do and to entertain ourselves but without the hustle and bustle of the bigger cities and towns that we have been tending to visit.
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| A cool and groovy park bench |
We made another exception to our museum rule and popped into the Maritime Museum – a decision sweetened by the fact that it is free during the low season. It was, amongst other things, an interesting foray into the naval and military history between Sweden, Denmark and Russia.
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| Ready for battle |
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| The 2011/12 summer season cycling fashion... |
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| Adrian inspects the torpedos |
Overall the quieter atmosphere in Karlskrona meant we had a chance to rest & recharge a little before tackling Poland. We’ll get to Poland in our next post so you’ll just have to wait till then to find out whether or not we puked on the ferry…
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