the next part of our Swedish expedition took a peculiar turn. we knew that Stockholm was our final destination for the weekend, but which path would we take out of Göteborg? going back the way we came was out of the question because aside from the points of interest (POIs) along the side of that road, it wasn't a very exciting drive in the first place. we did manage a sneak preview of the quainter aspects of the Swedish countryside, and we caught sight of some impressive modern windmills that dot the landscape between Västerås and Göteborg. other than that, we needed some fresh sights and new POIs to maintain our interest as we headed toward Stockholm. we soon found both in the hunt for Bronze Age carvings along the Bohlusian coast.
little red men
we said goodbye to Hotel Vasa we drove north out of Göteborg along the coast. our first destination was a wildlife park in the Bohlusian hinterlands that supposedly had an interesting menagerie of Nordic wildlife, appropriately called the Nordic Ark. as it turned out, this Swedish "safari" would have taken a solid two hours out of our day, therefore we opted to miss the reindeer and arctic foxes and instead we walked along a sprawling, crystal-clear fjord for a little while before we found our first set of carvings.
the carvings were about a kilometer from the wildlife park, hidden under a cluster of trees. their location was marked by a "R" which signifies rune and points in the general direction of where the rock is located. the smooth granite on which these carvings lie blend into the landscape quite well, and it's only when you are practically on top of them that you see the intricate little shapes and figures that represents the history of a civilization 3000 years old. the carvings are shallow - no more than a milimeter or two deep - and have been painted red by the Swedish historical society that protects the carvings today.
most of the carvings depict warriors wielding long swords and shields and, interestingly enough, long phalluses (or is it phalli?) figures of women are rarely carved in the rock, except in the case of grief or disaster where they are shown to be kneeling and crying. one particularly famous carving, however, shows a man and a woman, naked, and kissing. this is generically named "The Kiss" but it shows that Bronze Age Scandinavians had no pretenses about carving lewd pictures on their rocks. who knows? maybe the archeaologists are wrong and the carvings don't represent the cultural story of these ancient people. instead, maybe some angst-ridden Bronze Age teens got together and decided to vandalize a bunch of local rock outcroppings. other depictions include boats, the sun, cups, and cute little whales. the smallest carvings are no more than an inch tall with the biggest being an early representation of Odin at over 2 meters tall.
megaskrov and megaslott
we reached our fill of carvings in the early afternoon and headed back to Stockholm through some rough country that skirted the Norweigan border. we made a few stops on the way; one, at a Swedish rest stop called Frasses that had clearly ripped off its menu from McDonalds. take a look at their website: that is a Big Mac clone on their homepage. but we didn't really care because the food was excellent (i recommend the Megaskrov) and they offered all sorts of tasty seasons and sauces for their fries, including one called Rhode Island Dressing, which is clone of Thousand Island. we also hit up a large slott (castle), something we'd been trying to find for three days, in the city of Örebro. Slott also happens to mean manor house in Swedish, and while manor houses are interesting, they don't inspire thoughts of rugged, hardy, medieval Swedes; a strong, stone castle, however, does.
the capital of Scandinavia
Reykjavik is too remote. Helsinki is too modern. Oslo is way too expensive. Copenhagen? too quaint. Stockholm, on the other hand, has what it takes to be the champion for all of Scandinavia. it's the biggest city in terms of population in all of Scandinavia, mixing old world history with sleek modernity, and small town charm with an ultra-hip social scene. it's accessible and efficient (although let us be honest; there are no inefficient Scandinavian cities) and it's a perfect destination from which to explore the rest of the region. in short, Stockholm is marvelous and it only took us three days to come to that conclusion.
the one glitch was that we didn't actually stay in Stockholm. Tobias booked a Scandic hotel through Orbitz that was supposed to be in the city center. unfortunately, Orbitz had the wrong address for the hotel and hence, the wrong map on its website. the Scandic Kungens Kurva was actually in a suburb called, surprise-surprise, Kungens Kurva, which is about 10 kilometers outside Stockholm. at first, we were a little disheartened, but our mood collectively improved after we discovered that the hotel had a pool and sauna as well as the most complete breakfast spread yet (complete with caviar paste.) there was also a large hotel bar and convenient access to the Stockholm Metro.
now, if you only have three days to spend in Stockholm like we did, how would you spend your time in the most efficient, Scandinavian way possible? we started, appropriately enough, in the Gamla Stan, which is the heart of the Stockholm and holds all of the major museums, palaces, and quaint, ochre-colored buildings that you expect to see when you go to an old city. it also had a bustling tourist-oriented street filled with tacky souvenir shops, overpriced speciality stores, and pushy restaurateurs looking to herd visitors into their establishments by the dozens. we hit the side streets instead and took pictures of the narrow alleyways, occasionally popping our heads into a shop selling old maps. on one such trip, we found a store that was absolutely filled with antiques and trinkets from the Soviet Union. you could by military and civilian medals by the hundreds, flags from the Red Army or Soviet Navy, guns, knives, swords, maps, binoculars, currency, (i bought an envelope filled with small denomination Uzbek sum, the likes of which i never saw in Uzbekistan) belts, hats, books, and postcards. this store also had a few items that were seemingly plundered from Nazi Germany by the Red Army during the Second World War, and were later purchased in Russia by the proprietor of this shop. among those items was a bust of Adolf Hitler, some Reichsmarks, and a few pairs of field glasses belongs to officers of the Wehrmacht, each chillingly engraved with the swastika.
beside the beautiful Stortorget (see the pics below) the coolest event in Gamla Stan was the changing of the royal guard at the Stockholm Palace. Chach equated it to a Monty Python sketch as the little blue-clad soldiers shuffled around the palace square. i thought it was quite well orchestrated as a new company of soldiers took the place of the old ones in a ritual that involved one of the best marching bands that i had ever seen. not only were they close to perfect with their performance, they played a few jazz tunes along with their traditional military reveille, much to the delight of the crowd.
another must-see is Stockholm's city hall. it was designed by a brilliant, but very fussy architect named Ragnar Östberg who constantly changed his mind about the design of the building. the hall is home to the famous Nobel Banquet and is held in the Blue Hall, which isn't actually blue because he decided near the end of construction that the red bricks were far more beautiful, and therefore he canceled the paint job. it also has a Golden Room, which actually is gold, and contains 1 million gold-painted titles that cover the walls and pillars. one of the reasons for his wishy-washy behavior might be attributed to the fact that he was a Swedish nationalist and he wanted everything to match and complement with ruthless Swedish efficiency. perhaps this is why it took 12 years to build. nonetheless, it is an astounding piece of architecture.
the last night we hit a very hip club named Berns to see one of Tobias' fave musicians, Bobby Bare Jr. most young people in Stockholm dress like they just walked out of an H&M and there was no exception at Berns. in fact, Bobby Bare Jr and his bandmates were probably the most casually dressed people there, along with Chach, Tobias and me. Bobby took swigs off bottles of Jack Daniels and Miller Lite in between rawkus rock n' roll songs and everyone was most pleased, especially the drunk hipster Swedes in the audience who got a little too excited and stole Bobby's tambourine. well, i don't think Bobby wasn't too pleased with that. like most city dwellers, Stockholmites (ites?) love to go out, when they do, they dress for it. there are practically no dive bars in Stockholm and most drinking establishments are either ultra-sleek or have some sort of interesting theme or decor. take Koh Phangan, for example; a Thai restaurant in the Södermalm district. the minute you walk in, you feel as if Thailand and Jamaica united as one country and decided to celebrate with a rave in college freshman dorm room. the decor is heavy on blacklights, Bob Marley posters, glow-in-the-dark tape, and tiki torches. reggae music blares through the thatch-roofed bar and benches in the dining are arranged over koi ponds and inside tuktuks. the food was top-notch - possibly the best and most unique Thai i've ever had. food critics use the word "transcendental" a lot. whatever that means, i think Koh Phangan hit it.
we left Stockholm on a snowy Monday - the only snow we had during the entire trip - and headed out to tour the Stockholm archipelago, which is a popular holiday destination for Swedes. we also headed to Sigtuna on our way to the airport and cursed ourselves for not finding this gem of a town sooner. it was filled with the ruins of ancient monasteries and castles, just waiting for some sturdy tourists to explore their grounds. after stomping around some ruins for about an hour, we headed back to Arlanda International Airport, said goodbye to our trusty Volvo, and waited anxiously for 5-star luxury to take us back across the pond.
one last highlight: we had absolutely crystal clear skies as we flew over Greenland, something that is rare as the North Atlantic is almost always obscured by some sort of cloud cover. Chach and i had some beautiful views from our window and i managed to snap a few photos at 40,000 feet of glaciers calving into their fjords. enjoy.
little red men
we said goodbye to Hotel Vasa we drove north out of Göteborg along the coast. our first destination was a wildlife park in the Bohlusian hinterlands that supposedly had an interesting menagerie of Nordic wildlife, appropriately called the Nordic Ark. as it turned out, this Swedish "safari" would have taken a solid two hours out of our day, therefore we opted to miss the reindeer and arctic foxes and instead we walked along a sprawling, crystal-clear fjord for a little while before we found our first set of carvings.
the carvings were about a kilometer from the wildlife park, hidden under a cluster of trees. their location was marked by a "R" which signifies rune and points in the general direction of where the rock is located. the smooth granite on which these carvings lie blend into the landscape quite well, and it's only when you are practically on top of them that you see the intricate little shapes and figures that represents the history of a civilization 3000 years old. the carvings are shallow - no more than a milimeter or two deep - and have been painted red by the Swedish historical society that protects the carvings today.
most of the carvings depict warriors wielding long swords and shields and, interestingly enough, long phalluses (or is it phalli?) figures of women are rarely carved in the rock, except in the case of grief or disaster where they are shown to be kneeling and crying. one particularly famous carving, however, shows a man and a woman, naked, and kissing. this is generically named "The Kiss" but it shows that Bronze Age Scandinavians had no pretenses about carving lewd pictures on their rocks. who knows? maybe the archeaologists are wrong and the carvings don't represent the cultural story of these ancient people. instead, maybe some angst-ridden Bronze Age teens got together and decided to vandalize a bunch of local rock outcroppings. other depictions include boats, the sun, cups, and cute little whales. the smallest carvings are no more than an inch tall with the biggest being an early representation of Odin at over 2 meters tall.
megaskrov and megaslott
we reached our fill of carvings in the early afternoon and headed back to Stockholm through some rough country that skirted the Norweigan border. we made a few stops on the way; one, at a Swedish rest stop called Frasses that had clearly ripped off its menu from McDonalds. take a look at their website: that is a Big Mac clone on their homepage. but we didn't really care because the food was excellent (i recommend the Megaskrov) and they offered all sorts of tasty seasons and sauces for their fries, including one called Rhode Island Dressing, which is clone of Thousand Island. we also hit up a large slott (castle), something we'd been trying to find for three days, in the city of Örebro. Slott also happens to mean manor house in Swedish, and while manor houses are interesting, they don't inspire thoughts of rugged, hardy, medieval Swedes; a strong, stone castle, however, does.
the capital of Scandinavia
Reykjavik is too remote. Helsinki is too modern. Oslo is way too expensive. Copenhagen? too quaint. Stockholm, on the other hand, has what it takes to be the champion for all of Scandinavia. it's the biggest city in terms of population in all of Scandinavia, mixing old world history with sleek modernity, and small town charm with an ultra-hip social scene. it's accessible and efficient (although let us be honest; there are no inefficient Scandinavian cities) and it's a perfect destination from which to explore the rest of the region. in short, Stockholm is marvelous and it only took us three days to come to that conclusion.
the one glitch was that we didn't actually stay in Stockholm. Tobias booked a Scandic hotel through Orbitz that was supposed to be in the city center. unfortunately, Orbitz had the wrong address for the hotel and hence, the wrong map on its website. the Scandic Kungens Kurva was actually in a suburb called, surprise-surprise, Kungens Kurva, which is about 10 kilometers outside Stockholm. at first, we were a little disheartened, but our mood collectively improved after we discovered that the hotel had a pool and sauna as well as the most complete breakfast spread yet (complete with caviar paste.) there was also a large hotel bar and convenient access to the Stockholm Metro.
now, if you only have three days to spend in Stockholm like we did, how would you spend your time in the most efficient, Scandinavian way possible? we started, appropriately enough, in the Gamla Stan, which is the heart of the Stockholm and holds all of the major museums, palaces, and quaint, ochre-colored buildings that you expect to see when you go to an old city. it also had a bustling tourist-oriented street filled with tacky souvenir shops, overpriced speciality stores, and pushy restaurateurs looking to herd visitors into their establishments by the dozens. we hit the side streets instead and took pictures of the narrow alleyways, occasionally popping our heads into a shop selling old maps. on one such trip, we found a store that was absolutely filled with antiques and trinkets from the Soviet Union. you could by military and civilian medals by the hundreds, flags from the Red Army or Soviet Navy, guns, knives, swords, maps, binoculars, currency, (i bought an envelope filled with small denomination Uzbek sum, the likes of which i never saw in Uzbekistan) belts, hats, books, and postcards. this store also had a few items that were seemingly plundered from Nazi Germany by the Red Army during the Second World War, and were later purchased in Russia by the proprietor of this shop. among those items was a bust of Adolf Hitler, some Reichsmarks, and a few pairs of field glasses belongs to officers of the Wehrmacht, each chillingly engraved with the swastika.
beside the beautiful Stortorget (see the pics below) the coolest event in Gamla Stan was the changing of the royal guard at the Stockholm Palace. Chach equated it to a Monty Python sketch as the little blue-clad soldiers shuffled around the palace square. i thought it was quite well orchestrated as a new company of soldiers took the place of the old ones in a ritual that involved one of the best marching bands that i had ever seen. not only were they close to perfect with their performance, they played a few jazz tunes along with their traditional military reveille, much to the delight of the crowd.
another must-see is Stockholm's city hall. it was designed by a brilliant, but very fussy architect named Ragnar Östberg who constantly changed his mind about the design of the building. the hall is home to the famous Nobel Banquet and is held in the Blue Hall, which isn't actually blue because he decided near the end of construction that the red bricks were far more beautiful, and therefore he canceled the paint job. it also has a Golden Room, which actually is gold, and contains 1 million gold-painted titles that cover the walls and pillars. one of the reasons for his wishy-washy behavior might be attributed to the fact that he was a Swedish nationalist and he wanted everything to match and complement with ruthless Swedish efficiency. perhaps this is why it took 12 years to build. nonetheless, it is an astounding piece of architecture.
the last night we hit a very hip club named Berns to see one of Tobias' fave musicians, Bobby Bare Jr. most young people in Stockholm dress like they just walked out of an H&M and there was no exception at Berns. in fact, Bobby Bare Jr and his bandmates were probably the most casually dressed people there, along with Chach, Tobias and me. Bobby took swigs off bottles of Jack Daniels and Miller Lite in between rawkus rock n' roll songs and everyone was most pleased, especially the drunk hipster Swedes in the audience who got a little too excited and stole Bobby's tambourine. well, i don't think Bobby wasn't too pleased with that. like most city dwellers, Stockholmites (ites?) love to go out, when they do, they dress for it. there are practically no dive bars in Stockholm and most drinking establishments are either ultra-sleek or have some sort of interesting theme or decor. take Koh Phangan, for example; a Thai restaurant in the Södermalm district. the minute you walk in, you feel as if Thailand and Jamaica united as one country and decided to celebrate with a rave in college freshman dorm room. the decor is heavy on blacklights, Bob Marley posters, glow-in-the-dark tape, and tiki torches. reggae music blares through the thatch-roofed bar and benches in the dining are arranged over koi ponds and inside tuktuks. the food was top-notch - possibly the best and most unique Thai i've ever had. food critics use the word "transcendental" a lot. whatever that means, i think Koh Phangan hit it.
we left Stockholm on a snowy Monday - the only snow we had during the entire trip - and headed out to tour the Stockholm archipelago, which is a popular holiday destination for Swedes. we also headed to Sigtuna on our way to the airport and cursed ourselves for not finding this gem of a town sooner. it was filled with the ruins of ancient monasteries and castles, just waiting for some sturdy tourists to explore their grounds. after stomping around some ruins for about an hour, we headed back to Arlanda International Airport, said goodbye to our trusty Volvo, and waited anxiously for 5-star luxury to take us back across the pond.
one last highlight: we had absolutely crystal clear skies as we flew over Greenland, something that is rare as the North Atlantic is almost always obscured by some sort of cloud cover. Chach and i had some beautiful views from our window and i managed to snap a few photos at 40,000 feet of glaciers calving into their fjords. enjoy.
fjord near the Nordic Ark
our first set of carvings
a 40 foot Bronze Age carving at Tanumshede
a whale
a depiction of a stone ship setting ceremony
the home of the Tanumshede Rock Carvings - a UNESCO World Heritage Site
the Örebro Slott
Stockholm Gamla Stan
the changing of the guard at Stockholm Palace
how could you not want to live on this street?
or this one?
the most famous photo op in Stockholm at Stortorget
the Riddarholm
inside the Golden Room in the city hall, home of the Nobel Banquet
a medieval monastic fortress in Sigtuna
a glacier off the coast of Greenland
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