We walked through the abandoned stalls of a fair that was happening this weekend to the entrance to the museum. There were probably a couple tours groups with thirty or so in each waiting outside the museum. We got inside the museum and put our wet stuff away before it got miserably crowded.
The Vasa was a ship that set sail in 1628. It hadn't gotten far from its mooring when a squall tipped it. Because of its lack of ballast and thin design, water began coming in through the gunports and it sank.
Some three hundred years later, a historian and a diver began looking for the ship. They found it in 1959, and dug tunnels underneath it to run wires through so they could bring it to the surface. And I'm making this sound like this wasn't a ten-story-tall ship that could hold hundreds of people and was tons heavy.
The museum talked about the restoration of the ship, the life and times of Sweden when the ship was being built, and even about the skeletons of the thirteen people (out of thirty or so) found.
We had some delicious shrimp smorgasbords from the restaurant (we might call them open-faced sandwiches), then went out into the sun to find Skansen.
Oh, Skansen. The delight of my Sunday. They make you pay a bit to get in ($17), but they deliver. We were a bit disappointed at first when the houses that made up this outdoor, open-air (though I kept accidentally calling it the "outdoor air" museum) were closed. We found one that was open, and went inside to find the postmaster's wife (of the 1800s, of course), who gave us fire-oven baked cookies. That got our juices flowing.
We travelled from building to building. We happened to be at the chapel just in time for a youth choir singing madrigals. We wandered more, hid from a slight cloudburst, then watching folkdancing in the field where people were trying to walk on stilts.
This is going to be a hard story to relate, but the best part of the day was when the children's folk dance group was doing a dance where the four boys, of about 6 to 10 years old, sat on a bench and the girls danced then were introduced to one of the boys and sat on his lap.
One of the boys, either the clown of the group or just obstinate, wasn't finding this much to his pleasure. The girl went to sit on his lap, and he opened his legs. She was clearly experienced at this trickery, because she spent the whole rest of the dance smiling cheerfully as he tried to buck her off his lap. Alisa and I were in tears in the audience.
Additionally, the Swedish have a foot fetish, because quite a few of the dances involved partners tapping toes together.
Skansen also delivered in the animal section. We heard it had a collection of Scandinavian animals, but didn't chalk it up to much. However, not only did they have an extensive collection of farm and wild animals, they also had BABY ANIMALS.
We saw baby owls, baby goats, baby reindeer, baby ducks, baby bears, baby sheep, baby wolverines, baby geese, baby moose, baby bison, baby chickens, and I very well might be missing some. Spring! I love it! (Except for the random chilliness...)
In fact, I think those were practically all the animals they had there. Only the otter, the wolves and lynx (which we didn't see, so there could have been babies), the seals and the cows were babyless.
One thing we did find littered around the park, though, were pacifiers. What? After a couple that seemed purposefully placed, including a bag with a note, it was clearly a trend. Youngsters from all over Sweden make their trek to Skansen to "give" the baby animals their pacifiers now that they are big enough to not need them anymore. I think it's an adorable ritual (though not sure I'd pay to get my kid to Skansen when it reaches that age).
We wandered around the park for a few hours before taking our ferry back. (More boats for Corinne!)
We had dinner in some nondescript place with Viking in the name (and got pizzas with curry and kebab) (two different pizzas, in case you were wondering.) Back aboard the hotel ship, I found the only two English books on the boat. One was a book from the 50s about some sea adventure. The other was a 900-page romance vampire thriller. There was a reason (right around page 158, when there were seven men and one woman, and most of these men were vampires and shapeshifters, and the thriller portion had one scene thus far) that this book had been left behind.
Tomorrow, my blogging is going to get thrown off schedule because of an overnight train (in fact, over eleven hours on a train tomorrow). You'll probably hear from me in two days, but I may try to post our arrival in the morning. Last night in my awesome boat hotel...
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