On Dasher...

Never ask a Sámi person how many reindeer they have.  We couldn't help but wonder, though, as we stayed on a reindeer farm in Sevettijärvi, would we get to see any?  How many are there around?  There were droppings on the property, confirming their existence and Merlin could tell that they were fresh enough to signal close reindeer proximity.  Those are true country boy skills right there.  But a reindeer 'farm' is very different than the name implies.  These are wild animals, only partially domesticated.  To keep your reindeer is to follow them, gather them, mark them, not confine them.  So, did we see any reindeer?  We sure did.  This is the land of the reindeer, far above the Arctic Circle and even mating season (which it was while we were in Lapland) couldn't keep the reindeer completely out of sight. 

To ask about the number in someone's herd would be like saying, "hey, how much money have you got in the bank?"  Until very recently, reindeer husbandry was the core of the Sámi economy.  The animals were a currency.  In fact, when we asked one of the older schoolchildren in Sevettijärvi why the language textbook they'd sweetly presented us with had a picture of small reindeer bones on the cover, we were told that those were game pieces.  "It is a Skolt game," the thirteen year old explained.  You throw them on the ground and whichever ones land a certain way are reindeer.  "Whoever has the most reindeer wins."  So, basically, it's a very ancient version of Monopoly.  Until the 1600s, Sámi people lived as nomads, following reindeer as they migrated.  These journeys brought them over borders, being defined at that time as Russia, Sweden and Denmark.  The governments of each (and sometimes all three) began to tax the Sámi people and, with no hard currency, they paid with hides and meat.  The need to generate more income in order to pay taxes led to over-hunting and a sharp decrease in the number of reindeer.  There was a threat of extinction.

Many Sámi chose to settle along fjords and switch mainly to fishing.  Others decided to employ the same methods they'd seen Scandinavian shepherds use with their flocks of sheep.  The men began taming small groups of reindeer and herding them from place to place as needed.  The women made clothing and blankets from the fur, boots from the skins, tools from antlers and even cheese from the reindeer's milk.  These reindeer herders, though a minority, became what is now seen as the 'archetypical' Sámi.  As systematic (and sometimes sadistic - in cases of female sterilization) assimilation measures were taken by Scandinavian and Russian governments, the communities most reliant on reindeer husbandry were the ones who held on most tightly to their culture.  There's a direct correlation between the survival of Sámi dialects and traditions and the importance of herding in those communities.  You can pretty much safely put the reindeer at the center of modern Sámi identity. 

Of course, they also ate the meat.  While you'd probably be hard pressed to find any reindeer milk products around Lapland, reindeer meat is very common.  Most often, it is sauteed, resembling beef stir fry or cheese steak shavings, served with lingonberries and potatoes.  For some reason that we can't figure out, the reindeer in Lapland tastes much more like beefsteak than venison.  There is no gaminess and the flesh is tender enough to not necessitate it being cooked super rare.  Other common preparations are dried and cured sausages, sliced thin and eaten as a breakfast and lunch meat.  Reindeer soup made some appearances as well.  Canned reindeer stew, reindeer chunks and reindeer meatballs showed up all around Finland - not just Lapland.  It has grown from being a local delicacy to a national culinary tradition, as Sámi culture has become more widely accepted and respected in recent decades.

Above, a particularly delicious baked reindeer steak with rye and thyme crumble, forest mushrooms and artichoke puree.  This was at Ravintola Aanaar in Inari.  The town is considered the center of Sami culture in Finland.  Merlin ate this (and I had Lake Inari whitefish) in a small dining room adjacent to the main banquet hall.  A group of around 50 people had been filing in all evening and now sat enjoying a meal and some live, traditional music.  "Is it a wedding?" we asked.  "Oh, no.  Just a gathering of Sámi people."  Many had arrived in traditional costume, some wore name tags.  "It happens all the time."   Inari is also home to Siida, a really wonderful museum dedicated to Sámi culture and the nature of Northern Lapland.  Siida is a North Sámi word for a reindeer village and much of the permanent exhibition, naturally, was dedicated to herding and husbandry. 

This old record book shows a series of earmarks and the families and family members they represent.  Every summer, the calves that are born the spring before are rounded up and small cuts and patterns are made in their ears.  This marks ownership.  Thousands of earmarks exist, children have different ones than their parents, siblings and so on.  The best herders earn the most intricate patterns, Natalia explained to us.  "Mine was one no one wanted."  She owned some reindeer (of course, we didn't ask how many) at one point.  Her earmark pattern was simple enough that it could easily be turned into another.  So, one by one, her reindeer began to disappear.  Finally, she sold them off before she had none left.  "I knew who it was and was mad for a while.  But it is all a part of it."  She told us of the skill involved with knowing exactly where to find every one of your reindeer depending on the wind, the surface of the snow, how old they are.  The Sámi have hundreds of words for 'reindeer,' including one for each year of a reindeer's life.

Only around 10% of today's Sámi count reindeer husbandry as their primary source of income.  That doesn't make the animals any less important, though.  Tourism in Lapland depends a lot on people wanting to come up and see Dasher and Dancer et al.  At our homestay, Natalia told us about Spaniards zipping around on snowmobiles they'd never ridden before, trying to find some reindeer.  "I was running around with a first aid kit."  Other guests think that going right up to one and petting it is a good idea.  "They even think they can ride them!"  Most tourist material for the area involves snowmobile and dog-sled tours to go out and spot some reindeer.  Thankfully, absolutely nowhere is there the opportunity to go out on a hunt.  I was happy to see some of the beautiful animals, even if they were just fleeting glances.  And, at night, I even dreamed of reindeer (though our pillowcases may have had something to do with that).

Castle Hunting: Hämeenlinna

On a bright October morning, I boarded a fast train from Helsinki up to the town of Hämeenlinna, in the Finnish region of Tavastia.  Fast European trains can be disconcerting.  They marry speed and calmness so seamlessly that a chaos of landscapes becomes somehow pedestrian.  I got off in a small city quieted by early Saturday - joggers and dog walkers were my company, all of the shops were shuttered.  I'd come to look at a handsome old castle named Häme (Hämeenlinna in Finnish, "linna" means fortress) which sits at a narrow point in lake Vanajavesi.  It was an easygoing day, and a pleasant one.  The brick walls and narrow moat served as a backdrop for contemplation more than a reason for excitement.

Hämeenlinna is most interesting from across the water, when its catches the light and looks very grand.  Inside, it's as drab and colorless as a middle-school - thanks to a 1980's renovation that saw the walls whitewashed, the addition of modern stairs and fluorescent lights, hallways opened up and excessive guard-railing.  The most prominent feature, without exaggerating, is the spacious coat-check area.  Walking around, there's virtually nothing to look at.  It's like a museum between exhibitions; blank walls, scuffed floors, too many radiators, tiny windows that look out at nothing. It's a real shame, because Häme would make a great old pile.  One can catch glimpses of narrow passageways and staircases (cordoned off from the public), and there are a few unrestored rooms with vestiges of… not much.  Some of these contain folding chairs and pull-down projector screens.
Probably the highlight of the interior, in terms of medieval atmosphere, is the well room.  The well itself is dry, but the chamber is suitably damp and dark.  This is the lock on the old, metal-sheathed door.

On the far side of the water, in a wetland mess of cattails and reeds, someone has set up a boardwalk system.  The way was narrow, but it let me get right out almost to the edge of the vegetation.  A few inches of murky water covered the mud on either side; the growth, at its autumnal height, was above my head.  Still, I was able to get a few photos before retreating to more solid land.  I had a picnic on a half-sunken cement slab in the brush.  There were a few crows overhead, and their calls echoed over the water.

Brick is an interesting castle material.  In some parts of the world - like Holland and parts of Belgium - there isn't very much stone, so they built with brick.  In some cases there was plenty of stone, but the architectural shapeliness of brick was more appealing.  Hämeenlinna is a perfect example of this type of castle, and is somewhat rare for Scandinavia.
Häme was originally built as a stone garrison on a small island, sometime around the year 1300.  The walls, at that point, were low and makeshift.  The purpose of the fort was to enforce new taxes after the region had been brought under Swedish control.  Almost nothing is known about this early period, though, and there's a lot of debate about when the structure was actually assembled.  The brickwork mostly covers up the older stone, which was rough and not well cut.  During the late 14th century, as the fortress was being enlarged, redbrick was used instead of the native greystone so that the overall effect would be more visually dramatic and impressive.  In Finland - a conflict area at the time, and not very well off - this was almost unheard of, but it was common practice in other Swedish holdings across the Baltic.  Castles like Cēsis and Sigulda in Latvia, as well as Trakai in Lithuania, were built in brick because of a combination of vogue and necessity.

Häme's most interesting period - to me, at least - was during the mid and late 1700's, when it served as a "crown bakery."  Six huge ovens were built in the southern part of the castle, and a granary and wheat drying room were added above.  Because it was somewhat outdated and there were a large amount of troops in the region, the Swedes decided that the castle might best function as a kind of industrial kitchen, to keep mouths fed and supplies close at hand.  Again, not much information survives about the bakery, but a Russian survey in 1808 found that it could produce 1,500 lb. of bread and 900 lb. of rusks in one firing, which certainly sounds substantial.

Hämeenlinna is in a precarious position between Russia and the old Swedish empire, and so traded hands many times during its history.  Because it was often under threat of attack, it was modernized repeatedly.  Circular cannon batteries called "rondelles" were added at the end of the 16th century. (The rondelles, like many towers in the age of gunpowder, were circular to try to deflect enemy fire.) Soon after, earthen embankments were built up at some distance from the walls, so that cannons could be stationed at low and solid firing points.  Today, these green humps obscure much of the old buildings, which is too bad.  They are a nice place to sit and look out over the water, though.

The Ships and Shippers of Åland

On the western shore of Mariehamn, the capital of Åland island in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland, a Viking Lines ship idled patiently in the water.   Big and fast, Marianne waited to fill its cabins with excited passengers and whisk them off on an overnight booze cruise to Helsinki.  The gambling machines dinged and clinged in empty halls, the carpeting looked at itself in thousands of mirrored and super-buffed surfaces, bracing for another night of absorbing heavy, unsteady steps.  On the eastern shore, 'österhamn,' things were a little more low-key.  Karolina, a historic brig, was being worked on by this man.  She was built in 1874, saw a little bit of action between 1901 and 1905, then began her much longer stint as a stylish relic.  A piece of history.

Sjökvarteret or "the Maritime Quarter" as the neighborhood in österhamn is called, is part recreation and part functional homage.  This is where nearly 300 wooden ships were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Nowadays, there is a working blacksmith, some men actually repairing and building boats, picturesque storehouses and boat sheds in rows of weathered wood on stilts.  Newer beauties sit around, a swarm of nice yachts dock here in the summer.  Amazingly, this small, weathered stretch sits at the northern end of Scandinavia's largest harbor.  In the high season, people take boat tours in some of the antique ships being repaired this time of year.  In early October, the historic Albanus looked just as it would have at the start of Autumn in its heyday.  Crates of apples filled its deck, in from orchard-filled Geta in northern Åland.

People on Åland island have been traversing the Baltic in both directions for centuries.  To Stockholm they'd set sail with fish, meat and dairy from the farms that covered Åland.  They would return with goods like clothing and salt.  Then, began the big trips.  Boats grew larger, as did the crews that manned them, and shipping journeys took Ålanders around Cape Horn for Chilean nitrate and around the tip of South Africa to Australia for grain.  The Åland Maritime Museum tells the tale of this period through the stories of Mariehamn's locals.  There is the captain who is on his very last trip - he's promised his wife.  There are the men who have signed on because they want to travel or shirk their responsibilities on the family farm.  There was a gallery of ship portraits, the work of local artists as commissioned by local shipowners.  Our hotel room has a hard-bound "Who's Who in Åland," complete with photos.  So, you can see just how up close and personal their excellent maritime museum was.  

Perhaps the most influential person in the shipbuilding history of Mariehamn is Captain Gustaf Erikson, who took it upon himself to continue buying and repairing beautiful wooden windjammers as the rest of the world switched to steam power.  The fleet he accumulated right in these harbors competed competently with the shipping steamers right up until World War II.  Erikson was a man who understood the value of those sailing ships, the importance of tradition and even had a hunch that Mariehamn could still find an industry on the water even after their major shipping days were done.  "Many modern people long for peace and quiet for a couple of months in the bracing sea air," he suspected, starting the first business in the area to sail people across the Baltic simply for the experience, not the necessity.   The pleasure cruise.

The figurehead above is not Erikson, it's just the gentleman who used to be set onto the prow of the California.  Most other figureheads were women dressed in white Athenian or Victorian garb, hand held to heart (and their thoughtfully sculpted bosoms).  But Mr. California here's chin is not held as high, his gaze is less assured, his hand, a little lower, clutches at a jacket lapel like a man bracing himself. What an odd choice.  There were all sorts of curios on the Åland Maritime Museum.  Black and white photos taken by Peter Karney, a young Brit who volunteered aboard one of Mariehamn's ships on a journey around Cape Horn, offer extraordinary glimpses into life on the sea.  Men doing handstands for exercise or playing with their pet pigs.  A captain looking gruff.  The museum space itself has the feeling of a ship's interior and little stuffed mice are humorously stashed in corners for you to happen upon just like the rats on the windjammers of yore. 

Since the collections in the museum were provided by locals, there's some really great, personal stuff.  Souvenirs brought home from sailings around the world included a postcard from Seattle, some truly garish glass art from England, figurines from South Africa, a coconut.  There was even an authentic 18th century pirate flag with the iconic skull and crossbones, one of only two in the world.  Another room was dedicated to Viking Lines, an Åland company, and included excellent 1970s disco cruise photos and a newspaper clipping quoting an excited passenger.  "It's like a city on the water!"  A knot-tying station, with instructions, let you feel really inept at trying to recreate the rope wonders above. 

Everyone around here can probably tie at least a few of those knots.  Navigation is no longer part of elementary school education as it was in 1854, but you get the sense that not knowing how to sail around here would be a little like not knowing how to drive a car in California.  This bearded fellow brought a gorgeous sailboat into the wharf in Sjökvarteret.  He did so confidently - elegantly, really - and then lit a cigarette once he'd hopped on land.  As he stood and stared at the beauty, the man who'd been working Karolina came over to join him.  There were more puffs than words and then the two walked off together.

"Pears!" the bearded man called to us when we ran into the two men a little while later.  He was barely visible within the leaves of a short pear tree, jabbing at the branches above him with a stick&bucket contraption.  "Do you want one?" the other man asked and we all stood around waiting for just the right angle.  One, then a second small, hard pear was bagged and tossed over to us.  We thanked them, commented on the taste, chewed and then realized that small talk wasn't really going to happen.  Oh, those strong, silent seafaring types. 

The Painted Farms of Hälsingland

The man with the sword, to the left to the door, is the Guardian.  A quote above him states that he was there to protect anyone that entered, but also reserved the right to kick you out of it you got too drunk.  In the panel closest to the fireplace, the Fiddler laments his role as maître d'.  He is there to wrangle people, entertain, keep order.  He is harassed by a rowdy bunch whose job it is to make his job difficult, hiding in barns, boozing it up.  On the opposite wall, Sophia promises her unending love in a wedding ceremony and a man with a horse spins a tale about a buzzy political topic of the day, To Eat or Not to Eat horse meat.  This is the festivities room at Ol-Anders farm, one of the decorated Hälsingegården (farmsteads of Hälsingland).  These painted rooms are one part of what make the Hälsingegården unique to Sweden and the world. 

 In the 19th century, a boom occurred in Hälsingland.  It was a perfect storm of events for the region with a farming tradition dating back to the year 200.  Things that the farmers of Hälsingland had done for centuries suddenly became big business.  This is flax country and flax makes linen.  So, when a British man with know-how and his team of women who could spin with both hands simultaneously came into town, Hälsingland became Sweden's linen capital.  (The only linen mill still in Scandinavia exists here, today).  Then, when cotton began to usurp linen, in the mid 1800s, fortune struck again.
Agricultural reform gave farmers large swaths of forest they had little-to-no interest in.  But just about at the same time, industrialization started, railways were built and selling off land and felling rights became a goldmine.  Add to all of this a doubling of the population (thanks to peace and the smallpox vaccine) and the lack of a noble class and the farmers of  Hälsingland soared. "Cash in their pocket," Gun-Marie Swessar explained to us at Ol-Anders, something incredibly new for a population of people traded goods amongst themselves.  This is what they chose to do with it.

"That which... in Hälsingland, immediately arouses an outsider's attention are the magnificent and imposing buildings."  Elementary School Textbook, 1878.  Not much has changed since then.  As we drove to Alfta, where we'd booked a farmstay with the Hisved family, we kept noticing these enormous barns and houses.  Estates, really, grand in stature, but with an overwhelming sense of functionality.  Some people call the Hälsingegården, Hälsingland farmsteads, 'log castles,' and their layouts are pretty fortress-like.  Above, you can see the traditional form.  A fourth building used to be right where we're standing, completing the square.  The winter house is at the top, facing south for optimum sunshine.  The cow stables are to its left and the festivities and summer house is to its right.
This farm, Ol-Anders, was originally down in Alfta's town center.  However, after a 1793 fire destroyed almost all the buildings, the Anderssons and other families, moved their farms up onto hills, out of close proximity to neighbors.  For extra protection, they set them up like mini fortresses.  After the blaze, came the boom and what started as one story - two windowed buildings expanded upward and outward.  

Then came the decorative touches.  In parts of the region that were connected more closely to city, via trade routes or proximity, elaborate doors, detailed woodwork and pastels were the design of choice.  That's what the urban folk were doing, after all.  In places like Alfta and Långhed, porches were the style.  It's impossible not to notice them, some baroque, some rococo, some faux Greek temple.  "It took about 25 - 50 years for the fashions of the mainland [Europe] to get to this part of Sweden," Gun-Marie said, laughing.  Whether with a porch or not, the entrance to the home was considered the true sign of status.  Amazingly, though, even when the authorities actually began to complain that they were building on too large a scale and 'being too extravagant with wood,' the farmers of Hälsingland were never trying to outdo one another.  It was more like they were all deciding upon a local folk art, using most of the same builders and artists.

The painters mainly came from Dalarna, south of Hälsingland.  They would come on foot, with no job opportunities in their own neck of the woods, knowing that there was some wealth to go around up north.  Offering to paint for a few nights room and board, the artists began to adorn the festivities rooms.  Then, one room after another became canvases.  As the buildings grew, there was more wallspace to adorn.  With international styles beginning to come into vogue, farmers asked their painters to create the look and feel of expensive materials that would never be available to them.  Paint was used to create the illusion of oak and mahogany, Italian marble and French silk.  Always practical, the most intricate art was left for the rooms used only now and then.  More durable wall treatments, like stenciling and splatter painting, were used in entrance halls, sleeping rooms.  Because the fanciest murals were done in rooms that got use maybe a few times per generation and were not exposed to smoke or grease, they were able to remain intact.

Before we met with Gun-Marie at Ol-Anders, we didn't quite know how we'd be able to get a look at some of the famous interiors.  "Perhaps I can call my friend," Kersti Hisved told us when we asked about it.  We stayed with her and her husband, Ivor, in the hamlet of Långhed.  "Or, you can just come upstairs and look at ours!"  Ivor remembers touching the wall paintings as a child.  The paint used to come off on his fingers, he recalled.  Amazingly, with windows all around, it shows no signs of fading.  They've turned the festivities room into a kitchen, removing the wall panels temporarily to add insulation and having a restorer add a protective sealant before beginning any construction work.  "He told me to clean the walls with bread," said Kersti, "that's how they do all the old churches.  Lots of bread."  She dabbed at the wood with an imaginary chunk of baguette.
"In the 50s and 60s, everyone wanted everything new."  All across Hälsingland, some design elements became casualties of modernity.  But the festivities rooms, with their lack of insulation, were often the last things to get touched.  "She did not have the money to renovate this whole, big house," Ivor said of his grandmother.

Although the buildings on Kersti and Ivor's farm date back to 1845, they have only been in the Hisved family for four generations.  Some Hälsingegården have been in the same family for 400 years.  A strict code of inheritance governed the land here, where there was no aristocracy to clamor for real estate.  Father to son and if you had a daughter, it was customary to marry her off to a close neighbor.  Ironically, though, right after all these big houses were built in the mid 1800s, 10 - 30% of the people in this area emigrated to America.  They were following Erik Jansson, a preacher whose love of book burning got him run out of town and whom they promptly shot in Bishop Hill, Illinois after discovering that - prophet or not - he was an egomaniacal control freak.  Anyway, lots of houses were left empty.

While driving along in Edsbyn, we spotted Panesgården, a Halsingegården-turned-garden shop.  A warm welcome was given by Rosemarie and Rolf, who'd bought the building under a year ago.  Rosemarie had a flower shop in town, but fell in love with the historic farm, which wasn't being put to any use.  The ceiling had been newly touched up, the old faded painting could still be seen.  As we gawked at it, Rosemarie came up beside us.  "Want to see the upstairs?" she asked almost mischievously.  The impossibly narrow spiral staircase was unroped for us.  "You do this at your risk," she said before telling us to duck.  "I'm not allowed to let customers up here."

Upstairs, we emerged into a huge, bright room with some of the prettiest painting we'd seen.  She would like to turn the space into a cafe, if she can figure out the dangerous staircase situation.  Of the 1,000 Hälsingland farms, around 50 of them can be visited.  Many have been turned into B&Bs.  I think it was most fun to have just stumbled upon some.
What I love most about these farmers' mansions is the clear idea you get of what was truly valued by the people who built them.  Even as the farms grew almost ludicrously large, entire families would still sleep in a single room.  Why heat more than one?  They remained self-sufficient, continuing to spin, weave, slaughter, build, brew, bake... and all those big buildings gave them space to do it.  On most grand estates, the space is filled with stuff.  Here, they were filled with tools.  On most, fashion trumps function, wallpaper and furnishings are switched out for newer styles.  On these walls, art was made to last. 

Skansen, The Swedish Original

Just fifteen minutes by boat from Stockholm's old town traffic, on a green island in the archipelago, one can wander through the 18th and 19th centuries.  When we asked one young volunteer how they had decided on the "year" of the house we were in (meaning the time portrayed, not the date built) he nodded to a wooden-faced, centuries-old clock.  "Because of that," he said.  "It's the newest thing in here.  We don't want a clock expert to come in and tell us that it hadn't been built yet."  He was dressed in garters and a tri-cornered hat, and had just put a few more logs on the open fire.  Because of the warmth and the dusty light filtering through wavy glass, we were ready to believe that this was some version of the 1700's, some parallel existence of rural Sweden.
Skansen is the oldest and largest outdoor museum in Sweden.  A cluster of buildings, objects and traditions rescued from the brink of extinction, the collection is a pan-temporal glimpse of the country's past.

We've been to many "skansens" in different places - the name has become a noun, and we use it pretty broadly to mean open-air house-museum.  Notably, there was a terrific one in the Czech Republic and a half-abandoned example in the hills above Tbilisi.  Our favorite, probably, was the first of the trip - we actually spent the night at the rambling, rainy skansen in Ciechanowiec, Poland.
Several years ago, on a trip with my mother and aunt, I'd taken the ferry from winter-darkened Gamla Stan to the island of Djurgården.  From my memory, I was able to call up a kind of endless landscape on a hill outside Stockholm proper, where the buildings were all of old wood and we watched wolverines and a grey owl.

I found Skansen about how I remembered it, if less dreamy.  The trees were more fully leafed when Rebecca and I got off the boat, and there were more visitors.  Like so many public green spaces, the hill that the museum is built on has a specific grayness in the offseason.  The sky was overcast, but the gray was more emotional response than true color - shuttered buildings, leaves being raked, the smell of woodsmoke trickling from the chimneys, a melancholy that comes before bare branches. The ferry docked at the entrance to Gröna Lund amusement park, where autumn-quieted rides loom over the boat and the walk uphill to the museum.  We shared Skansen with a few other young couples and American tourists, but schoolchildren made up the largest demographic - and the most energetic.
Above, potato starch set on a windowsill to dry.

As the afternoon got close to evening, the air was cold.  We were drawn to the various hearths and kitchen stoves, where costumed men and women told us about their imaginary lives.  One man in large-buckled shoes showed us a collection of rocks and told us about copper and iron mining.  A pregnant woman lit an oil lamp and talked about the portrait she was painting of a farmer and his wife - she was usually the wife, but the dress in the picture didn't fit her at the moment.  A schoolteacher worked at knitting something (a mitten?) and laughed when we asked about the wallpaper.  The performances were casual, and broke between eras and characters.  In general, the people seemed happy to talk to someone - most visitors ducked in and out without saying hello.

Peasant architecture, handcrafts and artwork weren't appreciated much before they began to die out. Because they weren't considered high art, the beautiful objects of every day life - painted walls, carved tools, woven clothing - weren't preserved outside of the home.  The idea of needlepoint being worthy of a museum is a rather new concept.  As modernity began changing lives, it also changed the value people gave to their old things, and much was discarded.
At ethnographic museums, those objects aren't the entire point.  They're important, but their effect is more so - like a theater set's is to a play.  We are supposed to enter living dioramas, where fires crackle, chickens cluck around the doorways and the smell of yeast hangs in the air.  It's a kind of theater in perpetuity.

Of course, the buildings themselves are as fascinating as anything inside them.  Collected from all over Sweden, they range from churches and chapels to government-built soldier's homes and windmills.  There are several complete farmsteads, a faux mine, a Sami camp, a schoolhouse, post office, countless barns and the tallest steeple in Sweden.  All of the buildings were carefully taken apart, moved and reassembled.  Walking around the seventy five acre collection is surreal, especially when one catches a glimpse of modern Stockholm in the distance.  The juxtaposition of old, new, rural and urban is a little comical.
The idea behind Skansen was actually Norwegian - King Oscar II had created a similar museum a decade before the Swedish one opened.  Industrialization was rapidly shifting the way people lived their lives, and things that had once been taken for granted were suddenly disappearing.  Artur Hazelius, a professor and folklorist, founded the museum after traveling in the Swedish countryside and noticing how much the peasant communities were changing.  Today, it's one of the most popular attractions in Stockholm, even among the Swedish.  We talked to one woman from the capital about it - "Everybody goes at least once a year," she said, only half joking.

Skansen's collection extends even to live animals.  Moose lumber around on spindly legs, brown bears sleep in furry piles, wolves hide in the trees.  The scandinavian wildlife collection is interesting but - as with all zoos - a little lifeless.  The owls are maybe the best feature.  One, the great grey owl, is housed in a walk-in aviary.  It's possible to get quite close to the huge thing, which is unnervingly still most of the time.
Less depressing are the domesticated livestock, who are much more content than the fat seals and pacing lynx.  Goats and cows dutifully graze and look placid.  Horses swish their tails and stare into the distance.  Peacocks preen and give grating cries.  Here, bloody fish wait to be thrown to a pair of otters.

Of course, Skansen isn't really magical.  Walk around and you'll run into tractors and golf-carts, women shoveling sawdust with earphones on, cotton candy and (even) the tinny music of amusement rides.  There are buckets of lollipops and bad coffee.  But the boat ride really does something for the visit.  Leaving the city pier and arriving at the island, then getting back on the boat as the sun gets low, the museum gets set apart from everyday life - cut off by gray water and some minutes of voiceless wind. By the time the division has been made - hotel room and tourist bars cut away from windmills and hair kerchiefs - Skansen is impossible not to find fun and interesting. These sort of things are inevitably hokey, but they're important too.

Castle Hunting: Slott Kalmar

The Bubonic plague struck Stockholm in 1571, so Johan III, King of Sweden, took his wife and son to Kalmar castle.  They lived there for the better part of two years, cut off from the capital, looking out over a pretty harbor and the calm waters of the Kalmar straight.  The fortress defenses had recently been modernized and strengthened, but the sturdy structure was more utilitarian than palatial.  Time moved slowly.  The King and Queen occupied themselves with construction.  The result is one of the prettiest and oddest castles we've been to, where pavilions and formal gardens once served as backdrops to sieges and cannon fire.
We spent two nights in Kalmar, huddled in pubs as the wind off the Baltic whipped through town. The leaves had just begun to change.  Our room was almost in the shadow of the castle's copper roofs, the moat was just outside our door.  We explored the castle from top to bottom, poking into places we weren't supposed to and walking around the marshy perimeter.

It's rare to see true Renaissance castles.  There are plenty of fortresses built (or renovated) during the Renaissance, and lots of forts that were prettified and turned into palaces during the period. But there are few defensible, Renaissance style castles, and I've never come across one like Kalmar.  What Johan III and Queen Catharine created was a military instillation with all the grace and accents of a fashionable residence.  The interiors are light and luxurious, there are fine carvings and painted woods.  The castle isn't outfitted with a true keep.  Instead, the inner courtyard is fully integrated with its surroundings and the main block was designed as a whole, which meant it couldn't be held beyond the front doors.  It also means that walking around the high-ceilinged rooms is pleasant and easy.  It feels "fit for a king" more than "strong enough for a warlord."

But this is no simple seaside villa.  During the 16th century, Kalmar served as a focal point for the maritime borderlands between Denmark and Sweden.  The Danes controlled the peninsula further south, the Swedes were centered north of the harbor, around Stockholm.  While there had been several agreements (the principle one, the Treaty of Kalmar, was actually signed at the castle in 1397) that had kept Scandinavia intermittently peaceful for a century, the dawn of the 15th century saw renewed hostility and restive borders carved across the region.  Being a crucial trading port - especially with mainland powers Germany and Poland - and being so close to antagonistic Denmark, the fortress needed to be strong.  Being situated on the sea, Kalmar also needed to be ready for the newest floating technology - namely, huge warships loaded with cannons.

An adventure: without realizing that we weren't allowed, we climbed up to the very top of the castle's highest roof.  A door had been left open by a caterer - a banquet was being prepared, things were in some disarray - and we found an intriguing wooden staircase.  Up several flights, through an attic coated with dust and bird droppings, at the top of a rickety scaffolding ladder, there was a door in the ceiling.  It opened.  We stepped up into the wind.  In a lofty cupola (you can see it in other pictures) there was a rudimentary railing and old bell, amazing views, a dangerous drop and a great perspective over the castle courtyard.  After climbing back down, it became clear that the doorway to the attic was usually locked.
The castle's rooms are mostly used as exhibition spaces these days.  History (old robes, plundered furniture, building models) was superseded by a vast collection of Bjorn Borg photographs (why?) and a room of paper cutouts.  Painted, paneled and restored ceilings are the architectural highpoint.  Electric fires radiate weak flickers over every hearth.

Kalmar's harbor was nicknamed "Kättilen," or "Cauldron," because of its depth, which allowed deep-drawing, large boats into its docks.  It's a pretty spot, with tiny islets in the bay and messes of high reeds along the banks.  The grey September water lapped rather peacefully against the rocks - Öland island shelters the site from the worst waves off the Baltic sea.  Significant dwellings have existed there since the stone age, and in the middle ages it was one of the primary ports of Eastern Scandinavia.  The first keep was erected on the castle island around 1200, probably to serve as a garrison and customs house.  A larger complex existed by 1300, with significant walls and separate towers.
Cannons swiftly changed everything about military architecture (I've talked about this in Castello di Trani, Kyrenia Castle, Palamidi Fortress and soaring Kotor ).  In terms of shore defenses, it changed things even more.  Before the advent of gunpowder, all that was needed to defend a port was a garrison of men - ships could only feebly attack land from the water and the real fighting was done once the attackers had come ashore.  After cannon were invented, ships and castles became direct adversaries.

A promenade meanders along the waterside in the present day.  Ducks and a few malevolent swans nest in the salty grass, high sycamores shade a cemetery and museum.  It's all very Scandinavian-peaceful, which is at severe odds with the past. While harbor castles are theoretically better off during a siege - it's hard for an enemy to seal off both the water and the land around a fortress - they are also subject to the full brawn of an opponent's cannon.  Sweden was especially concerned about this fact at the point when the Nordic Union dissolved - a lot of money and expertise went into strengthening and updating the country's medieval castles so that they could withstand gunpowder weapons.
The high old battlements were too delicate for the new cudgeling, so the outer walls of Kalmar, which rise directly from the water, are thick, low and earthen.  They didn't need to be very high, because attacking gun batteries would be firing on a horizontal plane.  Along the top, cannon ramps were installed for moving large guns, and firing stations were established.  Massive bastions were built at the corners, and a gatehouse was positioned at the back, fronting a wide moat.  In essence, the old castle was given a protective booting of sod and stone, and so was freed up to be made more luxurious.

Over the summer of 1611, a long siege and prolonged cannon war - dubbed the "Kalmar War," which is a generously expansive term - saw the castle fall to the Danes.  They captured it from the landward side, after the Swedes and run out of ammunition.  Fighting continued further north, but eventually petered out.  Forces on both sides were relying heavily on mercenaries, but didn't have the funds to pay them - many men were lost to desertion and disinterest.  After England and others put a stop to the flagging conflict, Sweden paid a hefty ransom to regain the castle.
As the new border between the countries was moved southward in a complicated treaty, Kalmar lost a lot of its strategic significance.  It continued for a while as a secondary royal residence, but eventually fell into disrepair.  Before it was spruced up in the 19th century - as a curio - it was reportedly in very bad shape.

An oft overlooked fact is that fortresses and castles were usually built by dreamers or egomaniacs - people who wanted their stone edifices to look impressive and feel imposing.  What we found endearing about Kalmar, in the end, wasn't its location, its grandeur or its sieges.  Castles were built to be fought over, and they were built by people with an eye for drama.  No, what was distinctive here, on the Swedish coast, was that a sixteenth century royal family decided to build a fortress that was both functional and beautiful.
Make no mistake, even in the 1500's, there were plenty of monarchs and low gentry who romanticized the middle ages, even as recent as they were.  They were rapidly taking disused piles and turning them into whimsical, fashionable country homes.  Most "renaissance castles" were built or renovated for show.  At Kalmar, under threat of imminent attack, the King built a true limestone stronghold, then made it livable.  By the cold, dark waters of the Baltic, Sweden has a special treat - a place where function and fancy have been given equal billing.
(And, if you can sneak in, the attics are one of the great castle experiences of Europe!)

A Seaworthy Museum In Gøteborg

The sound of the Maritiman museum in Gøteborg is half the experience.  Steel whines against steel, engines hum, wharfs creak, footsteps ring out in the gloom.  Everything is a little unsteady.  This is a floating mess of ladders and pipes, where the sound and the movement of the waves provides atmosphere.  After an hour or two, you feel like a sailor.  The museum has a way of completely enveloping the visitor - the fluorescent gleam on worn metal, the smoothness of ladder rungs, the smell of new paint and old mildew.
Crawling through the green belly of the submarine Nordkaparen, past hundreds of dials and knobs, is like maneuvering through a hard-shelled dreamscape.

The seventeen boats that make up Maritiman - thirteen floating, four resting on the wharf - are so closely moored that the various decks and smokestacks create a jumbled whole.  Gøteborg is close at hand; on deck, the city sounds of traffic and people are as clear as the noise of the water.  Seagulls wheel, bicyclists whizz by on the waterfront, the ticket office sells ice cream cones to chilly pedestrians.  It feels much like any normal, familiar urban dockside.
The museum boats are anything but normal, though.  Guns prickle atop the destroyer HMS Småland, fire hoses wreath the Flodsprutan II, primitive radar antennae juts up from the minelayer Kalmarsund.  There's a harbor crane, two cute little tugs, a few lifeboats, a massive cargo ship and a rare, 19th century Monitor named the Sölve. There's even a floating lighthouse, the No. 29 Fladen (the red tower can be seen in the left of the picture).  The No. 29 was, rather pitiably, replaced by an "anchored buoy" in 1969.

The exterior decks are fun and interesting - the maze of connective ramps and stairways is engaging by itself - but the museum is most thrilling down below.  This is where the reverberations - who knows from what vibration? - take over, and the way becomes confusing.  How far does the hallway go?  Is this a dead end?  Where did that staircase come from?  Have I passed this before?
Levels and directions are pointless after a while.  Partly, the strangeness is because of the movement of the ship and the swaying of the lights.  Partly, it's because of the low ceilings, the perpetual crouch, the tight spaces.  It's rare, aboard the warships, to be able to stand up straight and get a good look around.  But the disorientation is partly willful - I didn't care about getting lost.

The Småland was, according to an information plaque, the first destroyer in the world to be outfitted with sea-based missiles.  The plaque also mentions such diverse armaments as torpedos, 12cm cannons, anti aircraft guns, anti submarine rocket launchers, depth charges, 58 mines, chaff-launchers and flare rockets.
Yes, up in the fresh air, the ship is impressively armed.  But that aspect of it hardly resonates below. It was difficult to recognize what anything was - even a kitchen looked warped, too small and foreign.  I could hear a few other visitors, somewhere in the corridors around me, but I didn't see anyone until I found myself back in sunlight.

Hugging the side of the Småland, looking like a prowling shark, the submarine Nordkaparen is one of Maritiman's jewels.  Built in 1961 as a state of the art coastal-defense weapon, the ship was used for about twenty years, before being decommissioned and docked.  The tarp over the front and the plentiful rust don't inspire a lot of confidence in the Nordkaparen's seaworthiness, but it seemed safe enough in the harbor.
After clambering down a long ladder, one can imagine immediately that they are deep under the surface.  Sounds are transmitted with watery vagueness.  There are no windows.  Wires and tubes criss-cross around you.  It's as much Jules Verne as Tom Clancy.

It's difficult to believe that twenty seven men lived aboard the Nordkaparen.  There doesn't seem to be room for three people in the tight confines.  There are valves and gauges on every surface - all vividly low-tech. It's not what one imagines a submarine to be like, it's much scarier.  Imagine maneuvering this blind cylinder in the black deep, without the aid of computers or modern controls, with no visibility, feeling the way with radar.
Torpedos shouldn't feel surprising in this realm, but somehow they caught me off guard.  There were several of them, bright orange, protruding from their barrels.  Most of the bunks were arrayed around the weapons, presumably because that's where there was some space.

What really brings the museum to life are the textures and sounds.  Everything is right there to be touched, bumped against or snagged on.  Many decks are reached by cramped ladder, and so the interiors become full of handholds and things to lean into.  Deep down, in the engine room of the Småland, pipes and ducts twist through the space like treeroots in a cave.  The ships groan and clang against eachother.  Walking through, getting lost, one passes empty kitchens and bunk rooms and chambers full of dials. For the claustrophobic, the tight spaces and hard edges might be frightening.  For the inflexible, some of the submarine ports might be hard to navigate - even relatively limber folks have to essentially crawl through the holes.  After some time alone in these depths, the boats take on a surreal spookiness.  These ships aren't exactly meant for humans, they're just big machines - it's like spending time inside an engine.

A brighter, more lighthearted feeling permeates other boats - like the plucky Flodsprutan II, which has lived in Gøteborg harbor since 1931.  The little fire boat patrolled the waterfront until the '70's, and is still in working order.  Rows of gleaming nozzles and coiled hoses are hung against the walls, the kitchen looks recently used (seen above - the dishes are part of the display).  Nearby, two more modern navy boats - a minelayer and a patrol craft - are sleek and fast and comfortable.  The cheerful red of the lighthouse boat, No. 29 Fladen, hides a bright interior full of blue china and genteel uniforms.

Gøteborg hasn't opened itself up to the water.  The port is more functional than fancy.  Buildings along the seafront aren't as pretty as those further in, and the city isn't defined by the view from a ferry.  So, at the end of a visit to Maritiman, standing at the very top of the Minelayer Kalmarsund, with cranes and cruise ships in the distance, one can feel that they are docked in any port in any city.  That's part of the charm. Spending a few hours at the museum, you can really pretend that your life is at sea - or, at least, it excites the imagination enough to make all the strangeness feel natural.