Visit to Stockholm

[earths_daughter]

Perversely, last weekend we left some of the best weather this summer has known for the distinctly cooler, Nordic climate of Stockholm. For my husband this was partly a business trip but for me, entirely pleasure.

Stockholm is a beautiful city, built on an archipelago, so the sea is everywhere.

Comments

[laeliacatt]

Gorgeous pictures! These look like postcards. :) I'm intrigued especially by the Vasa. The carvings, still intact, on her stern are magnificent. I'll bet you did feel like you'd wandered onto the set of Pirates of the Caribbean!

[earths_daughter]

Thank you. I have a good camera, but I am pleased with how they came out.

The carvings, still intact, on her stern are magnificent. They are. She was to have been the royal flagship, designed by the king himself, no less, (which may have been the problem) so an immense amount of prestige attached.

[earths_daughter]

I believe someone went down in a diving bell in the 1660s and retrieved the cannons. Then she was left and indeed forgotten. However, the story lived on in legend and fable and in 1950 an amateur treasure-seeker heard the story from his father. Years of research studying hand-written records in old Swedish (a modern version of Gandalf at Minas Tirith) at length furnished him with an approximate position and after tests of the sea bed using a core sampler he finally located it.

It is an extraordinary story.

[earths_daughter]

P.S. Had you thought of going to see Day Zero?

[_celebrian]

Wow! Those are absolutely stunning pictures. Thank you so much for sharing them. :-) I've never been to Stockholm (or most other places on that side of the Atlantic), but I can see that it would be a fabulous destination someday.

The Vasa is really impressive too. I love the carvings. It reminds me a little of the replica viking ship that is in a local museum here. A man from a nearby town built it years ago and several of his children as well as others actually sailed it across the Atlantic to Norway. It's a good story actually, but the ship is nowhere near that fancy.

[earths_daughter]

Thank you. It must have taken some courage to sail that ship to Norway.

The Vikings were a very practical people. I remember seeing a museum display of Celtic and Viking artifacts. The Celtic ones were fine, carefully decorated and it was clear that much effort had gone in to making them beautiful. The Viking artifacts were practical and functional with no time wasted in unnecessary decoration.

[alyrthia]

Thank you for sharing -- really beautiful photos. Very impressive.

[earths_daughter]

Thank you. I don't want to bore people with my holiday snaps so I try to post only the best and limit them in number.

[mumis]

WOW they are so beautiful,I have been many times in Sweden I have family there,but I had not be in Stockholm!:D

Thanks for sharing!

*hugs*

[earths_daughter]

Thanks. The beauty of Stockholm is man-made, I imagine the rest of Sweden is naturally beautiful. All those lakes and forests, all the way up to the Arctic Circle.

[mumis]

If you will you can see some pictures of Sweden in my tow last entry!:D

*hugs*