I said goodbye to Dana in the morning (after a breakfast of a snegl – a Danish cinnamon roll), then was off on a random roadtrip through Sweden, thanks to my Viking class. They took us first to Ales Stenar, the site of a Viking ship burial monument on the “dramatic landscape” of Southern Sweden. Our guide, who was quite amusing and kept spurting out random facts and comments (and making fun of the Swedes…and being very insightful in his explanations: “The Danes go out and get drunk. The Swedes go out and get drunk and it’s a problem. That’s the best way to describe it.”), and that’s how he kept describing it – as one of the only pieces of dramatic landscape that southern Scandinavia has.
Crossing the Øresund Bridge
The dramatic landscape
A not-so-dramatic windswept hair photograph
Tiny Swedish townWe ate lunch in a town along the way, where they were having a random fair and enjoying the wonderful sunshine. Maybe I’m just getting accustomed to Danish, but Swedish sounded very strange. At the town I ate a “real American burger” – not so – and listened to a Swedish singer do a very odd cover of the Beatles’ “Come Together”.
2kg of Toblerone?
We then went to a burial ground with a lot of much smaller monuments of all shapes, but some also in ships.
Using me as a scale of the Viking burial.Our final stop was a runic stone in what seemed like the middle of nowhere (but close to an absolutely gorgeous manor house, which I couldn’t get a picture of because we drove by too fast). It’s one of the only contemporary writing sources that actually has the word Viking in it. That’s pretty cool.
Look closely to see the engraved mask.
This says 'Viking'
A lot of the trip was driving through southern Sweden, which was actually really nice. Sweden sadly doesn’t fit into my travel plans this time, other than Malmø, which is right across the Øresund Bridge from Copenhagen, so I felt like this trip actually gave me a fairly nice, if quick, view of southern Sweden. It’s a beautiful country, and the farms are adorable.
Sunday
Another sightseeing day! Benny and Helle picked me up, and we went to Trelleborg, an old Viking fortress. There’s not much left of it, but using postholes they’ve put in concrete markers to show where the longhouses would have been. They also built a model longhouse and a model Viking village. It was only used for about 15 years and they don’t have any sources on it to know what happened there, but if you have a good imagination, the place can be really impressive. We also did some exploring of the surrounding area.
From there we went to Roskilde Domkirke (cathedral). It’s famous for having most of the kings and queens buried there. So many fancy caskets!
Roskilde
The cathedral
Queen Margarethe I
Christian IV is the one in the black casket
We also stopped at a small reconstructed medieval village right next to their house where in the summer they have activities and things on the weekend. It looked really cute.
The weather was absolutely amazing and we were able to sit outside on the porch and bask in the sun before dinner. Huzzah!
Monday
I rode my bike to school much more successfully. The bike seat is up now, and I think something was a little loose on the brake, so it was braking while I was riding, explaining some of why I was having such a hard time biking. I might be lazy and not bike everywhere like some of my friends, but who knows – with the weather getting better and my metro pass expiring soon…
Snegl is just an awesome word.
ReplyDeleteThat's a LOT of Toblerone. (Which I've never actually had by the way... I keep hovering near it at the grocery store, but can't justify buying some. :P)
VERY COOL... that is, the runic stones and Viking archaeology... not the American hamburger...
You know, I should actually be working. I DO have stuff to do. I suppose I'll get on that.