Rick Steves Tour of Scandinavia - Part 2: Pre-Tour Days in Stockholm

Stockholm, Sweden - June  2 - 4

June 2: Getting There 

Every Norse adventure needs a saga, so here is the saga of how I ended up in Sweden a mere 10 days after returning from a wonderful Viking River Cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest. Rob and I had booked, over a year ago, a Baltic cruise that would have taken us to a few places we had not visited in Scandinavia, plus unfamiliar places we really wanted to see - Heslinki, Estonia, and St. Petersburg...and then Putin started a war. We cancelled the cruise, but SAS would not cancel our plane ticket. They did provide us with a voucher - with a time limit. Rob, being not as demented as I, had no desire to return to Europe so quickly, but when he suggested that I go back to Norway, where I had lived and studied back in 1969-70, I thought, "Well, a return to Norway is always welcome." I didn't want to travel alone, so I checked for a Rick Steves tour of Scandinavia. Because I was booking so late, there was ONE seat left for the whole summer...and it just happened to be starting on the first week of June, so, still jet-lagged from the last trip, I found myself on the way to Europe again!   

Nice to see my favorite band of all time waving bye as I board my SAS flight to Copenhagen

Landing in Stockholm

I had a lot of thoughts of "I'm getting too old for this!" when I arrived after 24 hours of travel, including some delays and gate changes in Copenhagen that had me hauling my carry-on bags through the long halls of their huge airport. By the time I got to the hotel, I was half dead, but after a surprisingly good night of sleep and a good hotel breakfast, I was feeling back to my old self and ready to go out and explore Stockholm.

June 3:  Skansen, the ABBA Museum, and the Swedish History Museum

Our tour started on June 4, so I had today to explore on my own some of the places not included on the itinerary. I woke up way too early but managed to putter around in my little single hotel room, organizing my things and reading until it was time for the breakfast buffet.

The Hotel Wellington is conveniently located, with easy walking to many of the recommended sights. Stockholm is a city built on several islands, so I walked past the elegant buildings that line the waterfront and crossed the bridge that leads to the island of Djurgården, a lovely, wooded area filled with museums and Stockholm's amusement park, Tivoli.

The elegant buildings facing Stockholm's waterfront.

Stockholm's waterfront promenade

A city built on islands

The bridge leading to Djurgården

One of the many gardens of Djurgården.  Stockholm is so far north that the tulips were still in bloom.

The Nordic Museum

One of the gorgeous parks in Djurgården

A cute home on Djurgården

It was spring in Stockholm - Make way for goslings!  I think these are called Barnacle Geese.

View of the city from Djurgården

Skansen

My first stop was Skansen, which opened in 1891. It is the largest open-air museum in the world - a hilltop site where old farms, homes, churches, and other buildings were brought from all over Sweden to show life in the past.

The entrance to Skansen

Men and women in traditional clothing were demonstrating some of the trades, such as pottery, glassmaking, baking, etc. Rob and I had visited Skansen on our Scandinavian honeymoon 22 years ago, and it seems to have become more commercialized than I remembered. Each building with a demonstration now included a shop where one can purchase books, glass items, pottery, and baked goods.

An early phone booth

Costumed docents walk up the streets of Skansen

The book binder and printer building

Book binding materials 

An old barn

This rooster was crowing his heart out - repeatedly!

Inside the barn

The potter's studio

The local tavern

The glassblower's workshop

Grass-roofed cottages

The windmills pictured below are two of the two thousand windmills
that once stood on the island of Oland.

The farms and animals of Skansen

The park also includes a great area for kids called "Lille Skansen," with a petting zoo of farm animals. Further on were Nordic animals, including reindeer, brown bears, wild boars (including some adorable striped piglets), and others. The reindeer were looking a bit scruffy, as they are losing their thick winter pelts.

Cows and sheep

Goats

Old farmhouse

Reindeer

A small herd of young reindeer

Moose

Brown bears playing in the water

A wild boar...

...and her adorable piglets

European Bison

Great Grey Owl

And lots more little goslings roaming free all around Skansen

It couldn’t have been a prettier day. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the weather was much warmer than had been predicted.

The ABBA Museum

From the old past displayed in Skansen, I visited the more recent past at the ABBA Museum. The rooms were filled with videos, recordings of the members talking about their lives, many of the costumes they had worn, and of course, their music playing everywhere. Many of the visitors were happily singing and dancing along with the songs. There was also an interactive feature that allowed a visitor to become the fifth member of the group and sing and dance along with a computer-generated version of the group. I was never a huge ABBA fan, although I like their music and can sing along with many of their songs...but this was a fun and funky museum.

Some of the many costumes the museum had on display. 
We learned that there was a tax benefit to having costumes that could not be used in
everyday life, so the group went for some really "out-there" costumes.

A replica of one of the studio offices

Some of the group's many gold and platinum albums

Some of the instruments used for ABBA's music

A guest dancing with holographic images of the band

Wax figures of the ABBA members

More costumes.

After lunch by the water, I walked back across the bridge to go to the Swedish History Museum and discovered that the Stockholm Marathon had just begun! Runners were racing down the streets, and the sidewalks were crowded with thousands of cheering fans. I pushed my way through, but unfortunately, I was on the wrong side of the street from the museum and had to wait for a big break in the crowd of runners before dashing across the road. (I learned later that Kathy, one of my tour-mates, had run in this event!)

Seaside dining on Djurgården

A huge crowd watches the Stockholm Marathon

The Swedish History Museum

The museum was large, and I did not see any of the upstairs rooms, but I visited the two highlights. The Guldrummet (The Gold Room) which was full of gold and silver objects – jewelry, coins, and other items. Many of these objects had been discovered in Sweden, buried in the earth. The displays were laid out according to the age of the objects, from the earliest in the bronze age through the medieval period.

The description in English says, "The Gold Room contains 52 kilograms of gold and over 200 kilograms of silver.  Artifacts include three unique gold collars from the 5th/6th century, silver pendants from the Viking Age, reliquaries decorated with gemstones from the Middle Ages, and other amazing objects from many parts of the world.  Even today's goldsmiths are awestruck by these pieces."

Sweden has one of Europe's richest collections of antique gold and silver.  Under a law passed in the 17th century, any unclaimed finds of more than 100 years old and made of gold, silver, or copper alloy must be purchased by the state.  As a result, an unusually large number of gold and silver artifacts have been preserved.

These treasures often lay buried and were found by maid-servants, farmhands, smallholders, widows, or labourers working in agriculture or forestry.  They were purchased for cash and sent to the museum.

Some of the earliest artifacts

The influence of Christianity is evident with the appearance of crosses.

Some of the most interesting artifacts.  The rings and ingots at the lower left were of precise weights, so they may have been used for currency.  The mask of Alexander the Great was made in the 2nd century CE and was paraded in processions by Roman soldiers.

The next large exhibit was the Viking Room, which displayed lots of objects made and used by the Vikings, who ruled Scandinavia and terrorized much of Europe from 793 to 1066 CE.

Weapons and armor were a theme in the Viking Room

Remnants of daily life - reindeer antlers, a Viking toolbox, and remnants of clothing.  
How amazing to think they have lasted for a thousand years!

Decorative items

Rune stones were often memorials to the dead.  

In addition to the rune stones, there was another collection of beautifully decorated standing stones called the Gotland Stones, which come from the Baltic island of Gotland. These "picture stones" provide us with wonderful details about the mythology and daily lives of the Vikings.

There were still many rooms to explore in the Swedish Museum, but my feet said they’d had enough, so I walked back to the hotel where my brain and body agreed that they too had had enough, and I collapsed for a two-hour nap.

In the late afternoon, I went down to the lobby for happy hour and met several of the people I will be traveling with over the next two weeks. We had a lovely time visiting and sharing dinner, so I went to bed tonight feeling much revived and ready for new adventures.

June 4: Stockholm's Royal Palace, the Changing of the Guard, and our Tour Begins

I woke up in the morning feeling wonderful after a full night of sleep. Hurray! The weather today was a bit cloudier and cooler than the warm day yesterday, but the sun was shining. At the hotel’s breakfast, I met several more of my fellow travelers. Our tour didn’t officially start until the afternoon so after breakfast, I walked over another bridge to Gamle Stan, the "Old City." Gamle Stan, which dates from the 13th century, is on Stadsholmen, a small island in the heart of Stockholm, and for a long time, the little island was the only Stockholm. Eventually the city spread out to the mainland and other islands to become the city we know today.

The Museums of the Royal Palace: The Royal Armoury Museum

My destination was the Royal Palace, which contains several museums. The best of these is the Royal Armoury Museum, which does include some swords and ancient guns, but is mostly a timeline of Swedish royal history. Each room highlighted a particular historical era, with stories of the kings and queens displayed on posters.

Artifacts of Royal Life from the 1500s through the 1930s.

The best part for me was the actual clothing worn by the kings and queens of Sweden (and their children) all the way back to the 1500s!

In addition to the fabulous clothing, there were several interesting stories of the lives (and deaths) of the Swedish kings and queens.

First is the macabre tale of Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg who married the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus in 1620. She was always a troubled women, made even more so by the deaths of several of her children. When Gustavus Adolphus was killed in battle in 1620, she ordered that his embalmed body be brought to her and refused to let him be buried for several months. She kept his heart, wrapped in this bloody cloth, with her always.

Maria Eleonora was the mother of Christina, the surviving child of Gustavus Adolphus. Before his death, he ensured that Christina was become heir to his throne, and to prepare her, he had her educated as a male would have been. There is a Greta Garbo film from 1933 in which she portrays Queen Christina. The film is highly fictionalized, but it does show her meeting her future lover dressed as a man…and sure enough, the museum talks about her becoming queen at age 6 and being raised with a man’s education so that she would be prepared to govern, and she really did sometimes dress as a man. She was reported to be a good ruler, but she eventually gave her throne to her cousin, Karl Gustav. I’m sure in the movie, he was portrayed as a dashing handsome young man, but based on the clothing I saw, most of the kings of that era seemed to be short and round. (Being fat indicated that you were wealthy and had enough to eat.)

Then there was the story of the death of Karl XII, who spent his entire life at war. "In the autumn of 1718, he launched his last campaign, against Norway. On November 30th, the king was outside the Fredrikstem fortress. Following a religious service he was inspecting the construction of a trench system that the Swedes intended to use to conquer the fortress. It was wet, muddy, and dark. Visibility was poor. To get a better view, the king dug his feet into the wall of the trench so that he could lift himself up over its edge. Surveying the countryside, a sudden shot hit him in the left temple, and he sank down with his left hand under his chin. And there he lay, motionless. The king was dead. Traces of that fatal moment can still be seen on the king's hat, with an entrance hole in its left side."

Karl XII's hat and wig

A similar fate awaited Gustav III, who took the throne in 1772 in a coup d'état. He wanted to rule as an enlightened despot, and indeed, he made many reforms such as abolishing torture. But his autocratic rule angered even some of his inner circle. Gustav loved the theater and wrote and performed in plays. The museum described his death: "Gustav III's final act played out at the Royal Opera in Stockholm on March 16, 1792. It was Friday evening and a masquerade ball was being held. All of the guests wore masks, and the king also donned a black cloak. Several masked men surrounded the king and shot him in the back. He was injured so severely that he died 13 days later."

Gustav III's final costume.

The Coach Museum in the Royal Armoury

My favorite room in the Royal Armoury Museum was the long hall in the stone walled basement filled with gorgeous, ornate royal coaches and sleighs from Sweden's past. Absolutely astounding!

The Stockholm Palace Changing of the Guard

Next up was the famed Changing of the Guard. I hurried to the courtyard about 45 minutes early, where a huge crowd was already gathered. Once the program started, I could see why everyone was so eager to see it. The entire event took a full 45 minutes and included marching soldiers, mounted soldiers, and a mounted band that played throughout the spectacle. This band has played all over the world. It was all great fun, but after standing on cobblestones for an hour and a half, I was grateful for the chance to sit down for a spicy and delicious goulasch soup at a nearby restaurant.

Waiting in the Palace Courtyard

The Mounted Band

The Treasury (The Crown Jewels of Sweden)

I returned to the palace one last time to see the Royal Treasury, which displays the Crown Jewels of Sweden. Compared to England's crown jewels in the Tower of London, it is a modest display...mostly the various crowns worn in coronations.

Crowns of the Swedish Kings and Queens - and three little crowns for princes.

Items from the Royal Treasury

This iron chest held all the Royal Regalia until 1879.

The Royal Palace

I finished my visit with a walk through the Royal Apartments, which were lovely, although not as ornate as some of the palaces I had recently visited in Germany

The Throne Room

The Silver Throne belongs to the Swedish cultural heritage and is a time-honored symbol of the Swedish monarchy.  It was a gift from Magna Gabriel de la Gardie to Queen Kristina to commemorate her coronation in the Stockholm Cathedral in 1690.  It was made by Abraham Drentwett of Augsburg in Southern Germany.

Gold-leafed doors and ceilings in the Royal Palace

The Three Crowns symbol of Sweden

Hallway in the ceremonial section of the Royal Palace.

Hallway in the Living Quarters of the Royal Palace

Guest Chambers in the Palace

The Council Chamber

A Royal Bedroom

Gustav III died in this bedchamber after his assassination at a masked ball.

Then it was time to hurry back to my hotel past the grand old buildings of new Stockholm and meet my fellow tour mates.

We met in our hotel lobby for introductions (quite a few from California), then our guide, Laurel, led us through the streets and onto the subway to cross the city to a large restaurant that offered a good traditional Swedish meal – 4 different preparations of herring and, of course, Swedish meatballs! It was a fun evening, with lots of lively conversation. This is going to be a fun group to travel with!