Date:7/13/2024-7/24/2024
Destination: Sweden, Denmark
Goal: Coasters and Culture in Sweden and Denmark
Distance: 4286 Miles
Means of Travel: Flight, Train, Ferry, Bus
Potential Credits: 34
Today was my no coasters day to explore Stockholm. The plan for the day was to get all my sightseeing done, which included walking around town and two museums. I would be going back in time and seeing a few different chapters of Swedish history, from simple country living to the grandeur of the dynastic Swedish Empire.
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| Image Description: Iconic Stockholm site of a row of tall, narrow buildings, with the nearest ones being red, orange, and yellow and having curvy Scandinavian gabled roofs. The corner of another building is seen on the right. |
I was awake for 20 hours straight, cut it with 2 hours of sleep, spent 8 hours at an amusement park, and was awoken again at 2 am. How did I not sleep the entire morning away? I was up around 7, light blazing in through the porthole in the ship, so I decided to get dressed and head up above deck for breakfast so I could go right for Old Town.
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| Image Description: A plate of various meats, cheeses, and breads with a muffin sits on a hardwood table. |
I was about 20 minutes early for breakfast, so I hung out in the breakfast room until this nice lady brought out several offerings: a basket full of every kind of bread imaginable, a smorgasbord of charcuterie, pate, and cold cuts, a tube of caviar, cereal, stuff my dad said was indicative of German breakfast.
There was this huge group of French kids staying on the boat, two of them sat down with me. Chit-chatting, I told them in French my mother and her parents are French so we were able to kind of shoot the shit. That morning I used English with my roommate, French with these kids, and Swedish with hostel staff, so that was kind of International Man of Mystery energy switching between languages like that.
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| Image Description: A black and white photo of a sailing vessel called Björkö moored in the water in front of Stockholm. |
The walk from Söder Mälarstrand is always a beautiful way to start the day.
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| Image Description: A brick paved footbridge with a bike path and small red shacks leads to Old Town. Only one construction worker stands on the bridge in the early hours of the morning. |
Not wanting to waste time when there was a whole city to see, I hopped on foot and strolled on over to Old Town.
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| Image Description: Across the water, several blocky European buildings rise out of the streets of Stockholm. Behind them, a church with a brick and tarnished copper steeple rises into the sky. |
I wandered across the little pedestrian bridge into a quiet, calm Stockholm that hadn't fully woken up yet. All I could hear were my thoughts, the occasional boat motor, and the iconic two-toned wail of a European police siren echoing through the narrow streets.
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| Image Description: A narrow European street surrounded by tall, narrow, orange buildings. Tables for outdoor bistros and flowers flank an uphill cobblestone street. |
Early thoosie gets the Stockholm! I was able to get shots like this all morning because all the tourists were sleeping in! Yay for having so many mental health problems that sleep is a luxury I don't get anymore, and then throwing jet lag and a shitty bed on a dirty old boat into the mix as well!
Thought this accessible crosswalk was kind of cool.
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| Image Description: Top left, a red and orange building that are tall and rectangular with curved roofs. Top right, a row of colorful buildings and the corner of another give way to a view of a pink tower with a black clock and spire. At bottom, four tall, rectangular buildings in red, orange, yellow, and beige rise into a blue sky. The red and orange building have ornate, curvy accents on the flat walls of their roof gables. |
Old Town, or Gamla Stan as it's called in Swedish, is exactly that. This is the Stockholm that was built in the era before towering glass and steel skyscrapers, and it's beautiful. A bit more hilly than I expected, but like Paris it's laid out organically and into the terrain. This spot here, outside the Nobel Prize Museum, is probably the most photographed spot in Stockholm.
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| Image Description: Jarrett stands in front of a row of tall colorful buildings in red, green, orange, yellow, and beige amid a few pots of flowers in the streets of Stockholm. |
Obligatory touristy shot.
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| Image Description: A pale orange building with concrete arched windows and columns, with a black and tarnished copper spire. Text on the front reads "SVENSKA AKADEMEN," while a banner by the doors reads "NOBEL PRIZE MUSEUM." |
In case you were wondering about the Nobel Prize Museum, no I did not go in, but it's here. One thing I appreciated about Scandinavia, maybe it's because it's not a religious part of the world, I'm not sure, but not every big, beautiful building on the skyline is a church. You'll see government buildings and museums that are just as grand and awe-inspiring.
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| Image Description: A brick church with green roofs of tarnished copper rises into the sky. |
Cool church but it wasn't open.
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| Image Description: At the top left, a narrow road goes downhill through an alley of colorful buildings. Top right, stairs go down a narrow alley between tow stone walls decorated with iron gates and lamps. At bottom, a shot looking up an uphill street flanked with orange, cream, and one rose-colored buildings. Bikes are parked at a black iron fence to the left. |
I sort of ADHDed my way to the Slussen ferry port. Gamla Stan is a maze, but a maze you want to be totally lost in. Every nook, cranny, and corner of this part of town is gorgeous!
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| Image Description: Down a jetty, a long line of people wait to get on a blue ferry boat. |
With enough exploring under my belt, I made my way to the Djurgarden Ferry to head over to my main thing to do today: Skansen. It's pretty easy to get to, just get off at the ferry, walk past Grona Lund, make a right, and keep going for a bit.
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| Image Description: A red tour boat says "Take A Chance On Me" on the prow in white letters. |
The name of this tour boat made me chuckle.
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| Image Description: Jarrett stands in front of a turnstile gate, with a red neon sign reading "Skansen." |
I waltzed up here and immediately noticed I was the only American here. Skansen seems to attract almost exclusively Swedes.
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| Image Description: A large table-like model of Skansen, showing a miniature hilltop dotted with models of small red buildings. |
Skansen is an outdoor museum, think like a historical village a la Colonial Williamsburg or Ohio Village back in the states. It's a very large hilltop complex made up of relocated buildings from all around Sweden in the pre-industrial period. I learned here that Skansen is actually pretty old, dating back to the late 19th century. It was built as a nationalism thing, a place where people could come see what Swedish-ness is all about. Skansen played a very important role in establishing a national identity for the Swedes.
Fun fact: I'm a huge fan of the Sid Meier's Civilization game franchise. If you play Civilization VI as Sweden, you can actually build outdoor museums in the game!
Built atop a hill, there's stairs from hell or a really cool escalator that takes you past nature scenes of Sweden and Stockolm under the Northern Lights. Yeah, this was a no brainer.
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| Image Description: A small red building with grass growing on the roof sits amid overgrown cobblestone. |
Stepping off that escalator is like stepping back in time. You're on this little overgrown hillside with little red cabin-like buildings with grass growing on the roofs.
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| Image Description: A beautiful cream, black, white, and spotted rooster with a bright red crest and gobbler stands in rocky grass. |
And cock. There was also cock at Skansen.
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| Image Description: A vintage machine shop, with a horizontal mill holding a large drill bit over a slotted workbench table. A hanging red light with a single red bulb provides the only color in the photo. |
Among some of the working buildings they have are a glass blower (which I actually saw on an episode of Anthony Bourdain I watched to prep for this trip), and a machinist shop. Needless to say, I work as a machinist, so this was interesting getting to see how my job was done 100 years ago.
This glass shop was scorching hot but it was cool to see it in action.
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| Image Description: A vista of the island of Djurgården taken from over a gravel plaza. |
The hilltop location also provides some gorgeous views of Stockholm.
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| Image Description: Behind a wheat field fenced in with a wooden palisade with a crow resting on it, a tall red wooden Scandinavian church rises out of the sky. The tower is square in profile, with curvy roofs and a curved dome with windows atop it. |
Here we have a really cool Protestant church. Scandinavia's monarchs ran the show with Protestant as the state religion, to ensure the king had control instead of the Vatican. You were expected to come here, maybe not every Sunday but most, and they would also give out news pertaining to the kingdom here. It was a church but also served the function of a town meeting house in a way.
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| Image Description: A curved vaulted wooden roof painted with ornate religious art and red floral print on the rafters. |
Inside was beautiful, the art gave me Midsommar vibes.
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| Image Description: Atop a grassy hill, several unpainted log cabins are set up. In the foreground, a tall pole adorned with various symbols depicting stars, crossed arrows, villagers, and two hanging wreaths, is covered in brown, dry plant matter. |
Speaking of, I watched that film for the first time upon getting ready to come out here, so this was kind of a fun surprise to see Skansen's Midsommar pole still up. So when do we stuff a toxic coaster enthusiast in a bear pelt and do this shit?
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| Image Description: A log cabin with grass growing on the roof behind a wheat field fenced with a simple wooden palisade. |
This little cottage was absolutely adorable and furnished in a way that romanticized the old Sweden. Maybe things wouldn't have been this pretty in real life, but it sure is pretty here.
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| Image Description: The interior of a cabin, with small windows, wooden furniture, and ornate textiles decorating the walls. |
The museum was not shy in their claim that this was a romanticized portrayal of life in pre-industrial Sweden. Speaking to the man inside (who was incredibly smart and informative, the people here know their shit), he told me that Skansen was started circa 1890s as a nationalism thing to sort of set an example for "what is Swedish?" So it would make sense they went a little Disney World with some of their exhibits, but at the end of the day, these are all real buildings moved from all over Sverige.
Gonna tell my kids this was ABBA.
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| Image Description: Up top, a red two-story home sits in a grassy field, with wooden planks as walkways around the property. On the bottom, a whitewashed wall has a pretty red and blue hexagona nd circle pattern painted on it. The sign reads in Swedish and English, "In this farmstead the walls are decorated with original paintings - please do not touch!" |
Checking this building out, it was beautifully painted with traditional patterns on the walls. The one Americans I saw here all day got totally bitched out for touching original 17th-century paint.
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| Image Description: An old wooden country-styled canopy bed decorated with ornate Scandinavian textiles, the bed is four feet long. |
The Swedes can do a lot of things right. Sleep is not one of them. After sleeping on a piece of plywood with a Maxi Pad over it twice now, I see this shit at Skansen. The bed is 4 feet long, so I ask if people back then were really that short. The guy informs me that old Sweden believed sleeping on your back was bad for you, so they made these horrid contraptions to encourage you to curl up into a ball. That being said, I might have actually taken this bed over the one on the boat.
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| Image Description: A man wearing period clothing stands next to a wooden dinghy on stilts in a boathouse. |
Two men were working on this boat, which would be like the ones used to get around Stockholm's islands in the pre-industrial era.
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| Image Description: Two brown bears look through a chain link fence surrounding their enclosure. |
Skansen is known for its zoo of Nordic animals, and I strolled through, but didn't pay it much time as I would be doing Kolmården the next day and these animals didn't seem terribly active anyway.
Image Description: On the left, a sign reads in English and Swedish, "The reindeers shedding their winter coat and that's why they look so ugly." On the right, a small baby reindeer sits in the door to a stable.
Look. It's a baby reindeer. And it's ugly, apparently.
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| Image Description: A tall five-story hexagonal brick tower, with arched windows and a Swedish flag flying from atop. |
This tower was probably the tallest thing on the property but it couldn't be climbed. The placard said it was a spa built by a doctor before Skansen was on-site.
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| Image Description: A hand holds up a rolled tortilla stuffed with meat, potatoes, cream, and parsley. |
I had other plans besides this for today, so I figured I'd get some lunch and start making my way there. For food, I found this place that sold Swedish game meat, and got this cone stuffed with potatoes, elk, cloudberries, crème fraiche, and parsley. They also gave me a free sample of elk chips with it!
My other plan for today involved a museum where bags are not allowed, so my plan was to lock my camera bag up at Skansen, take just the DSLR with me, and come back to retrieve my bag when I finished up here. However, you needed a mobile number to use the lockers, and like some of the other apps I've tried for this trip, it wouldn't send a verification code to a foreign number. Talking to Skansen staff, they were super cool and just took my bag to customer service with a sticky note on it. This, right here, is the kind of above-and-beyond service culture that makes Scandinavia fucking awesome.
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| Image Description: Jarrett stands in front of a yellow building between two tall men with long blonde hair dressed as Vikings. |
Entering Djurgården and turning right? Relatively peaceful walk to Skansen. Pass Gröna Lund and turn left? This is where Stockholm turns into a tourist trap. Yeah I'm American, yeah I got pictures with Vikings on the street, but some of this stuff seemed like a super commercial way to waste time in a beautiful city.
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| Image Description: A blocky yellow building says "ABBA THE MUSEUM" on the sign, with four large chrome platform boots on the roof. A large line to get in spills out onto the sidewalk. |
Case and point.
I love ABBA, a month before heading out I actually saw Mamma Mia! with my family and got hooked just in time for Sweden. Their music is catchy as all hell and lots of it made it onto the playlist for this trip. That being said, ABBA: The Museum is supposed to be the thing to do in Stockholm, yet I took one look at it and determined it had the makings of a tourist trap. Pricey ticket, museum was maybe the size of my parents' house, and there was always a huge line out into the street every time I passed this thing. So yes, I might get hate for this, but as great as they are, I elected to pass on the platform boots and spandex for today. Nobody needs to see me wear that shit.
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| Image Description: A directional sign has several arrows pointing in different directions. One at the bottom says "Vasamuseet" with a little icon of a sailing ship. It points to a large, blocky, black building. |
This is where I was going!
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| Image Description: A massive warship sits inside a large concrete museum, with rigging strung up three masts. |
The Vasa was a Swedish Empire war ship built by King Gustav Adolphus for trade wars with Denmark, Poland, Russia, and other Baltic Sea powers. This was a huge undertaking, one of the biggest ships in the world at the time and took a hefty portion of the Swedish Empire's GDP to build.
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| Image Description: A diorama shows a large sailing ship listing over in the water, surrounded by four smaller boats. |
However, she never got to see any action, as a design flaw pertaining to weight and balance caused her to sink in a gust of wind just twenty minutes into her maiden voyage.
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| Image Description: Behind crowd barriers, a large bronze cannon with ornate accents sits beside a white sign reading "The exhibit is under reconstruction" in English and Swedish. |
Another engineering lesson on the patio with a cig from Drunk Uncle Jarrett incoming!
So with a boat, the lower the center of gravity is, the more stable it is. You want the center of gravity to be far down from the center of buoyancy. When a ship is blown over, it tips using the center of buoyancy as the fulcrum, this kicks out the CG, and causes gravity to pull downward on the ship, canceling out whatever force is tipping the vessel and righting it.
Vasa's issues were lacking ballast and the two gun decks being too high up. This meant that the heavy bronze cannons weren't low enough to weigh the ship back down when that fateful gust of wind tipped her over, causing her to take on water and just kind of float there on her side. The skeletal remains of the crew were found in the ship, one of them had a crushed legbone because a cannon rolled down the gun deck and smashed his calf.
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| Image Description: A look down Vasa's starboard side, with multiple viewing decks visible looking at the ship. |
In the 1960s, Vasa was found, raised to the surface almost completely intact (Stockholm's water is so cold that nothing decays the wood), and now sits in this massive museum where the craftsmanship can be admired. This place is supposed to be "the thing" to do in Stockholm. I saw the most diverse group here, anyone who's in Stockholm is going to take time to see this, my dad saw this when he was in Sweden for work, and things are offered in several languages. This also had more Americans than Gröna Lund or Skansen.
Due to the low light environment and closed quarters, it's also very difficult to photograph well.
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| Image Description: A glass case containing a wooden model of the Vasa, roughly three feet in length. |
Vasa Museum was also very accessible, they had this tactile model for visually impaired museum guests to touch and get a feel for the shape of the schooner.
Image Description: On the left, an ornate crest shows two nude cherubs flanking a crown surrounded by colorful silks and fruit. On right, a detail shot of Vasa's stern, with ornate carvings of lions, horses, and other period decorations on the ship.
The craftsmanship, not just from a practical standpoint but also an artistic one, is mind-blowing. Much of the original carving is intact on the stern, but the museum has recreated it to show what it would have looked like new.
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| Image Description: In a large concrete building, Jarrett stands on a tilted circular wooden platform, clutching a black metal railing, with a large ship in the background. |
There are multiple crow's nests atop Vasa, this one is a tilted demonstration one overlooking the ship. Yup! That was unnerving enough for me, glad I didn't ever have to climb one of these!
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| Image Description: The stern of Vasa, flanked by several layers of observation deck. |
Pictures don't do it justice. This ship is absolutely massive.
The remains of the crew are also on display here, I took a photo of one skeleton in hopes it would help tell this man's story but have elected not to share it in hindsight. However, for those wanting to know the stories of these men, the museum staff have named all of them with aliases and seemed to know their ages, what state their bodies were found in, and anything indicating their specific means of death. I saw a tour guide going right down the line introducing a tour party to each of them individually.
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| Image Description: A ship made out of Legos is mounted on a rod, allowing it to tip over. |
On the way out, there was some kids exhibit on Lego shipwrecks. The Vasa one has a little steering wheel you can use to tip the boat over.
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| Image Description: A puzzle depicting a cross section of a ship's hull, with four weighted cannon puzzle pieces on the top two levels of the ship. |
Working in industrial balancing myself, I got a kick out of this. They turned the Vasa disaster into a little puzzle to help kids understand exactly what happened to the ship. I was able to balance it with the cannons on the two gun decks (it's almost like I get paid to do this), but a gust of wind still would've gone full RMC and added inversions to this ship.
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| Image Description: Rising from the trees is a large brick and green copper building, with several spires and ornate curved wall edge faces rising out of the Djurgården skyline. |
After swinging through the gift shop for a keychain and little Vasa model for my shelf of landmarks, I headed out and couldn't help but notice the big beautiful museum across the street, which I had seen from uphill at Skansen.
Image Description: On the left, a cone-shaped dwelling has sticks propped against a cone of sod growing grass. On the right, the interior shows a grassy ground with reindeer pelts laid out as carpeting under wooden stick walls.
Speaking of, there were a few things I still wanted to see at Skansen, so I made my way back over there. Something I'd noticed but not stopped to see were these really cool Sami dwellings. The Sami, indigeonous people of Northern Scandinavia that can now be found in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, were nomadic and lived off of reindeer much in the way the First Nations of North America's plains used bison.
Image Description: On the left, a pyramid-shaped structure made of logs has a small glass window, door, chimney, and colorful flag of red, green, blue, and yellow. On the right, the interior shows wood-planked walls and basic furnishings surrounding a cast-iron stove. Against the wall sits a small blue bed.
Nowadays, the Sami have adapted these dwellings into a sort of small camping cottage, think something you may see at KOA here in the States. The guide told me that you might go up for a weekend in the winter to visit your Sami uncle in one of these, which honestly sounds appealing. She also told me that the flag is the ethnic flag of the Sami people, and they are starting to speak up and make the rights they demand heard by the Swedish government. I was told life is currently getting better for the indigenous people of Sweden.
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| Image Description: An ornate stilted tower covered in red shingles with a pointed red dome at the top. Black and yellow panels and green posts decorate the structure. |
Most of Skansen's buildings were just little cottages, but you'd see a few tall towers here and there. Looking around, these were mostly belltowers, and you could not climb any of them.
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| Image Description: A small red windmill in a grassy field. |
Moulin Rouge! For those of you who want to see the one in Paris without a bunch of naked women shaking their ninnies and turkums in your face!
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| Image Description: An unpainted wooden windmill on a post atop a wooden shed. |
And another windmill, though this one looked more complicated. I think it was pivoted to turn into the wind.
Image Description: Two shots of the same red bell tower, covered entirely in red shingles with a pointed roof and weather vane atop the structure. Black arch-shaped window covers are seen around the top level of the belfry.
This bell tower is visible from off the Djurgården island and is probably the most recognizable structure here at Skansen. The card said that it was donated by a church that had burned down. You can't climb it, but it's huge and beautiful.
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| Image Description: Jarrett stands in front of a small prop lighthouse. |
On the way out, I took the stairs down the hill past a level with a few kiddie rides and the Baltic Sea Science Center. I popped in, but honestly, it wasn't any cooler than the stuff at the St. Augustine Lighthouse. No artifacts here, mostly just science demonstrations, so I just kind of took a stroll through.
After this, my phone was dying, and I had seen all I wanted to, so I hopped on the ferry back to Söder Mälarstrand to shower (I was also pretty gross, Skansen involves enough walking to blister my foot), charge my devices, call home, and figure out dinner.
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| Image Description: Jarrett stands on a brickwork sidewalk next to a retaining wall, wearing a purple Hawaiian shirt and black-framed glasses. In the background, the bell tower of Stockholm City Hall is visible. |
I ventured out into the streets of Stockholm rocking one of my iconic Hawaiian shirts, shorts, and my hiking sandals (didn't want to dirty up another pair of socks as I didn't pack many)...and it rained. I really looked like a dumbass tourist getting pissed on like this, the one time I leave my umbrella at the hostel!
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| Image Description: A restaurant bartop decorated with Old Norse wood carvings, a stained glass window depicting a Viking longship hangs over the bar with drinking glasses hanging below it. |
I was looking for inexpensive places to get Swedish food, and what better than Viking Bar in the non-tourist part of Stockholm?
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| Image Description: A plate of food containing two rolls, a flat slice of bread, and white pickled cabbage sits on a table with a beer. |
Not sure if the bartender liked Americans, she was a bit short with me but had no problem talking to other patrons in English, but it was whatever. They had this really good salad bar, normally not a salad bar but it had unlimited Swedish bread basket and this pickled stuff I learned was a Swedish thing called pizza salad.
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| Image Description: A plate with a Viking ship insignia holds seven meatballs, mashed potatoes, gravy, and a small dipping cup of lingonberries, garnished with parsley. A beer sits in the photo. |
Köttebullar, or Swedish Meatballs, are probably the most iconic food item to this nation, so naturally I had to try it out. You might have had this dish in a frozen meal or at IKEA in the States, and it's usually pretty good there, but this is the proper way to eat them. The meatballs are dense and well-done, the gravy tastes like this creamy red currant gravy my family makes at Thanksgiving, and the lingonberries aren't as gelatinous here as they are at Ikea. Wonderful meal, not terribly expensive either.
After dinner, I walked through the rain back to the boat, made a stop at the grocery store to get some snacks and some of this squeeze cheese stuff for my mom and dad that they like in Sweden (I made a total ass of myself as the dumb American wearing palm trees and sandals in the cold Swedish rain thinking it came with a shopping bag). But I got back, had some of the chocolate I bought, and packed it in.
Tomorrow was time to leave Stockholm for leg two of the trip!
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| Image Description: A tall wood and steel truss-supported wooden roller coaster on a piney cliff. A train goes down the drop. |
UP NEXT: I liked Sweden's people, their food, their culture, and their parks, let's see if I like their coasters! I take a train to Kolmården Wildlife Park for the last RMC Topper Track coaster I've not ridden! We take you inside and outside this incredible wooden coaster at one of the world's premier zoos.
