Bad Engineering Sometimes Equals the Best Museum
July 11th, 2016
We heard the weather was going to be stormy so we got an early start to our day and we headed to the Skansen open air museum and zoo. The entire place it made up of old homes and buildings from all over Sweden and was made to show the way of life here before the industrial revolution. The zoo houses Nordic animals and we got to see reindeer, moose, and a wolverine, among all the other animals here.
A seal saying hello!
We went through a schoolhouse, where the teachers used to live and teach in one of the rooms. Many of the old buildings in the "town village" we're set up to function like they used to so we were able to see glass blowing and visit a blacksmith. Of course we also stopped in the bakery and after all the smells had to buy a couple treats. Swedes really seem to enjoy cinnamon rolls, and we appreciated this.
One of the neat (and old) buildings at Skansen
Next, we went to the Vasa museum. The museum is built entirely around the Vasa ship which sank during it's maiden voyage. It is the only 17th century preserved ship and 98% of it is still original. After sinking, it stayed in the sea for 333 years before it was found again and they figured out how to move it.
The Vasa is a huge ship, even by today's standards!
We learned about everything from how they moved it from the water, to how they soaked it in polyethenel glycol to keep it from drying out and decaying, to the skeletons they found with the ship-some with clothes and hair still intact! Seeing how ships look today, it's baffling why they thought this was a good design, but that's hindsight for ya! It was a ton of information to take in and a lot to write about, but we followed the podcast from their website and the site is very detailed. So, if you're bored (or Uncle Phil) and want to learn everything we learned, feel free: http://www.vasamuseet.se/en/visit/audioguide :)
What a beautifully ornate ship.
Things of note about the preservation and what they've learned. They sprayed the Vasa with PEG several times and one of the side-effects was that the PEG spread the iron, from the bolts, throughout the wood which in turn further corroded the wood. They're currently in the process of replacing the bolts with stainless steel to help stop corrosion.
It was amazing to compare Stockholm's underground with St. Petersburg.
After a long day of museums, we visited what they describe as the world's longest art gallery, the Stockholm subway system of course! Many of the stations and stops are decorated or painted by over 150 artists. It was fun to compare this to the insanely elaborate train stations in St. Petersburg. Each station was entirely unique and told a different story. It would be fun if Chicago tried to make our subway stations more appealing with art.
For our final dinner here, we went to Cafe Tranan, our first more traditional Swedish meal here! We finally had meatballs with lingonberries (which was completely soaked in butter and amazing) and steak tartare with truffle (yum!).
