Stockholm

Welcome to Stockholm, Liz and I  arrived in Stockholm around noon and proceeded to prepare to for our first day in Sweden. After getting settled in at our hotel we went to find lunch. After Lunch we moved on to got see the town hall of Stockholm. The picture above was taking on the final day in Stockholm but of the town hall from across the lake. We made it to the town hall just in time to make it for the last tour of the building, while we were wait we got to take so pictures of the courtyard and lake.

The town hall may look fairly old but it actually was finished in 1923, the town hall was built to look similar to old buildings in Europe, while also using symbols from Turkey, Russia, and Europe as a whole. They wanted it to blend in with some of the buildings on the old island. 

Now for the tour we started off with the room that is probably the reason why this building looks familiar to you, the Blue hall. 

The Blue hall is where the Nobel piece prize ceremony is. The stairwell above is where the award winners walk down to where the rest of the people our sitting. 

This is where the organ for the hall is located. It is actually played via an organ in a separate location and then the notes are sent here. This causes a slight delay between when the person actually playing the organ and when the sounds come out. 

From the Blue hall our tour moved on to the city council room. 

The city council is interesting because it is setup so that the left wing politicians sit on the left from the view of the people looking in and the same but on the right for the right wing politicians. This is different from most places because they have their politicians based on looking at outwards. 

The second thing that is interesting about this room is the celling. As I said this building was finished in 1923 so the celling here looks kind of out of place for that time period. The celling was built to look like an old Viking long house. You can see that the top is blue and there is supposed to be clouds as if you were looking at the sky. Then they colored the beams to look like they are wooden as well. This goes along with the theme of the entire building make it look like its as old as you possibly can. 

The final stop after moving through some rooms that for the most part were both unimportant and unmemorable, there may be some pictures later in the miscellianous section at the end for here. To finish up the inside of the town hall we stopped in what's called the gold hall.

This room is plated with basically pure gold. And the art on the wall lays out the history of Sweden. its a very interesting room because they actually miscalculated the size of the room. The government of Stockholm wanted the entire building done and ready to use in less time than was needed so the builders had to cut some corners and one of those was proper measurements. They didn't add in the fact that they were going to have a ring around the bottom of the room which shaved off enough space so that they didn't have the space to finish all of the planed art work. So they just left the art either cut off or unfinished in places. 

And from the Gold hall we finished up the tour, I thought that this building was really cool and a great way to start our time in Stockholm. 

I'm going to go a bit out of chronological order here, as we move outside. I think that this is how I'm going to go through things for the rest of the trip in Stockholm because we doubled up a on a few different places. 

So outside on day two Liz and I went on a walking tour of the city, and our first stop was the Town hall. Our tour guide took us to see this tomb

This is right outside of the town hall, and can be seen in a few of the pictures of the town hall from a far if you look hard enough. Anyways this tomb was built with the intention of hold Biriger Jarl, the man who is given credit with founding the city of Stockholm. According to legend he founded the city on what now called the old island, the city was on an important trade route. It could control trade from the mainland attempting to leave the lake and inner rivers towards the Baltic sea. It is also strategically located as whoever was in control was basically in control of everyone in the area. The city was formed by Biriger Jarl, with the help of Some German merchants (this goes to further my opinion that the Viking were more than just crazed raiders. I firmly believe that they were some of the most important people for the further development of trade on an international level. They setup trade routes from the New world all the way to quite possibly Arabia. With that said yes they were going around northern Europe raiding, pillaging, and killing most anyone in there way. But they did setup at least three of the most powerful nations of there time, in Russia, Sweden, and England.) alright sorry for the rant but yeah this dude was never actually moved to this tomb so the tomb is empty and basically a symbol at this point.

  On our way back we stopped at a bunch of churches, to give you an idea, it was maybe a two mile walk from the town hall to our hotel and we saw three large churches just on the walk back alone unfortunately the churches weren't very keen on me taking pictures inside of them so I don't have any pictures (which sucks because I love the inside of churches in Europe they are beautiful).

For the rest of the trip I'm going to go one island at a time, mainly because the last day that I was there, day four, I spent walking around to all of the island taking a bunch of pictures so its best if I go island by island and then finish with the Hockey game and then some miscellaneous pictures.

So will start on Riddarholmen which is a small island that is technically apart of Gamlastan or the old town. This island was original the island of monks, it was where during the pre-protestant days of Sweden where a group of catholic monks lived. Now a days it is home to the Riddarholm Church

 This church is no longer a functioning church as it now solely the burial church for the royal families of Sweden. I say families because it house at least three different families. It houses every monarch starting with Gustavus Adolphus till the last king who died in 1950. The only exception would be Queen Christina who is an incredibly interesting story. Her Father Gustavus II Adolphus other wise known as Gustavus Adolphus the Great, he is known as the Great because of his military exploits during the thirty years. The thirty years war for those that don't know are the title that has been given to the conflicts between Protestants specifically in Northern Germany, Sweden, and Catholic France (France Hated the Austrians so anyway to screw them over), against the Catholics in Austria, and Southern Europe. For the longest time the Northern Germans were being beaten fairly handlely by the Austrian forces until some random dude from Sweden which at the time was seen as a backwater country, came in and basically won the war for the Protestants by himself. He transformed Sweden into a global superpower, mainly with the tactics that he used, but he revolutionized how Europeans fought battles. Some historians call him the Father of modernwarfare, now I'm not a military tactician or a military tactical historian so I'm not sure of the exact details as to what he did. That said I know he changed the way that Artillery was used as well as how to properly combine the use of infantry and Cavalry along side of the Artillery. Now he died in Battle during the war in Saxony (which is the region to the south of Berlin) and his only remaining heir was his Daughter Christina. Now Christina is interesting because while her father revolutionized the way that warfare was fought she was influential in growing Sweden into a superpower via domestic, and governmental means. She was known for her intellect and her rejection of social norms of the time, she refused to marry, and never had children. She took the throne at the age of 6 and ruled Sweden during the middle section of its golden age, and continued the success that the country was having for the next 20 years or so. Until one day well probably not one day, this probably had been brewing in her mind for along time, anyways one night she snuck out of the castle dressed as a commoner and made her way south. All the way south to Rome where she took refuge with the Pope renouncing Protestantism and rejoining the catholic faith. So the daughter of the Gustavus Adolphus the man who had fought for the protestants during the Thirty years war. Who was the man who brought Protestantism to Sweden, his daughter would go on to rejoin the Catholic faith. To further her legacy as a rebel and a strong female figure from this time, she is one of the few women to be buried at in the Vatican Crips at St. Pauls. So she did all that and lead the most powerful country in Europe for a little over 20 years most of those years she was still considered a minor by todays standards.

Sadly the Riddarholm Church wasn't open to the public in the winter, for whatever reason.

Although on my last day I was able to get a bunch of pictures of the random political buildings on the island.

These are all different court buildings, they are apart of the court of appeals. 

Now that Riddarholm is done I will be moving on to Gamalstan which is the main island and the called the old town. 

Over in the old town the first building that I got to see after getting off of the Riddarholm was the House of Nobility.

The house of nobility is exactly what you would think that it would be with that name it was the building where the house of nobility for the Swedish parliament use to be when that was a thing still. Now it is a place where records for former noble families. Outside of the building is a Gustav Vasa statue.

Gustav was the first King in Sweden after the collapse of the Kalmar Union. The Kalmar union to keep things moderately short, was the joining of Sweden, Norway and Denmark under one crown, which happened in the late 14th century. It lasted until 1523 in Sweden and much longer in Denmark and Norway. But the ascension of Gustav Vasa after the end of the Swedish liberation way against Christian of Denmark was more of less the down fall of Denmark and the Kalmar union. Gustav Vasa kind of became king by showing up. Most of the nobility in Sweden were slaughter by Christian (it was a war so of course he was going to kill the rebelling lords), and a minor lord named Gustav Vasa who wasn't in Sweden at that time just kind of walked into Stockholm and crowned himself king. Most people in Sweden see him as a pretty good ruler, and remember him fondly.

There are three churches on the island, the first one is the old German Church. If you remember the city was helped get off the ground by some German merchants so of course they made a church.

  The next two churches are the Cathedral of Stockholm, and the finish church.

The Cathedral.

Now for the Nobel Museum, which was very boring and I felt like it was just a bunch of rich people congratulating themselves on doing things. Now I will admit that some of what they have done has been really good for humanity but it really didn't have much and wasn't my cup of tea. 

Okay now I want to turn away from places and tourist things and talk about how amazing the meatballs are. I don't think I can put word to how amazing it was that I could eat Swedish meatballs for lunch and dinner everyday honestly it may have been the best part of Stockholm. If you think that Swedish meatballs that you can get in America are good, you know nothing the sauce is perfect the meatballs are to die for. The only thing that I can say negative about them is that for the most part they never served enough, I could have eaten like 3 or four of the serving that were given. So to finish off Swedish Meatballs is the best type of food that I have had so far in Europe.

The next place that I'm going to go to is the medieval museum, which Liz and I both agreed was probably the best museum in Stockholm. It was a walk through the history of Stockholm, and specifically the history of the city in the medieval era. I don't have any pictures from the inside but it was one of the most well done museum with the most information compared to almost all of the other museum that we had been to. Think of it like a walk through medieval Stockholm, with as accurate as possible representations of city as possible all things considered. 

 Now we move onto the Vasa Museum which is the Museum with the huge ship. It also goes into the history of the time period that the ship was launched and sunk.

Because my mom has made it clear that I should take pictures of myself while I'm over here, here is one picture from the Vasa Museum. It is poor quality do to the lighting and the shaky hand. 

Anyways the ship the Vasa named after the Vasa family, is one of the most intact ships from this era in Swedish history. It was a 64 gun Warship that made its maiden Voyage in 1628, sinking less than a mile out of the dock on that voyage. The ship had a lack of balance a tilted to an extreme towards the left side. A slight wind was all that was need to sink the ship.

Here is a recreation of the ship may have looked like before its launch. The ship now of course has lost its color and its mast, but after being recovered in 1961 the people of the museum worked tirelessly to preserve the ship. The thing that Liz and I found most strange about the ship and how it was preserved, was that they use what is basically nail polish remover as the main chemical to preserve the ship. From there they moved the ship to Museum where it rests today. 

I'm not a naval historian or an expert by an means so I'm not sure exactly what this ship would have been used for but I can assume that it would have been a flagship used to protect Swedish assets along the Baltic sea.

The ship itself was a sight to see, It was incredibly interesting, and beautiful to see a ship that had so much work done to make sure that it sailed, and protected the seas.  

Liz and I did go to one other museum, but it was so boring and irrelevant that I don't even remember what is was, or where it was. All I know that we both agreed that it was underwhelming, and didn't offer much.

The final thing before I post the Miscellaneous picture I wanted to say the Hockey game that we went to between Frolunda HC and Djugarden HC was super cool. Here is a taste of how into the games the fans were

 

And the highlight of the game was seeing future 1st overall draft pick and fingers crossed D partner of Erik Karlsson Rasmus Dahlin 

I will say that you can definitely tell he was 17 at the time, he is long and lanky, but lacks size and strength. That said he is a smooth skater who doesn't seem to miss a stride and honestly watching him skate was an experience in itself. He also seems to have very good puck skills, and passing skills which should translate well to the NHL. Anyways this game was much better than the game is Finland it was closer and the quality of play was high. I feel like I should also say the Henrik Lundqvists twin Brother Joel plays for Frolunda as well which was interesting. 

Some weaponry that was found in the Vasa wreckage, the cannons and the cannon balls. 

This Adolf Fredrik Church which was right outside of our hotel, this church was actually where Rene Descarte was originally buried. 

Here is the Dam where the lake becomes the sea. 

Gustavas Adolphos the second 

Karl XIV Johan, the first Bernadotte, he was the French general who Napoleon sent to Sweden at the request of the Swedish government to become king. Napoleon sent him there because it is reported that they had, had a falling out and he wanted to exile Jean his name at the time to the frozen waste land that Napoleon thought Sweden was. Karl's family is still the ruling family of Sweden and Napoleon's dynasty fell three different times, twice with him under the helm and a third with his nephew, so who really came out on top here. 

 Lars Johan Hierta, and I like him for more than just his name, he is considered the father of the freedom of the press in Sweden. He was a newspaper publisher, and a politician.

This is a view of the lake from Riddarholm.

The Swedish Parilament building 

Here are a few random statues that I couldn't find any information on what they were.

I'm sorry this took me so long to get out but I'm done with classes for the Quarter so I should have the next post out very soon. That will be on royal palace, then I will move on to a brief look at Amsterdam which will finish finally the trip that Liz and I took.