Sweden 2010 - going home

It is Tuesday 29th June and we are on the road again. After a very enjoyable long weekend spent with our friends, we are driving south, back into Sweden, to Gothenburg, to catch a midnight ferry to Denmark.

We have a few hours to spare before the ferry is due, so we drive to the coast, a place we visited in the past.

We like this part of Sweden, the coast here is very unique, and this was our first sight of Sweden many years ago.

We sit on the rocks and watch the sun go down.

We arrive in Denmark in early hours and drive south, the reverse journey, for the evening ferry to England.

We are back in England at lunchtime on Thursday 1st July, and hope that the few hours we will be driving home, is not too bad as far as the traffic goes.

When we hit a bottleneck and come to stand still on A303, we know that we are home!

Norway 2010

After a hot days drive at last we arrive at our friends house, just outside the town of Gran, north of Oslo. We have been here before, but it is some time ago.
It is good to see them both. We sit in their garden with a cold drink, heaven!

We are here for couple of days only, but time enough to catch up on news of families and friends.

They married about the same time as we did, 40 years ago, and now we all are grandparents.

There is also time for a little sight seeing of the local area. Norway is full of Norse history.

Sweden 2010 - Midsummer

The Midsummer is celebrated all over Sweden, but specially in Dalarna, where they still keep a lot of their traditions. Every village and town has their own celebrations and we know from our past visit here that that is an experience not to be missed. The celebrations usually start by raising the maypole, decorated with birch twigs and wild flowers. Then people, dressed in national costumes and to the sound of folk music, walk or ride on a horseback or in trailers drawn by horses (or tractors) to a special place.
It is Friday 25th June, Midsummer Eve here in Rattvik. We have been told by the local Information Centre where the procession meets at 5pm and that it will then walk through the town to Rattvik Gammelgarden (see last post), where the singing and dancing would continue.
The whole week leading up to it the weather was absolutely fantastic and today started the same way. But by midday the sky opened and it just has not stopped raining all afternoon.
But at 5pm, as if someone up there had a stopwatch, the rain stopped.

Some of the pictures from the start of the procession:

Please have your sound on for this one:

Tomorrow the Swedish people will celebrate Midsummer day with a special food and drink.

But for us it is back to our cottage to pack and early start in the morning, to drive to Norway, to visit an old friend of my husband, from his younger days. Some 40 year ago he married a Norwegian lady and they settled in Norway.

Sweden 2010 - shopping

There are many wonderful things one can buy in Sweden, be it glass, wooden objects, textiles...Scandinavian design is well known. Our house is full on reminders of previous trips.

Did I buy some goodies this time? Oh, yes!

I love table linen and I do use it a lot at home.

In this wonderful shop in Rattvik I bought cotton fabric, enough to make a quilt.

And in this lovely shop in Leksand I bought Swedish linen thread.
I have not used or seen it before, but I just had to buy it, just look at the colours, they are like sweeties!

If any of you have any experience using a linen thread, I would be grateful for your opinion.

Sweden 2010 - some of the places we visited 2)

From our cottage we walked across the town of Rattvik to the other side, to  "Gammelgarden" ( the Old Farmstead), a village of old wooden houses brought here from other parts of the area in 1920's.

This type of historical villages can be seen all over Scandinavia. It is a good way of preserving and looking after the old wooden houses.

Our Swedish friends drove up from their home further south to spend a weekend with us. It was good to catch up. We met them ( or rather our children met theirs in the camp site playground during our first visit to Sweden) some 30 years ago.
Over the years we have become good friends, visiting each other homes, and watching our families grow up. And now we are grandparents.
We spent a long weekend together, exploring the countryside, chatting, shopping....

Sweden 2010 - some of the places we visited 1)

It would had been very easy just to sit and admire the scenery around us. But we know that Dalarna is full of wonderful places to explore and some of them we visited on our previous trips.




There is one place we decided to visit again, and that is the home of artist Carl Larsson and his wife Karin, in Sundborne near Falun, to the east of the lake Siljan.




Carl Larsson's pictures are well known, we have had some of his prints on our walls very long time.
But Karin was also very talented, mainly in textiles, embroidery and design, but like so many women of that time, she lived in her husband's shadow. It is even suggested that had she lived today, she would be more celebrated then her husband. I was interested to see some of her embroidered table linen and asked our guide if she knows what stitches they are, because I could not recognise them. Karin used to make up her own stitches as she went along.

This is the house they  lived in since 1888, and they had their 8 children here. I wanted to come here again, because I just love the house and I wish I could show you the inside, but photographs inside are not allowed, so I can only show you the house from the outside. Many of the Carl Larsson's paintings are of the life in the house, so if you know any of his work, you can use your imagination.

To the west of lake Siljan, in Mora, is the home of another well known Swedish artist, Anders Zorn and his wife, they lived here since 1896. Zorn was well travelled, he also spent some of his time in America. The house is very interesting inside, but yet again, no photographs. The picture on the right of the house is Zorn's studio.

On the north side of the lake is a village called Nusnas. It was here where in 1928 two brothers, Nils and Jannes Olsson started carving and painting wooden horses. Since then the wooden horse has become a symbol of Dalarna.
The horses are still made here. You can visit the factory and of course, very large tourist shop.
The horses are still hand carved and still decorated by hand. They are made in many sizes, and have become a sought after souvenir.
Of course I have bought some for my grandchildren, but gave it to them as soon as we got back, so I can't show you here.