Stockholm to Helsinki

~ mhbeard

Tuesday 25 september 2018
now in Helsinki

On our last full day in Stockholm, we went to the Nordic Museum and Skansen, located near the Vasa ship museum. Both give a good illustration of life in Sweden, and the other Nordic countries to a lesser extent. The Nordic is all inside this impressive building:
and the Skansen is a large outdoor area, similar to the Copenhagen Folk Museum but more extensive in some ways.

I liked this drinking fountain at the entrance to the Nordic:
for its juxtaposition of technology, function, and art.

The building’s central hallway is enormous:
and there are many more exhibits than you can take in on a single visit. Here are a few of my favorite things. First, a rocking gander:

and then a lovely place setting for lobster:

and finally a small ceramic piece whose provenance I didn’t get:
 but the colors are nice and the work is fine.

On to Skansen. It’s a combination of folk museum, Nordic animal zoo, cute performance venues, and many restaurants. It’s easy to imagine the hordes of people who come in the summer. But the temperatures started to drop noticeably during our days in Stockholm, and Skansen was almost empty on our visit.

There are some replica shops and working buildings (a little like Sturbridge and other re-created historic villages). I especially liked the iron-monger’s/toolshop, with its wall of drawers containing lots of fixtures:
because it reminded me of Rejuvenation Hardware, Omega Salvage, and Urban Ore. (It also reminded me of choosing knobs and pulls when we renovated our kitchen. Too many choices!)

Again we saw birchbark used to make roofs waterproof a few hundred years ago:
and we also saw a few animals we don’t see every day. Since Skansen houses a collection of Nordic animals, it wasn’t too surprising to see a relative of our own bison:
but we didn’t expect the peacock:

On Tuesday we went to the harbor for another overnight cruise, from Stockholm to Helsinki. The boat was a very big ferry, like the one we took from Copenhagen to Oslo, with two decks of cars below, cabins and suites above, and restaurants and a shopping mall in between. The food was very good and the 17-hour ride, starting with a route between the many islands, was smooth.

Though we did have a beer while watching the Chinese Snooker Championship in the sports bar, we didn’t pay attention to the casino.