Traditional Swedish Odds and Ends

Here are a few Swedish traditions that we've tried out during the past few months. 

In case you don't follow Swedish royalty and missed it, Princess Estelle was born in February.  She is second in line to the throne behind her mother, Crown Princess Victoria.  The country celebrated the birth by eating lots of Princess cake.  We bought some from the corner grocery store and thought it was pretty yummy-- whipped cream and jam between the layers.

Princess Cake

Another traditional food we've tried are Semlor.  They were originally Sweden's Fat Tuesday food, but now are sold from January through Easter.  It is basically a roll spread with an almond flavored jam and a bunch of whipped cream.  It's a bit surprising because the roll is really just a regular roll-- not a doughnut, pastry, or sweet roll like you might expect looking at it.  Semlors got mixed reviews from our family.

Semlor

Another food we've tried and liked-- chocolate bars with black licorice in them.  It sounds like a bad idea, but it tastes really good.




It's funny how some things are just done differently-- In the US a sandwich involves two pieces of bread with stuff in between.  Here people usually eat makas (I may or may not have spelled that right).  One piece of bread (or half a hard roll) topped with ham, cheese, jam, etc.  Orange marmalade and jam is very popular.  You don't put a top on it. And peanut butter? Never.

Our Påskris

And just to prove my mind isn't only on food....

At my friend's house the other day, I saw my first Påskris--a Swedish Easter tree.  It was good I did because it helped me understand all the twigs and feathers for sale at the store. You put a bundle of branches with buds (usually birch) in a vase and decorate it with bright colored feathers.  You can also hang other Easter decorations like eggs, chicks, etc. from the branches.  At the store, you could buy a bundle of plain branches or buy branches with feathers already attached.  I just bought the feathers and a few other decorations and cut some branches out of the overgrown hedge in my yard.  Attaching the feathers was even easier than we expected. Turns out they came with wire already attached for hooking them to the branches.  I'm enjoying having this crazy patch of color in my living room.  I tried to look up the source of the tradition and found a number of ideas-- from brooms for spring cleaning to witches-- so who knows.  I'm also told that on Easter the kids dress up like grandpas and grandmas and go from house to house for treats.  Hopefully some kids will come by our house.

Let's get out of the house! Visiting Kulturen in Lund.

We were excited to have all these cute spring flowers pop up in the yard.

We are all a bit cabin feverish after the winter and wanted to get out and play this weekend.  We've had some decent spring weather off and on. There are flowers blooming all over the yard and we have actually seen quite a bit of sun. Unfortunately, Saturday was a little cold, cloudy and drizzly.  Not really go out and play or bike ride sort of weather-- unless you are Swedish.  (They seem absolutely oblivious to the weather and do whatever activity they want anyway).

More spring flowers under the apple tree

We decided that we'd drive to Lund (a little over an hour away) and see Kulturen-- an open-air museum. It is sort of like a Swedish Greenfield Village.  Over the years, culturally and historically important buildings from throughout southern Sweden have been moved to this museum.  The result is a tour of how people have lived in Sweden throughout time, with everything from the middle ages through 1930 represented. It turned out to be a great activity for a marginal day-- you ducked in and out of buildings never being either inside or outside for too long of a stretch.

The main building had exhibits on the middle ages in Lund.  We were very impressed with the organization and the artistic ways the rooms were arranged. 

Stone carvings

A map on the ceiling showing a flat world with Jerusalem at its center.

Cool sword.

This hall had hundreds of artificats arranged by type-- a cabinet of beads, a cabinet of shoes, etc.  The kids liked that there was a computer.  You could type in the an objects number and read more information on it.

Lots and lots of keys.

We thought it was fun to see that dice haven't changed much in hundreds of years.

 

Shoes

A whetstone at a blacksmith's shop.

Another building had fishing and farming equipment.

Nets and boats

Hay Wagon

Model of a mill

One of my favorite buildings was this 19th century vicarage.



M really liked the round, curvy clocks like the one on the right.



I'm tempted to try and make something like this.

The walls and ceilings of the house were all fairly rough lumber, but then they were painted quite elaboratedly.

The Burghers' house showed examples of middle-class furnishings from the 16th to 20th century.



Stained glass pictures in the window



A snake plate?



There were many different examples of tile fireplaces



 

Beautiful paintings painted on the walls-- I would so love to do this do my house. Trouble is I don't know how to paint!

 

We enjoyed seeing many interesting, old musical instruments.

The gardens and grounds were really pretty-- even in the leafless early spring. 

 

The bell tower of a church. We thought the design was very odd.

 The church was built in 1652 and is still in use.  We saw a sign that said you could reserve it for weddings.  It had all the typical elements of a Swedish church-- organ in the balcony in the back, pulpit on the side, altar in the front-- but it was very small and more roughly made.  In a way that made it more beautiful.  You could imagine a community coming together to build it.

 

A clogmaker's workshop

Check out the sod roof.

On our way back to Kristianstad, we finally stopped and visited Västra Vrams kyrka in Tollarp. We'd admired it from the motorway many times. It makes me think of a gingerbread house. It was built in 1869 so it is relatively new.  :-) The inside is very bright and light.  There were beautiful stain glass windows behind the altar with rainbows and colorful birds.  Unfortunately, the back lighting makes it hard to capture the beauty with a camera (at least for amateurs like us).