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| 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).
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| 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.
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| Stone carvings |
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| A map on the ceiling showing a flat world with Jerusalem at its center. |
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| Cool sword. |
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| 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. |
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| Lots and lots of keys. |
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| We thought it was fun to see that dice haven't changed much in hundreds of years. |
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Shoes
A whetstone at a blacksmith's shop.
Another building had fishing and farming equipment.
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| Nets and boats |
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| Hay Wagon |
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| Model of a mill |
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| One of my favorite buildings was this 19th century vicarage. |
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| 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.
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| Stained glass pictures in the window |
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| A snake plate? |
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| There were many different examples of tile fireplaces |
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| 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! |
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| We enjoyed seeing many interesting, old musical instruments. |
The gardens and grounds were really pretty-- even in the leafless early spring.
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| 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.
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| A clogmaker's workshop |
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| 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).
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