Cruising briefly across Sweden

We’ve never spent this much time in Sweden before, and we’ve enjoyed ourselves enormously.

In Uppsala, for instance, we devoted much of our attention to the cathedral, the largest Gothic structure in Scandinavia.  It’s the burial place of such notables as King Gustavus Vasa, the great botanist Carl Linnaeus, the Nobel laureate Nathan Söderblom, and the remarkable scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg.

After — of all things — dinner in a Greek restaurant near the cathedral, we drove out to Gamla Uppsala (“Old Uppsala”), the original site of the city.  There, we saw the parish church that represents all that is left of the original cathedral.  Interestingly, right beside the church is a line of large royal pagan burial mounds.  Gamla Uppsala was apparently the site of a major pre-Christian temple, as well as of at least one royal feasting hall or mead hall, much like that of Theoden King and the Riders of Rohan in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, or the one depicted in Beowulf.  And that’s not altogether surprising:  Uppsala is mentioned in Beowulf.

Driving from Uppsala to Göteborg, we stopped off to take a look at the limestone quarry near Österplana, in Västergötland, where scientists found the “extinct meteorite” that I mentioned here recently.  And, while doing so, naturally, we wandered into a number of small medieval churches that dot the area around the microvillages of Österplana, Medelplana, and Västerplana.  Husaby, for instance, marks the place where the first Christian king of Sweden, Olof Skötkonung, was baptized by the British missionary St. Sigfrid around AD 1008.

So many interesting subjects to learn about, so little time.

I sometimes hear people say that immortal life would be boring.  When I hear that statement, I wonder if we’re members of the same species.

Posted from Göteborg, Sweden