Wow, what a day. I would say we were up with the sun but the sun comes up at 3 am so…
We hopped on a boat this morning and took a two hour trip through the archipelago to Birka- a viking settlement that was abandoned over 1000 years ago.

The city just looks like a field of grass, but bits of the low wall around it and the protective fortress are still visible, as are all of the couple thousand burial mounds. We ate a quick lunch at the island’s restaurant (a delicious genuine Swedish smorgasbord) before we were taken on a guided tour of the island.
And now prepare for a history lesson.
Vikings didn’t have horned helmets- they were made up in the 1800’s to make them look fiercer.
A viking is actually a job title. Vikings were about 1% of the people and they were the ones responsible for raiding/pillaging.
The vikings wouldn’t go to battle if they weren’t positive they could win. Instead, they would trade with them.
Vikings discovered Greenland, Iceland, and Newfoundland during their era (750-1100 AD).
They believed hair held all your power, so everyone had their own special comb.
When they died, their bodies were burned in a boat (with their combs, jewelry, and knife) then covered in stones, and finally buried in dirt, which becomes a burial mound.
Vikings are awesome.

The bumps are the walls of the fortress

Burial mounds

Unfortunately, it rained again today, although there was no thunder and lightning like yesterday. Fortunately, we don’t melt in the rain. After the tour finished at the very top of the island, we ignored the path back down and mountain goat-ed our way down the other side of the island. It was so cool to stand at the top of an island in the middle of a viking fortress and look out over the archipelago. Really beautiful and inspiring.

After clambering our way down, we went over to the small reconstruction of Birka and wandered around. The houses are pre-medieval and therefore extremely un-waterproofed. They also had giant fire pits in the middle of keep everyone warm during the freezing winters. Stockholm is at nearly the same latitude as Anchorage, actually. And Amsterdam is the same as Portland. I thought that was really interesting.

Interesting artwork beside one of the buildings

Dad wandered out onto the ricketiest looking dock I’ve ever seen-

There was an opportunity to cook bread over an open fire, but we didn’t want to stand around and wait our turn in the pouring rain and went to check out the museum.

Model of what part of Birka could have looked like during early spring

Typical cargo ship

All in all an amazing day. Michael made countless Skyrim references and I filled up a memory card.

Strangely, it was on the way back to Stockholm that is really struck me that we were in Sweden. I was sitting at the back of the boat, watching out the huge windows when a little sailboat came through our wake with a Swedish flag flapping behind it.

You can see the boat in the righthand corner, because I was too busy going “Oh. I’m in Sweden” to take a good picture. But that was the glorious view behind the boat, not that you can really tell because of the lighting. Whoops.

We’re not sure what we’re doing tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Also today was cloudy and we there was a chance we had meatballs. He he.