Tag Archives: Stockholm Sweden

Jun22

A Viking dinner at Aifur

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A Viking dinner at Aifur

Thursday, 30-May-2024


While wandering around Gamla Stan, the old-city part of Stockholm, one comes across quite a few tourist destinations. Souvenir shops, tours, events, everything is calling your name (primarily your wallet). I avoided most of them, as a general rule – stopping into some shops to buy interesting postcards, or into a particularly appealing looking cafe when hunger starts gnawing at me.

I have an interesting relationship with Tourist Restaurants. On the one hand, I don’t like “tourist” things… in general, I prefer seeing a bit more of the truly native experience of a city. That being said, I also want to experience the traditional culture of a city. And, as I learned in Greenland, most “native” restaurants don’t really serve traditional food, since people would normally just cook that for themselves at home.

Connected to that… I am, at the end of the day, a tourist. I am touring. Sometimes the best way to see the traditional culture of a place is, simply, to be a tourist.


Aifur is an example of me diving into my role as a tourist head-first, full power.

It’s a tourist destination, no two ways about it. In the center of Gamla Stan, with big signs hawking a “Viking Experience”, and a wait-list at least a day long, it’s absolutely targeted toward people who don’t live in Stockholm.



And you know what? That’s great, and I had a blast!

I was announced as a I walked in, and sat at a table with two whole people who spoke English, out of maybe 8 or 10 total. We communicated out best, shared a bottle of mead, and took silly pictures with a Viking helmet, sword, and axe. I ate Pike, which I don’t think I’ve ever had, and devoured a glorious berry tart. I learned the correct way to pronounce “Wieliczka”, a place I’ll be visiting in Poland, and failed miserably at pronouncing many other Polish words.

It was ridiculous, silly, delicious, and fun. In my mind, a good tourist experience!

Jun21

The Nordiska Museet of Stockholm

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Tuesday, 28-May-2024


I’d first seen the Nordiska Museet after wandering around near the Vasa Museum – It’s a staggeringly beautiful building on the Djurgården island, though unfortunately it did close a bit early in the day… which meant I couldn’t do a double-header of both the Vasa and the Nordiska.

But hey – that meant I had a mission to go back to, now didn’t it? I do love quests and missions, so… I won’t complain.


Heading in on Tuesday after the National Gallery worked perfectly – I was trying to rest my poor walking muscles a bit, and so decided to take one of the electric scooters, which left me more than energetic enough to dive into the museum itself. I did grab a quick cup of coffee first, along with some glorious chocolates, to fortify myself… but that’s just good tactics, right?

The museum itself was… not quite what I was expecting. Not in a bad way, though!

You see, I was expecting something like a natural history museum, or a history museum. Something describing the geology of Sweden, or perhaps the history of human settlement? But instead, I got something similar, but at the same time more direct and grounded – The Nordiska Museet of Stockholm discussed the culture of Sweden, and how it evolved over time.

There’s overlaps with a history museum, to be sure, but it was a really interesting shift that I can’t say I’ve ever really seen before. It’s subtle, but the exhibits were focused on discussing the people of Sweden, instead of the events, which lent it a far more human feeling than the almost sterile “this happened, then that happened” nature of many other exhibits.

Neither is bad, by any stretch of the imagination! Knowing the raw details is key, but hearing the stories of individuals, and how one person may have lived their life during each of the archetypical ages of Swedish Culture… it struck. It hit hard, in some cases, and I’ll freely admit that I teared up at some of the descriptions of people. Two specific stories come to mind; one of a couple from a woodmill town, who met after moving to the new urban world (from the smaller farming and fishing villages), and raised a family in spite of the challenges – and the story of a woman fleeing from World War 2 named Selma, who fled Estonia leaving her mother behind trying to build a safer life for her son in Sweden.

It’s an interesting bend to the traditional museum, and not at all what I expected from the soaring gothic-style building the exhibits were housed in.

While it was unexpected, it was not unappreciated. It hit close to home, and I’ll absolutely be thankful for this interested and unexpected glimpse into life across the ages.

Jun21

Nationalmuseum – the Stockholm National Gallery

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Nationalmuseum – the Stockholm National Gallery

Tuesday, 28-May-2024



I’d wandered by the Nationalmuseum (yep, all one word) on Monday, sadly finding it to be locked and barred. Little did they know that I was a time-traveler, though, and mere “opening hours” couldn’t keep my peepers from paintings! I quickly sprang into action, traveling forward into the future at a rate of one minute… per minute!

Which is to say, I went to the national gallery / museum after having a lovely croissant and a latte for breakfast.


I’ll split the gallery into three segments, to avoid overloading my dear readers with too many arts all at once. Also, because the gallery sort of has three general themes to it: Sculptures, tableware, and paintings.


We’ll start with sculptures, as they were the first spot I started and are honestly kind of my favorites for this museum… something about these specific sculptures of the Norse Gods is just neat to me, how they’re so similar to the styling of Roman statues, but… you know, aren’t Roman? Also the display on how a detailed marble sculpture is made! Somehow I didn’t know this, even after visiting all those museums in Italy!




Next up, a subject that I very nearly skipped over, Tableware! The Stockholm Nationalmuseum has a whole exhibit discussing the evolution of “Services”, or table settings. It… seemed a bit vapid at first, to be honest, but after reading through the placards (my one true love, informational placards), I got a new appreciation for just how the style and materials have evolved over time.




Finally, we arrive at the traditional part of the tour – Paintings!

With no disrespect to Sweden, I found this gallery a little bit of a letdown after the raw glory of the Norwegian landscape painters. Which isn’t to say that it’s bad, by any means, just that Norway set such an unattainably high bar that I needed to step back a little bit. I enjoyed the selection very much, once I settled into the groove of it, and had a blast wandering around and seeing tons of interesting historical notes from an empire that was woefully under-represented in my schooling.






**CONTENT WARNING***

The next bit is a little bit of a rant, and contains quite explicit language. In my defense, the explicit language is from the artist, and not me, so… yeah.


There was one exhibit that I did specifically dislike, however, and while I don’t want to pontificate too much… this is my blog, and it’s my turn to talk, so…

The artist Vaginal Davis had an exhibit in the Nationalmuseum entitled “Naked on my Ozgoad  or: Fausthaus – Anal Deep Throat ”. It was… Okay, I guess I’m an artistic luddite or something, because I really didn’t get it. The whole “exhibit” was just pages from L Frank Baum’s books. Like, literally just books, in glass enclosures, turned to a specific page. And not pages that told a story either, just… pages. If there was an overarching theme, it was lost on me.

It just… Art should evoke feelings in people. Just throwing out semi-offensive words does, technically, meet that criteria I guess… but it just seems less. And quite a bit at odds with the general “showcase a country’s artistic history” role of a national gallery.