Stockholm – We enjoyed visiting the Viking museum, which included a cool ride, sharing a fictional Viking journey and story about gaining three barrels of silver to prevent his daughter from being sold into marriage to save the family farm. The museum also reinforced all the Norse mythology that we have been learning about Ted Ed for many years. Learning about the Vikings adventures and journeys, their politics and societal practices, challenged the myth that most of their time was spent on the Ocean. There was archeological evidence of developing permanent communities and cultivating farms, the women had an active and respected role in the Viking society.
We took an interesting historical tour of old town Stockholm. In addition to learning about its role as a central point of trade and industry as a cultural meeting point, its history of conflict with the Danes, and we learned to watch for the painted on windows (a way of avoiding tax). The Nobel Prize Museum was really neat, with an overview of all prize recipients and their work, featuring gifts they had donated to the museum to represent their journey to the prize. The fashion show has been used by design students to represent the prize winner in every category.
Vasa Museum – The Vasa museum was incredible. A ship built in the 1600’s that sank early on its first voyage in the Stockholm harbour. This was attributed to poor ballasting and two levels of cannons making it unsteady. It was trapped underwater for 300 years, before finally being brought up through an amazing excavation effort. The museum documents the building of the ship, the reasons that it sank so quickly, it features the intricate carving, and shows examples of the paint used in this time. It then explains the amazing rescue effort, reconstruction, and the anthropological work around trying to understand a little bit about the people who had lost their lives.
