After breakfast, we headed to the City Hall. It was an interesting building. It is relatively new (completed in 1923) and yet was built in such a way that it looks like it was put together over time--old bricks, newer arches, etc. The brickwork was hand carved to be like the Middle Ages, for instance.
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| City Hall |
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| Matthew, Me and Megan in the courtyard |
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| The Blue Hall, which is where the Nobel Prizes (except the Peace Prize) are given out each year. It is definitely not blue although the initial plan had been to paint it blue. However, when they saw how beautiful the brickwork was, they decided not to paint it. |
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| Beautiful flooring in the Blue Hall as seen from above. |
A few pictures of the Town Council Chambers
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| The ceiling is really cool. |
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| Close up of some of the paintings on the ceiling. |
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| Hi Megan! |
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| Neat patterns on the walls |
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| Ceiling in an adjacent room |
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| Megan in the Prince's Hall. It has windows on one side and a beautiful painting on the other side. |
Couple photos of the paintings. It was supposed to make it so those who sat on this side did not feel slighted since they could not see out the windows.
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| Ceiling |
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| Another lovely mural |
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| The Gold Hall, which is absolutely stunning and is, indeed, gold. The room is decorated with over 18 million gold mosaic tiles depicting scenes from Swedish history and myth. Our guide explained a lot of the history and symbolism to us. A sampling of the mosaics are included below. |
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Sister Andersen (aka Emily) and her companion joined us on the tour of City Hall.
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After the tour of city hall, we climbed up the City Hall Tower. Partway up is a room that has a lot of statues and models on display.
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| View of Gamla Stan from City Hall Tower |
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| Me, Matthew and Megan with Gamla Stan |
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| View over City Hall. Notice how there are multiple styles of and materials used on the roof? All part of the plan. |
We took a few more photos of the statues and artwork on our trip down.
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| U, Me, Matthew, Megan |
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| Me, U, Matthew, Megan with City Hall |
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| Me, U, Matthew, Megan, Sister (Emily) Andersen |
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| U, Matthew, Megan, Me, Sister Bergsman and Sister Andersen with the gourmet hot dogs we bought for lunch. Me had cheese and juniper berry. |
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| We went to the Historika (Swedish History Museum). We walked through the history of Sweden from 1000 AD to the present day which was interesting. It said that Sweden as it is known today has existed for less than 100 years. Pretty crazy to think about! |
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| Rune Stone |
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| Megan and U playing a game in the numbers exhibit. |
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| There was a lot of religious art and relics from churches on display. |
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| The statue in the foreground is a burned statue of Christ from the 14th century that was burned in a church fire in the 1900s. In the background is a recreation of what the statue looked like in the church before the fire. |
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| World's oldest organ, built in 1370 |
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| Matthew in a replica of a longhouse built for children to explore. |
There were a couple of big exhibits on Vikings and on the Viking world. There was so much information!
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| The Unna Stone, a rune stone that was made by Unna in memory of her son. Rune stones were generally carved by Christians in memory of a deceased person. They were placed in a high traffic place for people to see. Rune stones were initially painted in bright colors but the colors faded over time. |
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| The 10th century remains from the burial site of a well-to-do man. He and the woman in the picture below were cremated in a fully loaded boat. After, his remains were buried along with several of his belongings which indicate that he was a warrior. |
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| The 10th century funeral pyre remains of a woman along with several of her possessions that were buried with her after the burning. The staff indicates that she was a powerful sorceress. This staff, called the Klinta Staff, is the grandest staff ever found. |
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| Picture stones were used to depict ancient tales, legends and myths. It is interesting to compare the similarities between different stones. This stone includes Odin on his 8 legged horse, a sailing longship and Valkyries as well as some unknown depictions. The lady doing a backflip is shown on many picture stones but we do not know what it represents. |
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| The Völund Stone is another picture stone. It contains many of the same depictions as the above stone including the lady doing a backflip. |
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| A rune stone |
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| The Gold Room contains a lot of treasurers from Swedish history. |
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| Me figured she should get a picture with this sign. |
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| Megan and U with the statue of King Gustav III |
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| U, Matthew, Megan, Me playing Scrabble. |
It was still hot so we bought some extra short sleeve shirts to wear. That 's what we had planned on doing if it got too hot; we just did not think it would happen.
U's Step Count: 22k
