Ship Shape: Ales Stenar

It finally stopped raining, and we had a chance, Saturday afternoon, to go and look at Ales Stenar, the largest of the Swedish ship-shaped standing stone circles. There are dozens of them, mostly in southern Sweden. Ales Stenar is in the 4,000-6,000 year-old range. Some argue it is merely a ship-cult site; some argue for a solar orientation/observatory. It is impressive in any case. Only one stone is missing, possibly, and its absence may simply have marked an entrance.

Ales Stenar stands on a beautiful grassy bluff above the tiny fishing hamlet of Kaseberga, overlooking the Baltic. It is late spring, and already the place is crowded. Walking around, I quickly figured out that as many are here for the fish market as for the megalithic site. I am savoring both!

Ales Stenar, about 200 feet long and 60 feet wide

Ship-shape; ship cult, millennia before the Vikings

One side

Backpackers at the site; we're glad we're not backpacking in this weather

The tiny harbor of Kaseberga

Tiny, but it supports a fish market well known for smoked salmon, eel, etc. The line was nearly out the door. I think the sign says "fish for sale." Note smoke coming from the smoke-house behind the building. I love smoked fish.

Until coming here, I had always associated swans with fresh water; the Baltic coast we have seen is loaded with them.


Vicki adds:

June 13, 2009 Southern Sweden

We have spent two days in a very nice parking lot about 200 yds from the Baltic Sea. We came to see the megalithic standing stones in a “ring” in the shape of a ship. However the weather was so bad yesterday with gale force winds, rain, high of 55, that we just stayed in the camper and enjoyed being couch potatoes. Today was just misty and this evening it has cleared up completely. Being Saturday, the parking lot has been quite busy with about 200-300 cars and campers coming and going. About 6 of us are spending the night again. There are restrooms-which we actually don’t need- and free wifi and it is quiet and free. A great combination. Mark and I walked up to the stones on the cliff over the sea earlier and then through the small fishing village. I am sure it will all be posted on his blog. I have been catching up on email and researching Stockholm. It is supposed to be raining hard there for the next two days so we will take our time getting there. We wanted to fly from there to St. Petersburg in Russia but it is very complicated to get a visa and the whole trip of 3-4 days would probably cost about 2 grand so I think we will skip it.

I realize that as of yesterday I have been retired one year. I must admit that it seems much longer what with all we have done, and yet I only have to start to think about it and it feels like yesterday. Memory is such a completely strange thing. Retirement is a marvelous thing but I do miss all my family and friends. Please write as you have time. Vicki

Helsingor (Elsinore) and the Kronborg

It finally stopped raining, and we had a chance, Saturday afternoon, to go and look at Ales Stenar, the largest of the Swedish ship-shaped standing stone circles. There are dozens of them, mostly in southern Sweden. Ales Stenar is in the 4,000-6,000 year-old range. Some argue it is merely a ship-cult site; some argue for a solar orientation/observatory. It is impressive in any case. Only one stone is missing, possibly, and its absence may simply have marked an entrance.

Ales Stenar stands on a beautiful grassy bluff above the tiny fishing hamlet of Kaseberga, overlooking the Baltic. It is late spring, and already the place is crowded. Walking around, I quickly figured out that as many are here for the fish market as for the megalithic site. I am savoring both!

Strengthening of Kronborg's fortifications continues

The tower, from the courtyard

More castle

The Hamlet plaque

The Shakespeare section of the gift shop;
Unemployed Philosophers Guild very well
represented

Battlement cannons; it was the Prince Consort's
 71st birthday, so there was a 21 gun salute at mid-day

Being disgorged from the Hamlet

To Sweden

Our first full day in Sweden, Friday, has been, um, interesting. From Helsingborg, after getting some Swedish kronors and tourist literature, we drove down to Ystad, in southeastern Skane, to see Ale's Stones, a giant ship-shaped stone circle on the coast. We have been parked at the Ale's Stones parking lot (N 55 23.311, E 14 03.818) since Thursday evening, along with half a dozen other motorhomes. Sweden is very permissive about such camping. The weather has been less permissive. Gale force wind has been blowing since we got here, with rain to match, and temperatures in the 50s. Our 7,500 lb camper is being buffeted in the wind. Fortunately it is water-tight, and I consider this a pretty good test of its water-tightness. As we have been sitting here today, perhaps a dozen other parties have driven up, donned very minimal rain gear (if any), and walked out the 1 km to see the Stones. They arrive back thoroughly soaked and chilled, presumably, to the bone. We are sitting tight, reading, writing, re-organizing (as always). Surely this gale will be over soon. 

11 PM update. It's still raining, but the winds have died down. This has been good: we needed a day off. 

Saturday morning update. Still raining. We are parked, still, about 200 meters from the sea and the little enclosed harbor for the fishing village of Kaseberga. Even at the height of the storm yesterday, I must note, someone was out in the waves in a wetsuit, surfing. Such devotion!

Monet's very famous "RV in a field with trees"

 

Denmark's National Museum

In an afternoon we managed only the pre-history and up through the Viking era sections of this immense and wonderful national museum. The prehistory collection is exceptional, especially the paleolithic, and the bronze age items are of great interest, containing many things we'd think of as “Norse” from periods a millennia or two before the Vikings. Denmark has the same kind of bog topography as Ireland, and much of what has been found are bog troves and sacrifices. Although there was no known written language, there certainly were congruences and communications among the peoples of Europe, and beyond, well before the Greeks and Romans, even in the neolithic.

Next to the paddle, the oldest known bow, c. 7,000 BC Skeleton of an auroch, extinct in Denmark by the Bronze age; last known European auroch died in Poland, 1627 The Bronze Age Scandinavians were sun-worshippers, the museum suggests The Chariot of the Sun, Bronze Age (horse not pictured) Horned helmet, early Bronze Norse horns (musical) Rune stone, Bronze The Gundestrup Cauldron (one interior panel only; silver), c. 150 BC, Thracian, probably from Bulgaria, but found in a bog trove dated Bronze age in Denmark 

Christiana

You are now leaving the EU

Danish hippie artwork, one of the few as yet untagged

Ditto

Somehow, this conveys a great deal about Christiana

As does this

Someone's idea of a joke; I hope

Christiana is the little hippie commune in Christianhaven started in the 60s or 70s. The government has tried to close it down on several occasions; it “seceded” from Denmark years ago. Now it is merely a seedy and cheesy curiosity, if you ask me. There's a lot of dope being sold and smoked there—no photography on some streets—and that's probably all there ever was to it.

Cathedral Out-takes

The angel seems to be saying "Make mine a double"

Apparently a running gag in this cathedral

Also the laughing skull

Ditto

Danish humor; the Odd Fellows Hall is right outside the west doors

Outside the south door...yes, and if they do, it's because of the restaurants you take them to....

Roskilde Cathedral

The Roskilde Cathedral is another high red brick cathedral, built between 1170 and 1280, originally Romansque, eventually Gothic. It is unusual in that it is not cruciform. Rather, it has had a number of chapels and other additions built on to it over the centuries—Roskilde Cathedral is the burial site of most Danish royalty, going back to Harald Bluetooth himself. It is a beautiful, high church, very well preserved, and the tombs of all the kings and queens of Denmark and associated memorials add to the interest.

The Roskilde Cathedral west towers Cathedral interior Organ; anno 1632 The royal box Harald Bluetooth, who unified Denmark in the 10th century, is buried in the column Queen Margarethe's tomb; she was queen of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in the 14th century King Christian X and his wife Queen Alexandrine; when the occupying Germans decreed in 1941 that all Danish Jews were to wear Star of David armbands, Christian responded by wearing one himself; the rest of the Danish population followed his example 

Roskilde Viking Ship Museum

The city of Roskilde lies about 30 miles west of Copenhagen. Whereas Copenhagen faces east and Sweden, Roskilde is at the end of a long and complicated fiord facing the northwest, and Norway. In the 11th century, it was the capital of the Denmark that Harald Bluetooth had unified in the 10th century. Sometime in the 11th century, fearing invasion from Norway, the residents of Roskilde scuttled five ships in one of the fiord's channels, thus reducing their vulnerability to the main channel. The invasion never came, and the ships were forgotten over the centuries. Late in the 20th century, however, they were discovered, conserved and preserved, and are now on display, along with much else, at the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum. The discovery of these and other Viking ships has brought about great interest in learning the techniques and materials used in building them. After all, these ships sailed all over the North and Baltic Seas, the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, as far as the Black Sea, and what is now Russia. At the Roskilde Museum they pride themselves in replicating the ships, using only materials and techniques known to have been used by the 9th, 10th, and 11th century shipwrights. It is an impressive undertaking, with research, education and construction and fabrication buildings all around, a smithy, carpentry shop, rope-making, sail-making, a restaurant, a hostel, a teacher center, and a collection of the fruits of these labors in the little Viking harbor between the Museum and the ship-building center. Want to know which kinds of Scandinavian trees and woods are right for which parts of the ship? Go to Roskilde. In the summer they even conduct cruises on the rebuilt ships on Roskilde fiord.

Main building of the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde Skuldelev 2, the warrior ship recovered from the fiord; there were four others, including a large merchant ship Part of the shipyard at the museum, where they are re-creating Viking ships The Sea Stallion from Glendalough, a re-creation of Skuldelev 2 (the ship was built originally in Dublin, a Viking outpost) The Sea Stallion at sea, on a voyage to Dublin from Roskilde Another of the Viking ship re-creations at Roskilde Viking Vicki (they encourage visitors to dress up) Viking Mark; how come I can't keep a straight face when trying to look fierce? I must have Dukakis' syndrome An interesting juxtaposition: Native American lodge frame, the Sea Stallion, and the Museum; so who "discovered" North America?