The 12 degree summer

Unfortunately the Swedish summer didn't impress this year. We actually didn't have ANY real summer days, just 'days when it didn't rain'. I wore shorts once. Mostly it was around 12 degrees... and rain.

So, we did puzzles and played games. A bit of dice, and a lot of "När Då Då?".

I ordered myself a bit of light summer reading. Most in preparation for the new exhibition at the Louvre Abu Dhabi - Letters of Light.

Lucas and I had a movie date and went to see the new Barbie-movie at the Skara cinema. We both enjoyed it, lots of laughs and quite thought provoking too.

Lucas also was put to scrub his filthy sneakers, and even surprised himself how clean they got!

We made many blackberry crumbles and enjoyed them with custard, yum.

We met up with Sixten and checked out old cars in Fornbyn, also, in the rain.

For this first part of Skara-visits, Lucas came along for the week, before we all went to Stockholm for five days.

Up Ålleberg

One thing we have been talking about doing for quite a while is to drive up to Ålleberg outside of Falköping and fika at the restaurant at the Gliding Club there. Turns out we weren't the only ones with the same idea this particular afternoon, so we had to wait for a really long time after ordering.
But hey, we had a good view while waiting! Lots of people were gliding this day, and some were parachuting too.

Ålleberg is the highest of all table mountains in Västra Götaland (335 meters above sea level), and most of the mountain is a nature reserve full of hiking trails and grazing livestock.

According to a Swedish legend, the Knights of Ålleberg are the ghosts of 12 knights who died here 1389 in the Battle of Åsle between Sweden and Denmark. The story says that the ghosts are trapped inside the mountain, waiting for a new war to wake them up so they can fight to save the country.
Other legends talk about how the mountain is the home of trolls.
We didn't see neither ghosts or trolls, just beautiful, endless views of the surroundings.

Vara with Carin

It's not always easy to match summer schedules with other expat friends. This year Carin was only in Sweden early on in the summer, and we came rather late. Luckily we managed to coordinate one day just as we arrived to Skara and before she shot off back to Italy, and met up in Vara for some fika.

She only had the two youngest with her this time as Alessio had already departed back to Rome. We went to the famous Nordpolen Konditori (where else?) together, and then Carin and I stayed on for a chat while the kids went and played mini golf.

It also turned out Vara was quite a shopping mekka, with several small and quirky shops along the main street that we had to go discover. Managed to make some awesome finds, yay! We then finished the afternoon with some ice cream before saying goodbye.

 

Recognise something?

While in one of the museum shops lately I saw this colouring-in book, called the World of Rune stones. I flicked through it quickly, and look what I saw! 
Recognise this one motif, already filled in on one of the pages..?

Yup, the same as what's been on my shoulder for the last (I think) 25 years!
It is a triskelion from a rune stone in Smiss on the island of Gotland. It symbolises movement and depicts an eagle, a snake and a bore.

I chose to have this done in a time when most of my peers were getting Chinese signs, tribal patterns or other tattoos that had nothing really to do with their own heritage. I wanted something connected rather to the Scandinavian history, and the idea of 'movement' attracted me as I was venturing out into the world.

Suitable too that the triskelion symbol is a powerful sign of magic; and for the Norse it represented Odin and his tricksy ways. A symbol for poets, historians and people with quick minds.

Tjolöholms Castle

For Nathans last day we needed to figure out something to do between checking out from our AirBnB and the flight opening. Luckily we had a great excursion spot very close to where we were, the Tjolöholm Castle; so we left the suitcases stored at the AirBnB and went to check it out.

This castle was built between 1898-1904, designed in Tudor style by the architect Lars Israel Wahlman. Tjolöholm was built at the request of the Dickson Family, or more accurately - Blanche Dickson - who led the work after tragically loosing her husband James. They were a wealthy Swedish-British couple who were looking for a country weekend estate to complement their apartment in nearby Göteborg. Mr Dickson had founded the Swedish shipping company James Dickson & Co.

Not just the castle is famous, but also the grounds and the garden. It is a typical English period garden inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement. This part below is where the staff lived:

They only had one English tour each day and it was scheduled too late for us, so we joined the Swedish speaking tour. Nathan got some notes so he could follow along too.

The entrance hall which welcomed us, very impressive, designed around the painting Queen of Saba, by Julius Kronberg. All the walls covered in oak panelling, and with a nearly 8m high fireplace, symbolising the hospitality of the castle - the bigger the fireplace, the more welcoming the host.

The sculpted oak staircase, featuring finely carved animals:

The tour started in the billiard room, with its red marble walls and vaulted glass ceiling.

Connected to the billiard room was the smoke room, decorated in Moorish style. Here the walls are decorated with polished walnut.

These inscriptions were just scribbles, designed to look like something Arabic, but apparently they have no meaning. Just there to emphasize the oriental feel of the room.

A portrait of Blanche Dickson, aged 48 in 1904:

This castle is as British as they come, although the young architect Wahlman had never been to England! It was the collaboration between Wahlman and the eccentric Mrs Dickson that led to this unique building, they really went to town on all the details! It is a wonderful combination of British 16th century and Scandinavian Jugend style, with all the modernities of the time. Tjolöholm is one of the few castles built in Sweden during the 20th century.

Here in the salon:

The whole castle is decorated with interiors selected from Liberty & Co in London. We could see a lot of state-of-the-art details, such as electrics, the first vacuum cleaner in Sweden (pulled by horses and weighing a ton) and this amazing kerosene driven hair dryer in one of the bedrooms:

Arts and Crafts details everywhere, everything from light switches to furniture, fabrics, carpets and stonework was available to order through the Liberty catalogues, like a high-end IKEA.

Check out this bathroom, with a super modern surround shower and other fixtures and fittings! Extremely unusual at the time.

William Morris wallpaper, all original:

Beautiful tapestries on the top landing:

The castle has 35 rooms all together. The total cost with interiors and everything was at the time 1 million SEK. In todays money value that would be about 1 billion SEK!

Mrs Dickson kept meticulous accounts of her purchases, and a lot of her correspondence with Liberty together with many invoices are kept in the archives. All of these are giving a good insight in what she ordered and how she planned the interior of the castle. The decor was inspired by the English Middle Ages hence the furniture is mostly dark and has metal details.

The Royal bedroom, designed initially for the hunting friend of Mr Dickson, King Oscar II:

Look at the vaults!

The back stairwell taking us 'downstairs' to the kitchen and the servants parts of the house:

The kitchen itself wasn't open to visit, but we could pass through the serving parts of the 'downstairs':

The dining hall. During dinners there would be a musical ensemble placed in the gallery to entertain the guests. A dinner could last for a few hours, it wasn't unusual to serve between 10-12 courses.

The ceiling is decorated with stucco, the pattern consists of the English rose, the Scottish thistle and four different family crests:

Thank you family, getting to spend time with you is really precious. It wasn't a long holiday this year, but at least we got this week together. ♥︎