Royal Hunting Museum

As the airfield was not very far away from Halle- and Hunneberg, I decided we needed to go to the Royal Hunting Museum.

I marketed the excursion as a visit to a ‘Moose Museum’, but Nathan misunderstood and thought we were going to a moose park, so he got a little bit disappointed. No real moose in sight.

The moose population here has varied in size over the centuries depending on the availability of grass, and hunting. They were in fact extinct here at the beginning of the 19th century, and when they later immigrated to the area, they became such a treat to the pine plantings in the area that King Oskar II decided to initiate royal hunts. These are still hosted here every other year.

The museum taught us a lot about the fauna of Halle- and Hunneberg, but also about the whole table mountain region here between the two largest lakes in Sweden. It is actually Sweden’s first UNESCO Global Geopark!

So what is a geopark? It’s an area that tells the story of our planet’s development. Today there are 177 geoparks across 46 countries. They are meeting places where the history of the earth meets the history of mankind.