Sigtuna -- a trip to a viking town

We have been exploring Stockholm and have actually ventured beyond the city limits and explored a few of the neighboring towns.  Mostly because we want to see more of Sweden but also because we are in the death spiral search for a "proper suburb" to live in post our corporate housing stint.  Our distaste for the suburbs mainly revolves around the necessity to drive EVERYWHERE.  We have really gotten used to walking to the grocery store every day, post office, etc.  We aren't worried about the restaurant scene since we don't really go out to eat anymore since Calvin is not only loud but enjoys throwing his food, so that's not a real consideration.

In our search for a non-suburb-non-Stockholm town, we found Sigtuna, a viking village!  This could be really promising!  Who wouldn't want to live in the oldest town in Sweden complete with rune stones from the 9th century!  Jon and I loaded up Calvin for the day and headed up north on the T-bana.  Take us as far north as you can T!  We went to the most northern stop and hopped on a bus to Sigtuna.  We got off the bus 30 long, Calvin-shriek filled minutes, onto a cobble stone street with 15 other tourists from Stockholm.  We looked around and sadly discovered that there wasn't much to see.  There was one street with cute buildings that was pedestrian only.  Being a Sunday, nothing was open except two cafes and the Sigtuna Museum.  Some of the bead shops looked cute but mostly quiet and slightly boring. (P.S. we went to Sigtuna on Feb 26th, not the date of this post).

Determined to make the most of our trip, we started exploring.  Sigtuna is situated on the northern part of beautiful Lake Mälaren (that spans down to Stockholm) and this part of the lake was still solidly frozen.  People were strapping on skates and skating on the plowed portions of the lake.  We saw a large group of people with backpacks on skating away.  It looked akin to a large hiking group heading out on a trail.  The sun was out which made the cold weather bearable as it was far below freezing.

Off on a skate on the lake

After enjoying the sun and the lake, we ventured towards the older viking ruins and churches built in the 16th century ("new" churches).  Since it was a viking town, most of the original buildings were destroyed by age, fire and other viking awesomeness.  Needless to say, it is still pretty neat to walk around buildings that were built hundreds of years before America was founded.

The Sigtuna Museum is not really worth visiting.  Aside from a few random viking artifacts and a reproduction of what the town looked like a few hundred years ago, it's really too small to capture your attention for longer than 10 minutes (and that included the time it took us to take off our coats).  The people were extremely nice and a woman in period costume practiced her English with me for a solid 12 minutes.  Of course, Calvin is always a conversation starter so we talked about him for a while.

We explored some of the old churches and ventured in where we could.  I kept having flashbacks to the movie Willow and expected a crow to fly over cawing a warning message that "they're coming, cawww, they're coming!" or something.  If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about.  It just had that cold, barren feel and still felt very much like a castle (even though it was a church).  I kept doing the crow's voice but Jon hadn't seen the movie and just thought I was acting weird again.

St Olofs Church ruin

St Pers church ruin

Checking out a rune stone

Warning: "Falling stones"

"Willoowwww!"

The viking rune stones were interesting -- mostly because the sign next to them provided a descriptive paragraph in Swedish and then one line in English saying, "This rune is hastily drawn and contains many misspellings."  Really?  That's what it says in Swedish too? I doubt it.  I really need to learn SWEDISH. AHH.

We spent some time in a nice cafe, enjoying an absolutely delicious meal of pasta and chili.  It was the perfect fix for a really cold day.  We finished the day walking by the lake again and Jon picked up some deep fried waffles and hot chocolate.  He ventured onto the very frozen lake "just to see" but freaked out a bit when it started crackling near the stairs.

It really was a beautiful day and despite it being a solid hour commute outside of Stockholm, we had a very fun time.  The lake was beautiful in the winter and I can only imagine how wonderful it is in the summer.  Its so nice to see people enjoying it regardless of the weather.  So many people in the States only venture out when the weather is "nice" and warm.  If the Swedes stayed inside all winter, they would need much larger houses.  Winter here is long but fortunately, most days, its also beautiful.

new sport -- ice sailing!