Scandinavia: miscellany in pictures

I just got back to Oxford from Norway and Sweden. Here are some random bits that I took photos of.

We saw a lot of stave churches, due to prioritization. This one is Hopperstad stave church, built in around 1130, i.e. shortly after the Viking age. We were told that they were made using basically ship-building expertise — they just put the ship upside down on top of some staves. I mostly thought about what it would be like to live in 1130 and be involved in building and attending this church.

This is a different Stave church, in Borgund, that we broke in to the poorly guarded grounds of, for various reasons. Not pictured: it was shockingly windy. There is something about standing in a wind that seems like it might blow the tombstones out of the ground, in the vicinity of a church that looks like this, under late night blue skies, that I found scary, but I couldn’t think of anything to actually be scared of.

Fjords. Not how I imagined them when reading Life the Universe and Everything.

Anders Zorn is one of my two favorite artists, and I was in his tiny Swedish town, where the Anders Zorn museum is, which my mother told me is one of the best museums. But I only stepped in and out of the gift shop, because I wasn’t in the mood. I am not sure if I should regret that, but so far I don’t. Art is usually on the internet..

I liked this statue in his garden.