Quimper Hittys

This is a beautiful city, sprinkled around on many islands big and small. The part of town where we are staying has old old buildings…

…cobbled streets…

…and a café around the corner every time you might feel like a cup of tea and a bun.

At this bakery in a 17th century building, we saw a jaw-droppingly beautiful painted ceiling, and had tea and cakes while we admired it!

We went to museums every day! The Vasa Museum houses an entire ship that foundered in 1628, and was raised in 1961. Coriander and Arianell were in awe of the 1:10 Scale painted model of the ship (just their size!) …

…and the humans were in awe of conservation job, starting as soon as the ship was raised from Stockholm Harbour in and ongoing. There are still many things to learn as scientific research methods are refined.

Carved wooden figures festooned the exterior of the ship, but most were warriors and princes, and not inclined to chat to small dolls.

Between museums we trotted down narrow streets to find shops and eateries…

…and up stone staircases to find our accommodation at night.

We spent an entire day at the open air museum at Skansen…

…and admired the living history experts who were dressed in appropriate clothes doing activities of days gone by. This woman is making cordage out of bast fibre from Linden trees!

…and these young women were scutching and hackling retted flax plants to make linen fibre.

Skansen was filled with Swedish families enjoying a Sunday outing…

…and costumed interpreters going about their daily business. The experience was wonderful.

Arianell and Coriander met some little wooden toy animals,

And got to experience what it might have been like to sleep as families did in the old days-siblings crowded but warm in the same little bed.

We enjoyed four days and three nights on the Juno…

…there was always something new to see, even on a rainy day…

…passing through farmlands and little towns…

We got off to walk…

…and watched the Juno make her way through the “lock staircases”

There was a slow progress through the locks at Berg…we were able to walk for over an hour, and my cousin who lives 20 minutes away from there, popped by to have a cup of tea.

In the morning we were on the Baltic sea!

…where we visited the Viking settlement and fortress of Brevik…

…and saw a sprang loom!

…and later that day we arrived in the beautiful and busy city of Stockholm!

The trip on the Juno was a wonderful interlude, I’m so glad we were able to include these few gentle days in this trip, and in my life!

Coriander and Arianell are beyond excited to be starting on the next part of the trip…

…we’re taking the canal boat Juno from Göteborg to Stockholm!

We will travel 190 kilometres and pass through 58 locks…

It was all very exciting!

Some locks are very small…this is the view on the port side…

…and here is the starboard side of the same lock!

We were allowed to get off the boat and walk in certain places…

…so we did!

At one of the stops we found a patch of wild lingonberries!

But we didn’t need to forage for food, we were very well fed!

…and we had our own little cabin to sleep in at night!

Planning for two more days in Scåne the girls found a map and studied some possible destinations mostly involving tea and rocks…

First we drove as far as we could down to the southern tip of Sweden, parked the car and commenced walking…

…and after a bit more than a kilometre we arrived at the national historic site of the Ales Stones…

…it was a foggy day so the sea was as grey as the sky.

The stones are positioned in the outline of a ship, and they are big! The tallest ones at “prow” and “stern” are taller than the human!

Photos usually show the stones from the air! Taken from the ground it is harder to get a sense of the ship-shape, but they were impressive nonetheless.

Not far away was the little town of Ystad where we found a cup of tea in one of the old timbered buildings lining the cobblestone streets.

The next day we found the “kings grave” in Kivik… these stones have a strange story… the diameter of this stone pile follows the known size as recorded in the 17th century, but most of the rocks were removed over time to build other things, and the central tomb was looted. “Experts” in the early 1900’s decided to “restore” the shape of the stone pile but made it into a Phoenician style tomb, because they were sure there was some connection. The tombstones stones inside are actually very interesting with petroglyphs etc.

After speculation, interpretation, and much perambulation, it was very pleasant to have a cup of tea, an open-faced sandwich and a little cake. This is a really nice coffee shop called Alunbruket near Brosarp! It is a little hard to find but so worth it! And look at the teacup! It’s the same pattern that my Swedish grandfather treasured… I have two of his cups (though as a typical Swede, he preferred to drink coffee in them)!

It’s the end of our visit to the countryside of my fore-fathers and mothers…it was so nice to tramp around and visit places and see the views and vistas they saw too, satisfying and enriching, I am so glad we came here.

On to the next part of our adventure!

A little adventure! Coriander and Arianell hopped into the backpack and went on a 7+ km hike with me in the beautiful Söderånsens park.

The weather was perfect for a long walk, cool but bright…

…we enjoyed walking on beautiful trails through beech forests…

…up to a viewpoint at Kopparhatten…

Through more forest at the top of the ridge…

…with an understory of blueberry bushes!

Luckily for hungry little people, you are allowed to pick and eat berries in Sweden wherever you find them , even in a national park!

We kept walking up, down and around the park…

…through more forests …

…this looked like a troll cave…

…so we rested in a less spooky mossy spot.

It was a long walk! We hoped to see a tapestry weaving spider! But we didn’t. It was so very lovely under the trees with the soft dappled light, blueberries, old farmsteads with rock walls all that remained of people’s lives here in times past.

Arianell and Coriander felt like they could have been some of Elsa Beskow’s forest people!

We were all very glad to get to our next accommodation at Torps Vimsa…

…where the Hittys were provided with their own little copper kettle to make a restorative cup of tea!

The south of Sweden has many ancient burial mounds, we visited a group of about twelve barrows very near to Landskrona, which might have been visited by my not quite so ancient ancestors!

The back of a photo taken by my grandmother in 1948 (they are not viking burials but earlier)

Here’s the front of the photo. Another photo says the mounds are “near Härslöv” – these were the only clues I had as to where they were!

Arianell and Coriander were keen to climb up to the top!

The view south out over the fields was very fine.

After visiting the barrows we drove through nearby Teckomatorp and stopped at the little parish church in Norviddinge…

Where I located the gravestone of the Bengtsson family including my Great Aunt Anna Matilda, who I remember as a sweet white-haired lady who spoke in careful English, and taught me to embroider. We made “little Dutch girl” tea towels together, one for each day of the week except Sunday! She is the one who inspired me in my love of textiles, and whose tapestries brought me here.

Tack så mycket Faster Anna Matilda💐

A half hour away by ferry from Landskrona …

(more…)

After visiting Lilla Rödde we went to Svaneholms Slott, “swan lake castle” where…

…there was a lovely lake (formerly a moat) which did have swans, ducks and geese floating about on it.

Inside the castle were many textiles including several old Flemish weavings but also woven, knitted and embroidered garments, like this woman’s woollen knitted top,

Here is a close up of one of the sleeves – such beautiful work!

And here is a wedding shirt made by a betrothed woman for her sweetheart.

Who should we run into in the attic, but Nils! He’s the naughty boy who was shrunken down to Hitty size, and flew off with his farmyard goose visiting important historical sites all over Sweden (in a story written by Selma Lagerlöff)

Nils had a goose friend visiting. Coriander and Arianell would like to have met him when he was smaller, and asked for more details about his adventures!

The visit to the castle was followed by a fabulous lunch…this view is from the parking lot of the Vismarlövs Café and Bagarstuga …(I had Swedish pancakes for lunch!)

The afternoon was spent in the lovely little university town of Lund, then we had to say goodbye to our fellow students, and our tour organiser Sarah Light.

Every aspect of this tour was so well organised, Sarah was attentive, and accommodating and I can say unequivocally that every day of this weaving workshop tour was absolutely wonderful I think any tour arranged by this company would be excellent.

The website for information and upcoming tours with The Tour Studio is:

https://www.thetourstudio.com/about

Meanwhile we will be in Sweden for a while… the adventure continues!