The heatwave rumbled on today. It felt like Sydney without the humidity. The fan stayed on all night and the windows were wide open. Even our deodorant ran out. It was so bad that we spent the hottest part of the day in Max with the air con.
Heat aside, the hotel room is very comfortable now that the fan works. The shower is like a water cannon but in a very nice scouring way, although the water jet bath isn’t sealed so the bathroom turns into a lake everytime you have a wash.
Mirinda had a bath in the evening. Her first bath since last October. And, of course, she wanted to try the relaxing effects of the water jets. Rather than a repeat of her last experience when the jets spewed out brown, foul smelling water, she turned the water on before getting into the bath.
Her verdict? She enjoyed the bath but the relaxing was impossible with the noise the jets made. I agree about the jets. I was in the other room and the noise was terrible.
Another terrible thing was the lack of anything to stir my coffee with first thing. No stirrers, no spoons, no nothing. I resorted to using the non-ink end of a pen. I corrected this when we went to breakfast. It may have appeared that I stole a spoon but, rather, I just moved it up a floor.
But enough of that. Today we wandered around Strängnäs, visiting the coolness that is the domkyrka or cathedral.
The cathedral is not hard to find. It dominates the town being set high up above everything else. I reckon people use it as a navigation beacon when sailing on Lake Mälaren.
While the cathedral is big and imposing on the outside, it’s actually quite warm and friendly once you go inside. It probably helped because there was a fun run happening around it and there was a confirmation rehearsal happening at the altar.
There’s also lots of beautiful fresco work, in soft pastel colours. Possibly the pastel effect is from age and, originally, they would have been extremely bright. Overall, I rather liked the series of grotesques on the inside of one of the side arches.
There’s also a magnificent chapel decorated with lots of boats on one side and an army on the other. The boats and figures are in stucco, projecting out from the walls and ceiling like so many insects stuck on flypaper. The chapel is dedicated to the illegitimate son of King Karl XI and was made by Daniel Anckerman between 1649-52.
The chapel was originally dedicated to Saints Paul and Peter but, I guess, they already had enough and the bastard Carl Carlsson Gyllenhielm didn’t have any.
Carl has an interesting story in that while being born following an extramarital affair between his mother and the future king, he managed to work his way up to the Swedish Admiral of the Fleet. Obviously they have a different view of bastards here than in, say, Westeros. Or Britain. The stucco boats are obviously an indication of his naval career.
The chapel is locked behind big iron gates, so I had to take a rather oblique photo through the bars. Still, it makes it easier to see the depth.
On the opposite wall is an equally impressive army in stucco. I guess this represents his time in the war with Poland where he was taken prisoner for 12 years wearing shackles and writing hymns.
There is also an extraordinary chapel dedicated to Gustav Otto Stenbock with a wooden sculpture of great ornateness. I rather liked the figure at the bottom of the sculpture and wonder whether it’s Otto or just some allegorical figure. If it depicts Otto then he was at once muscly of thigh and bony of head.
Otto’s statue was placed here in the 17th century and it replaced an earlier dedication to Sten Sture the Elder. It makes me wonder whether, by paying a lot of money to the church, a later person can get a great cathedral spot with the assurance of an equally lovely spot in heaven and, if so, what happens to the usurped dead? Do they have to move a little bit away from God’s right hand?
Otto was a man who worked his way up through the ranks of the army then became Chancellor of Lund University. He was also a politician. He died in 1685 having sired 13 kids by two wives. Sten Sture the Elder, on the other hand, was King of Sweden for a while. But he died in 1503 so he might have had his time in the sun and needed to move over so Otto could have a bit for himself.
Actually, Sten’s Wikipedia entry is a rather jolly read. And he does have another monument in the cathedral except I didn’t get to see it because of the confirmation rehearsal which I didn’t want to interrupt.
As well as the people above, there was also an organist who, when the time was right, would play a little bit of music. This was to indicate where the music during the confirmation would go. He just played random things. I thought the Christmas medley was wholly inappropriate given the weather outside, but I did rather enjoy the wonky version of The Final Countdown.
Eventually, we left the coolness of the cathedral and walked around the outside of the building.
I was rather surprised to see that someone, sometimes ago, had decided to recycle a few rune stones by using them in the fabric of the church. Two of them were broken but one was complete. I wonder what it says?
Of course, I’m being facetious. I imagine the stone was placed in the wall in order to preserve it. And it’s not that different to using old gravestones to make a wall. Which churches do all the time.
I’d love to think that it reads something like: This stone was raised for Guthrum the Godless who killed Christians before breakfast and Muslims after lunch.
We discovered a bit later that some of the crown jewels, which live in the cathedral in a big glass display case, were stolen from the cathedral once by a crazy dude in a speedboat. As I said, the cathedral is very high up, towering over the town so it would have needed a pretty healthy and athletic speedboat thief to manage it.
Here’s a Fox News account of the daring heist though, of course, you can’t really trust Fox given their penchant for fake news. Here’s a report from the Guardian in the aftermath of the theft. And, finally, the news that the whole of Sweden was waiting for: The police found them.
My favourite part of the above stories has to be the fact that the Swedish police were hiding in a bin. At least that’s how this sentence reads: “According to Swedish media, they were found by Police hidden in a rubbish bin.“
Having had our fill of the rough and tumble of ecclesiastical matters, we headed down the hill, passing huffing and puffing fun runners struggling up the hill, and walked around the shores of the lake, ending up at the Greek taverna down by the marina.
It was here that we heard about a man who went to Australia from Sweden in order to sell socks. His footwear venture was unsuccessful. He must have found something else to do though, because he remained in Oz.
Our waitress with the beautiful coloured eyes (exactly like Mirinda’s) told us all about it and how she wanted to go and visit her relatives down under. Except she hates flying. She lives in Uppsala but was in Strängnäs on holiday, visiting her daughter, and working in the Greek Taverna. Odd kind of holiday.
The taverna was still decorated with all things Swedish given the Euro 2020 game yesterday and, obviously, for any further games to come. So Mirinda thought it only right to take a photo of a new Swede with a sizeable Swedish flag.
Following a delicious lunch of too much food and a couple of beers, we headed back to the hotel for a much needed siesta.
Eventually, we stirred enough to collect Max and take a drive around some possible places to live on a nearby island. I’m really taken with Strängnäs and could easily imagine a life set close by. At least on a bus route.
Back at the marina, we settled into a couple of grossly uncomfortable chairs for a couple of drinks at Riva, increasing the average age somewhat. We eventually left because a group of young dudes out on the pull and smothered in some sort of perfume assaulted my nose with pungent aromas. They all sat on the vacant bench in the photo below.
And that was our day. Tomorrow we head back.
