July 29, 2003

 

After our usual breakfast at the bakery, we headed north up the coast as Stefan suggested. There were some interesting things to see within a days’ ride from Kungshamn, so I wish we had known about them earlier, but I guess that’s what we get for not carrying guide books with us when we travel. We stumble on a lot of cool stuff quite by accident while passing up a lot of tourist stuff both knowingly and unknowingly. It was a beautiful day for riding and lots of bikes were out on the road, nearly each rider greeting us with a wave as they drove past.

 

The first stop was the Svenneby church which several people said was a must-see. It was a small, plain stone building built in the early part of the 12th century, and its belfry sat by itself on the cliff above which seems to be typical of the older Swedish churches. Inside the church, we found it charming; a space with lots of light streaming in through large clear windows, with narrow wooden pews closed off by gates, several wooden statues of Jesus and some assorted saints from the middle ages, and a loft hanging low above our heads. In the old days, the women would sit on one side of aisle while the men sat on the other; I could imagine them sitting there in their lacy caps and aprons. The wooden boards of the ceiling and altar were painted with biblical scenes and date from the 18th century, and the red and blue swirls of paint gave it a folk art feeling.

 

Just up the road, we found a Viking village, which seemed to be in the process of being built. People dressed in homespun garments and using hand tools were busy reconstructing buildings and workshops after archeological research and demonstrating Viking crafts like felt-making and wood carving to the visiting children. One interesting building, a longhouse, had a roof shaped like an overturned boat, its bowed supporting beams braced against the ground to give it strength. Here the tribe would gather and spend a lot of their time using the longhouse as a communal living room. Another curious building looked like a haystack, with a small round opening and an earth floor.

 

 

 

The area has had inhabitants even further back than the Vikings; 3 thousand years ago, people lived here and left their mark in the stones in the form of  rock carvings and built dolmens - chambered graves of stone. We stopped briefly at a grave field that contains about 200 graves from a later period, approximately 200-400 A.D., with both standing stones and barrows. The area around Tanum is particularly rich with rock carvings from between 1800 and 500 B.C. and at Vitlyke, there is an interpretive museum and walking paths that lead you through to some of the finest examples to be found. Scientists studying the carvings have painted the carved figures with red paint to make it easier to see. Many of the carvings are of long boats - at least 10,000 of them - with lines representing the crew, while others are comical stick people wielding long spears and shields. Some animals are depicted, including a whale, and symbols representing the sun, footprints and round “cup marks” which would hold offerings to the gods. I could have spend days there but it was afternoon already, and we hadn’t gone very far.

 

Up the coast a little further, and we started seeing a few large shopping centers and factory outlet stores in the middle of nowhere. We were getting close to the border with Norway, and as every one kept telling us, everything is a lot more expensive in Norway. We saw lots of cars with Norwegian plates and stores full of shoppers, so I guess it’s true. We crossed the border into a sparsely populated corner of Norway and over a bridge with a spectacular view, past cameras set every few kilometers scanning the traffic hoping to catch speeders and take their pictures. Not too much further and we had passed the small town of Halder and turned east where we crossed the border back into Sweden.

 

Time to find a room for the night. We found ourselves in a small town called Ǻrjäng, in front of the tourist information office. The young lady working there helped us find a Bed and Breakfast for around €50. We checked ourselves in, had a nice chat with the woman running the B&B then went out to walk around the town. She had told us she hoped it would be quiet tonight and paused a moment, calculating. Yes, it’s Wednesday, it should be alright. We were gradually realizing that this was not your typical Swedish town; noisy 2-stroke dirt bikes and cars with rap music booming out of huge American-style speakers trolled up and down the street. A raucous group of teenaged boys hung around at the main square. A young woman stood in front of a closed gas station on a deserted street looking like she was for hire; when I turned around to look again, she was gone. We went back to the tourist information to ask some questions and the girl also told us that since it was Wednesday, it wasn’t too bad – on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, the streets can be noisy all night long with the cars and bikes, and strolling teenagers out at night with nothing much to do…Every one we talked to seemed to agree on one thing: that it was a nuisance, but with a helpless shrug of their shoulders said there was nothing much that could be done. This town apparently doesn’t have a full time police force. A few days later, I was talking to a Swedish biker and told him of our experience and he laughed and said, “yes, Ǻrjäng has that reputation. The Swedes say it is a place outside the law.” He went on to explain that it was a portal for drugs coming from Norway into Sweden…

 

The next morning we headed to Lake Siljan on a 2 lane highway through the pine and birch forests. We got a very nice room in a hotel set in a tranquil park in a town called Mora. We were now in the Dalarna province which is famous for the carved wooden horses, painted red with a garland of folk flowers around their necks. Dalarna is also famous for all of its other folk crafts and as we traveled through the area we passed fields of flax for making linen, weaving studios, pottery studios, wooden horse workshops and handcraft guild stores where one can buy the local traditional costume of the area or the materials and patterns to make your own.

 

Following the east coast of Lake Siljan, we made a stop in Rättvik where a classic car rally was in progress. Thousands of old American cars were in town; almost all lovingly detailed and in pristine condition. These classic beauties were on the road all through the area, classic American rock music wafting through the rolled-down windows. Activities like a drive-in movie and a sock hop were also planned for the evening program. Mike and I strolled through the parking lot, admiring cars he hadn’t seen in decades. Convertibles and Cadillacs and tail fins are favorites but we also saw Hudsons, Edsels and the like, not to mention some later classics like Mustangs and Corvettes. Some of them were pulling vintage-looking trailers, carefully detailed and painted in the same colors as the car.

 

We also passed a motorcycle boutique sitting by itself along the highway, so we turned around to check it out. About a dozen bikes sat outside, helmets and leather jackets left sitting on the bikes as the owners shopped inside. We have observed this all over Sweden, people are always telling us how safe it is in this country. I chatted with a talkative guy who works in the shop about our travels and the tours he leads in Norway.

 

The next morning we woke up to clouds and pouring rain but we packed anyway, and hung out at the hotel waiting for the rain to pass (watching the animated movie “Ice Age” in Swedish) and by 1:30, the rain had tapered off and we were able to leave. We found a roadside pension where we got some coffee and freshly made heart-shaped waffles topped with strawberries and a huge dollop of unsweetened whipped cream.

 

Traveling south, and backtracking towards the west coast, we wound up back in Gothenborg at the floating Ibis Hotel. We headed to the avenue to get something for dinner where we ran into a group of Spanish minstrels from Granada (Tunas), holding their mandolins and dressed in capes and black velvet, looking a bit lost. We stopped and talked to them and they explained that they were looking for a place to play. They had asked at some of the restaurants lining the sidewalks if they could play there but were told no, so they were at a loss as to what to do. We chatted a bit about Spain and Sweden then left to eat, telling them that they should just set up and play on the corner. Walking back towards the hotel after dinner, we didn’t see them again, but we did see a few other sidewalk “musicians” such as the pair with keyboards and guitar and portable amplifier, or the pudgy guy with the thick glasses and a microphone into which he “sang” off-key along with the music coming from the boom box slung around his neck

 

From Gothenborg, we headed back into Europe; over the bridge to Copenhagen. It was still early and Mike thought it would be fun to go see the little mermaid so we made a whirlwind tour through Copenhagen, following the signs to the city center. At a large intersection, we stopped for a red light in front of a tourist information center so I ran inside and grabbed a map, then enlisted a taxi driver to show me on the map where we were and where we needed to go. We followed the map and the driver's directions past Tivoli gardens (the oldest amusement park in Europe?), past lots of cool old buildings with copper roofs (ooh, cool, did you see that one?!), and past an old castle hidden behind a large dike, finally ending up at the harbor. We could see the water of the harbor but no mermaid, so we asked someone who told us, “she’s that way, just a few hundred meters. She’s small but you can tell where she is by looking for the group of Japanese taking pictures”.

 

She was indeed small, about 4 feet tall, sitting by herself on a outcropping of rock just off the embankment in the water. A couple of Spanish tourists clowned around for the camera, and as soon as they were done, I took my requisite shots and then we left to make our way out of Copenhagen and on the road to Germany.

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