Skansen I

Few days ago I decided to go to Skansen. It is a open air museum and zoo in central Stockholm, on Djurgården island. It shows the way of life in the different parts of Sweden before industrial era. A Swedish dude called Artur Hazelius, who was a teacher, figured it would be nice to bunch up some buildings and animals to show people how it was in the past! He travelled a lot and brought back 150 houses from different parts of the country, mainly 15th - 16th century style. You can also find there a replica of 18th century town, museum of tobacco and matches, bisons, bears, owls and wolverines (hell yeah!)


It is very easy to get to Djurgården, there are buses, trams, it is close enough to walk there too. But there is a nice way when the weather allows it - a ferry. The trip lasts around 15 minutes from Slussen and stops next to Gröna Lund - amusement park.

The ferry arriving at Slussen.

Grona Lund view from a ferry.

Vasa Museum.

Ah boats!

Kastellholmen island.

From there it is not too far to the main entrance to Skansen, 1-2 stops depending on a transport. Admission fee is 100 SEK. Right after you pass the gates, you can find a small plan with main attractions. You also get a map.

Board with tiny cows!

If you like to explore in peace and silence consider going there during the week, cause on weekends, especially Sunday the park is filled with parents and LOTS of children. I was lucky, it was almost empty.
The tiny amusement park (inside) was dead. It looked pretty sad with nobody playing around!

Carousel

Lonely elefant.

I didn't spend too much time there, since I am not 6 any more and everything was closed down. Further along the road I found old houses, school and Hazeliu's grave. If I would read every description on the buildings I would probably still be there now... Funny thing was that 1st of September is also first day of school (at least in Poland) and the first building I have seen was a school. So back in the days if people had a business or a profession, they usually lived in the same building. So there is 1 classroom and teachers apartment in the same building. It also stated on the info plate that teachers did't get a lot of money (duh!) so it was popular to have bee hives and sell honey! 

Just a pretty fence.

Hazeliu's grave. 

Wooden bell tower.

Classroom. Amazingly - hare on the blackboard! Some people know what it means :P

Teacher's crib. 

Little storage room, probably for all the honey!

Oh I forgot to mention that every open house and building had a person inside. This person would be a sort of a guide... They were wearing silly clothing appropriate to the occasion and time period. This people would share the knowledge about the building and it's inhabitants. It was pretty cool. I always tried to ask them tricky questions!

What is next? Ah yes. The Manor. I mean seriously, some people were just lucky. Living in a manor like this would be amazing. So first you have like a little path leading to the buildings, it is all surrounded with trees, flowers, mazes of bushes. Path leads to the courtyard. One main building and two on the sides (for servants and stuff), a bit further away another weird looking building (no picture) which was a storage.

Path to the manor.

Moomin's house... in the garden.
Actually is is just a pavilion. 

This thing had a clever name, but I don't remember...

Entrance to the manor. Sadly it was closed.

This is actually a view from the stairs... Lucky bastards. 

I have no manors! (See what I almost did there?)

Move along people... There so much more to see. I will skip few things I've seen on the way and I will come back to them in next posts. 

Next stop: Rose garden and Oscar's Terrace.

Rose garden.

Rose garden.

Little boy with a fish.

This is not Ingrid Bergman. I checked.

View on Nordic Museum from the Terrace.

View from the Terrace.

Oh it goes south from then and there. I mean no more fancy buildings - au naturel - if you like. 

Welcome to the land of Sami! Check them out here. So as I said - all natural. This people had to work with whatever nature gave them so as you can see below they were not very fancy, but still impressive. 

This one is fancy.

Chicken legs house :)

Kinda like a tent!

This part is very much associated with animals, but I will leave that for another post, since this one is pretty long already... Now I will present few pictures with short descriptions cause it is pretty late and it took me two movies to write this post (Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman, while writing and keeping one eye on the movies) 

Stylish crib... with a bit of moss.

Market street, apparently pretty fancy during X-Mass.

Pretty nice home, had a barn and stuff.

Kitchen

Day room. Some housework in progress.

Cosy kitchen again.

Ok yes, they had a swing in the house. And the swing had a purpose. Keeping kids off the floor where many dangerous things happen!

Book store?

Local shop...

...with an apartment at the back!

That would be it for the buildings. I still have quite a few random pictures and even more REALLY cool pictures of animals from Skansen! I am sorry if you didn't read it at all. There was so much stuff to see and I really didn't want to skip too much. Anyway if you are planning to go to Stockholm, please find few hours to visit Skansen. Yes, at list few hours.

Thanks for reading!