Today we embraced the royal nature of Sweden. Sweden is a constitutional monarchy with a ceremonial monarchy similar in some ways to England. The current King is Carl XVI Gustav and the Queen is Silvia. They have three children, the Crown Princess Victoria, the eldest, Prince Carl Philip and Princess Madeleine. I think it is interesting that the rules of succession to the throne were changed in 1980, three years after Princess Victoria’s birth to eliminate gender discrimination and making her the Crown princess. Her brother, who has born in 1979, thus was crown prince for about a year after his birth until he had to relinquish his claim on the throne to his elder sister. Quite a progressive country!
We were able to buy a ticket and walk right into the castle where the royal family conducts their official business although they don’t live there. This is quite the contrast to our recent tour of the White House, which we had to apply for six months in advance and go through a background check before being approved to walk through the public rooms. We were able to see many of the castle’s public rooms where they have fancy state dinners and other similar events.
We also visited the treasury to see the crown jewels. These included the most jeweled encrusted filigreed gold crowns that you can imagine. Not a millimeter of space was left unenhanced. The current King and Queen do not actually use the crowns through, because the king has not officially been coronated! The cost of the necessary ceremony and its relative unimportance have lead Sweden to skip the coronation, but as such King Carl XI Gustav can’t wear the official crown of Sweden!
Finally we saw the royal armory with the historical carriages of the kings and queens, and some had runners for traveling over snow and ice. The armory also had a lot of clothes and armor, with several bloodstained outfits that various kings actually died in.
The section of town with all this royal activity is known as Gamal Stan, the old town. Despite the chill in the air, and the overcast gloomy weather, the streets were packed. On a day like this at home, about 42°F, windy and overcast you would find few people outside, but the Swedes were going about their business, out to enjoy their Saturday. We had lunch at a great Thai buffet. It is very common here for people to vacation at the beaches in Thailand and Thai food is extremely popular.
We stopped at an excellent Swedish design store, similar to the MOMA store with all kinds on interesting and unique items from up and coming Swedish designers. Apparently every time you go the feature items are different. I ended up with my souvenir of Sweden here, a bright green flat plastic vase that pops open to hold water and then can collapse totally flat again. I plan to use it in my Paris apartment! It weigh approximately one ounce so is an excellent choice for my travels.
Interestingly, tacos are also very popular, with Friday night being the unofficial taco night for all of Sweden. Large taco displays are located in all the grocery stores. They actually have more variety in taco shells than we do at home, with a great option called Taco tubs, which are crunchy corn shells, but shaped like flat square serving tray with raised edges. You load up your tray and then eat it. No spillage or leakage like traditional corn shells. We enjoyed our taco night, but in defiance of tradition on Saturday rather than Friday. As Easter is approaching, we were discussing some Easter traditions over dinner, and I learned about Easter witches. In Scandinavia, witches gather around Easter time and you need to light fires to keep them away. The witches are similar to Halloween withes but wear bandanas instead of peaked hats. They ride broomsticks accompanied by black cats, and tie coffee pots to their broomsticks. My friend could not explain why they tie coffee pots to the broomsticks, but insisted that they just do. And if you dress like an Easter witch for the Easter parade you will receive a chocolate egg at the end, so it’s best just to accept it s you can get your chocolate.
Tacos?! Who knew?
ReplyDeleteRegan