A Lesson in Swedish

I’ll start off this post with some of the words I learned in Swedish:

Tack-thank you

Fika-a generalized term for a break usually with tea, coffee, light snack, etc.

Herre forbarma dig- Lord have mercy

IKEA-IKEA

I think these words give an appropriate snapshot of my time in Sweden.

After a lovely wedding in New York, I jetted off to Stockholm (on Norwegian air- super cheap if you are interested!) for a rainy day of wandering the city and playing legos with the Swedish-Russian children I was staying with. Most of my time in Sweden, however, was spent in Uppsala, a city in Uppland about forty minutes from Stockholm. Uppsala is a university city and its university library contains a lot of Soviet propaganda material and pre-revolutionary maps. The latter was why I picked the city as my first stop. I spent most of my time in the Carolina Rediviva library which contains the famous Codex Argenteus, an illuminated manuscript from the 6^th century containing a 4^th century translation of the Bible into Gothic. Besides nerding out about their incredible collections and jumping up and down when finding the maps I was looking for, I was able to wander the city a bit. Here are a few sites from around the town.

The 13th century church in the photo is one of the main sites of Uppsala and not surprisingly called the Uppsala Cathedral. It was originally built as a Roman Catholic church and the site of many Swedish coronations and is now part of the Lutheran Church of Sweden.

Inside the church was an exhibition including this crown of Erik IX-also the oldest surviving crown in the Nordic countries. 

One of the many 11th century runes in the center of Uppsala.

I also attended my first Swedish Orthodox church service, and, since there were only two other people in the choir, I helped sing even though my ability to read Swedish is sub-par at best. Thankfully, I knew the melodies of almost all the hymns and was able to fudge my way through.

I have to say Sweden, as my first stop, was a bit of a shock to me. After a year of living and breathing Russia, I had equated traveling abroad as traveling in Russia. Somehow in the back of my head, I assumed that heading off to Sweden would pose the same challenges as Russia. I know this sounds completely inane since I have visited other countries and experienced cultures other than Russia, but I was still taken a back by how…in short… effortless it was to navigate the city, approach people for directions, etc. It’s easy to build up a trip in your mind with some attending trepidation about any upcoming adventure. I remember thinking to myself, “That’s it? There’s a bus schedule? It was on time? That was too easy! Where is the challenge?” Well, don’t worry I have adjusted all too well to these conveniences. (Hopefully not too much since I dream of visiting Russia again someday soon).

Next to come: Oslo, Norway