We had a guide that took us through parts of the island and explained things they have found and of their life. We went by a grave area and the guide told of how they were buried and what items were buried with them. She said that back in the late 1800's people had been doing archiological digs there.
The guide also showed us a dig where they found a village. As she said, a lot of what is said is "hypothesis" because there is nothing written. She told us of old Viking gods and myths. She was very interesting and good.
Berka, back then, was established because it was an island in the center of all other islands. It made a good stop for trading. Also, the Viking village only lasted about 200 years, from 750 to 950 AD. They aren't quite sure why they left, but assuming that the trading business fell off. The bodies of islands and waters were created by glaciers. Supposedly the glaciers held down all the land below. With the glaciers gone, the land started rising and is still rising today. So the guide felt that due to the land rising, it made it more inaccessible for trading and the people left.
After the tour of the area, we saw this small display of a home. There were people dressed in clothing of the period, cooking meat on the fire, splitting wood, and baking flat bread.
The tour was a great history lesson.
We caught our boat back to Stockholm and arrived about 5:15. We weren't going to take a train until 6:45 to Norrkopping, but we found one that didn't charge an extra fee at an earlier time so we hopped on that one.
We arrive in Norrkopping about 7:30, walked to the hostel, about a half mile. We aren't quite sure what we are going to do here. Norrkopping was listed as a stop in one of the books we have so we will check the place out tomorrow. There was a fellow we met in Stockholm and he asked why we would want to go to Norrkopping.
July 25, 2003
Laurie and I made reservations at another hostel for tonight because the one that we were at was full for tonight. The other hostel was quite aways and we would have to take a bus there. We packed our packs and we were going to leave them in the train station at a locker overnight. We were just going to take what we needed for the day and night.
I went to the front desk to see if I could use their phone. She told me that there was a cancellation so we could stay in our room. That was going to make things so much easier. It is nice to be able to stay in a place for a couple of days. It is more relaxing and I don't feel like I am on the go all the time.
Once we unpacked we walked to the information center. I asked them about a walk, but I was told it is only on Saturdays. It seemed like everything I asked about was not available to us while we were here.
So we just walked around and tried to find the few museums that we read about.
We first walked through Karl Johan's Park. I don't know who he is but there is also a street in Norway named Karl Johan. Anyways, the park is small, but has beautiful flower beds. There was a flower bed that surrounded a nice water fountain. What the park is especially known for is the flower bed that is designed with cactus. Every year they do a new arrangement and design depicting something special. The book I have says there are 25,000 cactus plants. It didn't look like that many, but I'll take their word. I wasn't going to try to count them. The arrangement was beautiful.
Norrkopping was one of the most important industrial cities of Sweden and it was the eighth largest. I don't know if that is true today. It was filled with textile mills and paper mills at one time.
One old mill that sits in the middle of the Mutala Strom (river) is now a museum. The building itself was shaped like an iron. The museum was free. It had different exhibits on each floor portraying different types of work.
The first floor was on the Volvo. There was a man that explained to us a little about this exhibit. A man found an old abandoned Volvo in the forest and he was curious why it was there and who owned it. The man found out that there had been 18 owners for the one car. It was a 1966 Amazon Volvo. The man contacted the owners and asked what their story was with the car. It was interesting. I can't say that a car now-a-days has that many owners or last that long.
Volvos are made in Sweden. There was an old restored 1966 Volvo in the museum.
The other floors consisted of a famous Swedish photographer named Christer Stromholm, a display of photographs of the Sisters of Birgattan and a display of a woman's story of working as a bobbin winder for 35 years on the 5th floor of this building.
The museum was free and very different than most museums. It wasn't overwhelming and it was interesting.
Next to this museum was the Stadsmusset, which is the city museum. This was also another free museum and very interesting. It portrayed the life of people and of the crafts and industrues of the 19th century.
When I first went in, there was a display of old short wave radios. There was one that was about as big as a piano.
There was a display of the looms to make textiles, a display of a blacksmith's shop, and a bunch of smaller displays of shops that had a cobbler, cooper, hat maker, glove maker, a barber, and an optician. This also was interesting and not too overwhelming.
After all of this, I was hungry. Laurie and I found a store and got "take away". That is what they say in most countries that I have been in. We sat on the bench outside the store and had potato salad and barbequed chicken.
