The Swedish Interlude

We enjoyed a weekend of (mostly) sun by taking in the last days of the Jazz Festival, watching Italiensk for Begyndere, and taking the train to Sweden to explore Lund.

Friday evening we saw the end of a jazz performance by a good group at the Østerbro stage, only a 10 minute walk from our apartment. Saturday had some promising weather, so we went down to the harbor and saw another band featuring a xylophone. It was enjoyable - modern, but not too "out there." Afterwards we took a walk down Strøget before heading home. On the way we picked up Italiensk for Begyndere which is a Danish film from 2002 that won some awards, see here for reviews. We both enjoyed the film - it developed slowly but really drew us in.

Finally, we took the train to Lund. Lund is a university town in Skåne (southern Sweden). Lund was founded by one of the early Danish kings (Knut the Great?) in 990. It remained part of Denmark until 1658 when it was ceded to Sweden, thus beginning "The Swedish Interlude," as described in the museum we visited. The Swedish Interlude continues to this day. Danish flags flew alongside Swedish flags, demonstrating the divided loyalties of the region (it's a long way to Stockholm). We spent most of our time at Kulturen, an open-air museum with about 40 homes mostly from the Skåne region. Like the other museums of this type in Scandinavia, we enjoyed the insight into the history of the region. Since most monuments preserved for posterity were built by the military, the church, or the aristocracy, these museums are a rare chance to see another side and get a feel for how people lived then. You can see a picture of me crawling out of a Småland farmhouse that was home to a family of 9 until the father ran off to America, not to be heard from again. Unfortunately Kulturen didn't have the reenactors like the denizens of Den Gamle By or Skansen, but it did have good written descriptions about the people who inhabited the buildings preserved on the site.

After Kulturen we visited the cathedral. It was compact, as cathedrals go, but impressive and solid. We were treated to a half-hour choir concert by a touring group from Bowling Green University (Ohio). They did several African-American spirituals and some other favorites we knew from our choir days. It was a nice reminder of our own European choir tour 12 summers ago.