a little sweden

we took the boys to the dentist today.

the bad news: henry is on the verge of about a hundred cavities.

the good news: greg stayed at a beautiful inn when he was in sweden, and he took pictures for us!




do you see the sign?  anno 1699. as an inn, we wonder?  or maybe that's when the trees were built.  anyway, they say people like linnaeus stayed here-- he was 1700's.  but they also say queen kristina stayed here.  she lived between 1626 and 1689, so maybe the trees were built in 1699, but it's possible the inn has been around even longer.  i knew nothing about queen kristina, but in my brief research for this post i thought i'd share just a little about her.  a queen of sweden, she was born to king gustav and maria eleanora.  here is what oregon state had to say:

Her mother was disappointed that she was a girl, especially since the court soothsayers and wise women predicted the child would be a boy. Consequently, she had little or nothing to do with the child. Her father, however, said "She will be a clever girl. She has already deceived all of us." Some reports claim that Kristina accompanied her father on journeys even as an infant and showed delight at the sound of cannon fire.

later, it's legally recognized that she will succeed the king when he dies and he sends her off to be trained as a prince.  these scandinavian countries were always so forward thinking.  unfortunately the king dies in battle.  his wife, her mom, apparently locks herself up in her room with his heart in a gold box.  kristina becomes queen.  she becomes educated.  she's super smart, learning german, french, italian, spanish, and latin.  oy!  but she also studies 12 hours a day.  (like a lawyer.)  (but not like me.) of course, danish is notably missing from this list... so maybe it really is a difficult language to learn.  no, danish and swedish are quite similar-- i verified that this morning, reading the back of the shampoo bottle-- so probably she didn't need to 'learn' it.  in any event, she's crowned in 1644 (4 years before christian IV dies-- remember him??).  this is right around the time that sweden invaded denmark and denmark handed over a bunch of norway and a little bit of denmark to sweden.  what else?  she is 'the driving force' in ending the 30 years' war, is blamed for descartes' death, considers abdicating from the throne, has a nervous breakdown, does abdicate, crowns her cousin, leaves sweden on a tour for europe, becomes a catholic, tries to become queen in naples which the pope doesn't like, has one of her servants killed, tries to rule poland, which she's not allowed to do, writes a couple of books, and lives and dies in rome.  and a lot more in between.  now-- i got that from oregon state.  you're not going to write your history paper from my blog anyway, but if any of it is inaccurate, just pretend i'm writing fiction.

more pictures....

up the hill and to the right--

 outside the inn...

apparently there's not really trespassing in sweden.  you can walk anywhere and build a fire and set up your tent anywhere, as long as you're 300 meters from a house.  and, of course, you do it all at your own risk.

it'd be a beautiful place to camp...

 inside the inn...

a lovely inn.

but it's late and now we are done with the guided tour, so i will say goodnight.