I'm quite sure that I've mentioned Skansen here at least once before as it's become one of my favorite places in Stockholm. It's billed as an open-air museum, which probably sounds strange for a country buried under snow for half the year. And yes, it does get really cold walking around there in the winter but it's totally worth it. Part of the place is essentially a museum of history and anthropology. Whole buildings from different centuries and different parts of Sweden were brought to Skansen along with their period furniture and accessories, and each day some of these buildings are inhabited by docents in period costume who tell you about the building and about life during that particular time. We've seen different women roasting coffee, making flatbread and knitting in dark, low-ceilinged, smoky kitchens. Another part of Skansen is a zoo. No giraffes or lions (I think they'd freeze to death), but animals such as wolves, bears and reindeer. Another part is a tiny amusement park that's essentially deserted right now but I'm sure will be busy starting in May, and then there's Little Skansen, an indoor children's museum with play structures and small animals (fish, guinea pigs, chickens, etc) that's inevitably packed.
We purchased a yearlong family membership and have been making it a point to get the most out of it. We went a few times during the Christmas season when they had special concerts and markets, and I knew that January 6 was the last day of their seasonal celebrations. I had my special Skansen Christmas calendar and noted exactly which events I wanted to see and participate in, not having high hopes that we'd actually be able to do everything. My personality's combination of ambition with laziness is bad enough without throwing a toddler into the mix. So imagine my surprise when we did it all, and more!
An early lunch was number one on the list (the park's only cafeteria-style restaurant gets extremely crowded by noon) followed by a concert of traditional fiddling. Our son is obsessed with violins, and stringed instruments in general, so I really wanted to make sure he saw this. It really wasn't so much a concert as it was two fiddlers in period dress sitting in front of a fireplace in a small 19th-century farmhouse, playing away. It was as though we (and a dozen other people) had teleported 150 years back in time into the house of a husband and wife playing music for their own entertainment. I restrained myself and didn't try to surreptitiously take a photo, but I wish I knew the name of the instrument the woman was playing. It had many strings and also many buttons along one side, and she would press the buttons as she bowed the instrument. Whatever it was, it was very, very fascinating. And O just sat there watching and listening for what must have been 20 minutes without fussing or fidgeting.
The Christmas market still had a few food stalls open, so we got to eat freshly made waffles and sweet roasted nuts. We also danced around the large Christmas tree in the center of the marketplace (ok, we danced near it and watched all the other people dancing around it as a live band played and sang) and we discovered a little playground that we'd somehow missed on all our previous visits. But the craziest thing of all? The Procession. Apparently in ye olde tymes, people would dress up and parade in the streets singing and chanting in rhyme to beg for food and drink. Kind of like wassailing, I guess? We thought we'd be watching this from the sidelines, but when it began, everyone was encouraged to BE part of the procession. The leaders were three youngish guys, one of whom was dressed like a bearded old man, one of whom was dressed like a woman, and one of whom was dressed like a goat or possibly a ram. Had it not been for the goatman, it would have all just seemed silly. But the goatman was completely sinister. He was wearing sheepskins (ok, so ram seems more likely) and in front he held a bright red goat/ram's head on a stick with the horns sticking out, and he bowed his own head down so you couldn't see his face. And of course we couldn't understand what they were saying. Totally out of The Wicker Man.
I expected us to walk past houses with people in costume standing outside who'd give a few of us something small. Instead, they started ushering everyone into the first house. By that point O was asleep (thank goodness) so S said he'd stay outside with the stroller. I wanted to see what would happen next, so in I shuffled foolishly. The tiny farmhouse was being heated by a log fire, so it was very dark (a little kid in front of me started crying because she'd fallen over the threshold), very hot, very smoky and extremely crowded. Once I was inside, I realized how many people were in there and how many more were still coming in, and I also realized that I had no idea how long this part would go on. And I realized it would all be in Swedish. And that there was a goatman blocking the exit. I was starting to feel claustrophobic and decided that, cultural curiosity be damned, I was getting out of that farmhouse before it was too late. So out I went against the flow of people, walking past the three men while trying to project the message, "Nothing personal, just too crowded." Maybe next Christmas we will brave the goatman again. Or maybe he will just haunt my dreams.
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