Back in Sweden, Mom and I decided to take a day trip on the train North to Uppsala. It takes about an hour total to get to Uppsala and Uppsala is the fourth largest city in Sweden with a population of about 150,000. Uppsala very much reminded me of Fort Collins, Colorado and it is also a University town housing Uppsala University, the oldest University in Scandinavia. We wanted to see Scandinavia's oldest church the Uppsala Cathedral.
The church was just amazing and full of detail. Swedish Kings and notable persons are also buried at the church and it was pretty interesting to see Gustav Vasa's sarcophagus and Eric the Saint's casket. Gustav Vasa most notably united Sweden, created a central government, and defeated the Danish. He was a pretty important King for the Swedes. Dale and I happen to live in Vasastan so it has been interesting learning about Gustav Vasa and realizing so many of the places around us are named after him. Eric the Saint, on the other hand, spread Christianity in an effort to unite Sweden and conquer Finland. For many many years after his death his casket was paraded around town on his patron day, May 18th, but that practice has since ceased.
While we were in the area we decided to take the bus 10km to Gamla Uppsala. Gamla Uppsala is home to Viking burial mounds and we spent a little bit walking around the mounds learning about the medieval practices. Apparently there used to be many more mounds but now the three mounds pictured below are the best preserved and they were the royal burial mounds.
Our day in Uppsala also happened to be a rainy windy day but Mom and I still made the most of it. We did learn later it was so windy because Hurricane Irene was moving through Sweden. Kind of funny our first Hurricane was in Sweden!
I hope to get another chance to go up to Uppsala so Dale can check it out. It's a small town, but I thought it had a lot of personality.
Love Always,
Matilda
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