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Sunday, October 7, 2007

Interesting Saturday

Yesterday I went to the Malmö Museum for the first time ever. It's housed in the castle/fortress Malmöhus from the 16th century. There are several different kinds of exhibits; an aquarium, two art galleries, prehistoric Skåne, archaeological finds from Malmö, the development of Malmö city from the beginning until around 1900, and one side of the castle with old interiors and royal portraits was open to visitors. Skåne belonged to Denmark from the formation of nation-states around 1100 until 1658. The castle was strategically placed, overlooking the port of entry and it was in use as royal castle during the king's regular visits until the Swedes took charge. After a few years the castle lost its significance, and it was turned into a prison. The museum moved in 1937.

In the prehistoric section I learned that the earliest inhabitants lived in Skåne around 12 000 B.C. They were hunters who followed the reindeers. It was interesting to see the finds from all the recent road constructions, there were pearls, 600-year old foreign coins, rings, pieces of Dutch china, metal brooches, but also a very old wooden clog and fishing equipment (osier basket, according to my dictionary). I wonder what the future archaeologists will think of the things we leave behind now.

The art gallery for modern art didn't interest me, but the other gallery displaying art and furniture of the different styles, like jugend, renaissance, Gustavian (named after Swedish King Gustav 3rd), and baroque, was fascinating. All the interiors, except one, had been taken from very wealthy family residences, and that was kind of misleading, because that's not the way most of our ancestors lived. Most of us descend from farmers and crofters, who lived in small wooden houses with very little fancy decorations.

After the museum visit, I went for lunch at an up-scale Italian restaurant. The pizza was very tasty. I also went shopping at Gray's. It's a store where they sell imported American food and candy. They have a fairly large selection of cake mixes, and I bought a package of Betty Crocker's chocolate fudge brownie mix.

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