Pupletts in Sweden: How we nearly angered the Viking Gods

On Thursday we got my car. A Volkswagon Passat wagon, brand new with only 17km on the clock. The only problem was that its a left-hand drive. Sure thats not a problem for Swedes who are used to driving on the right hand side of the road, but for us it was going to be a challenge. When the kids asked how driving on the 'wrong' side of the road felt, both Kris and I struggled to find an analogy before I finally summed it up as "It's like wearing your T-shirt as underwear". Sure this was a bit random but it did kind of sum it up - its still familar but just wrong. But how would I know anyway, I wussed out and made Kristine drive our first road trip :)

I spent some time looking at where we could go. We didnt want to do lots of driving in town - there were too many bikes and too much traffic. Then I found Ystad. It's a small town on the south coast about an hours drive from Malmo but most of the drive is freeway. At Ystad is the "Ales Stenar" - "Ale's Stones", which are touted as Sweden's Stonehenge. Its a set of standing stones, set up by the vikings in the shape of a boat on a hill overlooking the bay. But more on that later :)

When I mentioned this at work, it turned out the other Aussie expat family was planning on heading out there also, so we decided to go together, see the stones and have a picnic in Ystad.

So the first port of call was shopping. We had our migration biometrics (photos, fingerprints and signature, for our ID cards) done on friday, so we stopped by the shop and got some bread, meats and lollies. We made a fruit salad, pasta salad and packed cheese, ham and pepperoni. We also got some lollies to keep the kids (and adults) happy. It turns out the Swedish word for "foam" is "skum". This makes for some interesting names - for example there are plenty of fire extinguishers with SKUM written across them in huge letters and it also relates to foam lollies, such a these:

In case you can't read it, these lollies are called "Hello Kitty Skum" - appetising..

The Ales Stenar are about 20 minutes drive from Ystad. Once we parked in the carpark at the bay below we were suprised by how windy and cold it was. Overall its been about 10 degrees or so, but its been pretty comfortable but today, the wind cut straight through the jackets and we were a little worried it would blow Tomas away. It made it hard to hear each other, but we managed to group up and walk through the cow paddocks until we came to stones.

Alana at the steps overlooking the bay.

Looking back over the bay

We have some old photos of my dad and his cousin at the stones in Rollright and I wanted to recreate something similar, so here's all the kids in front of the South Eastern "Stern" Stone

The stones are formed in the shape of a ship, 67m long. It is made up of 59 stones each up to 1.8 tonnes (thanks Wikipedia). Archaeologists excavated the site in 1989 and found human remains and ash from a pyre that aged the relic at about 1400 years old - 600AD. These are some photos later that show the informaton signs with some details about the site.

Here's the view from the SE looking NW towards the NW Stern Stone:

and from the middle of the monument looking towards the NW Stern Stone.

Me in front of the NW Stern Stone:

Kris resting out of the wind:

A view of the stones from the west by the cliffs. The NW Stern Stone is on the left.

We aso got a couple of shots in front of the NW Stern Stone - Tom wasnt too happy with how loud the wind was:

This is looking to the Northwest along the cliffs away from the stones:

These shots are of the information boards about the stones. There's some interesting information, such as the stones are set up so that at the Winter Solstace (shortest day) the sun rises over the SE Stern stone and sets over the western mid-ship stone. On Summer Solstace (longest day), the sun rises over the NW Stern Stone and sets over the eastern mid-ship stone. On the Equinox the sun travels between the mid-ship stones. Read the signs for more info but it works like a giant calendar:

As we were about to leave, Tomas decided he needed to pee and walked over behind the NW Stern Stone. Kris and I managed to catch him before he angered any viking gods.

The wind made some nice waves - There were even people surfing in full dry suits.

After leaving the stones we went back to Ystad to find a place for a picnic. It was pretty windy, which made it hard to find a good place. One park looked nice, but it turned out that its was outside a crematorium so we decided to give that a miss.

Eventually we find a nice sheltered area called a kyrkogård. "Oh good, a church garden." I thought. It had a nice little stream and some sheltered areas, so we pulled in and then I found out that it actually meant "graveyard". Deciding we were unlikely to find a nice area to eat that didnt have bodies nearby, we found a quiet area and had our picnic.

A frog prince statue in the creek - I tried, but none of the kids would kiss him.