SWEDISH SOJOURN, Day 4, June 23

A day of moving today. My alarm, set on my phone, played the intermezzo from "Cavalleria Rusticana" this morning at 5:30. I had packed up last night after completing my blog, so I was pretty much set to go, except for a shower and washing of the hair. Luggage was set out at 7:15, and we left shortly afterwards, at 7:30. We departed for the Lake Siljan area, traveling to the province of Vaermland, going SW to the shores of Lake Vaenern. Our stay for the night was going to be Karlstad. The capital of the surrounding province of Vaermland, it sits amid an extensive area of sweeping forests, fertile farmland, and rivers once used to float timber into Vaenern and now an excellent way of seeing this peaceful part df western Sweden. Our first visit was to the village of Sunnemo, where we attended a Midsummer Eve church service. The Lutheran minister was a woman originally from Germany. Featured were four musicians--a woman playing piano, a man on violin, and two men on accordion. There was also an American choir which sang and later danced in Norwegian folk costumes. The service was held in both Swedish and English, and we were invited to sing along with the Swedish hymns, which was a real pleasure. We sang "How Great Thou Art" in both Swedish and English, and the song brought tears to my eyes, as my mother had sung it so many times. We also sang "O Vaermland," a kind of official anthem of the province. On the bus, as we were driving to Sunnemo, our guide Agneta had played the anthem on CD, and I remembered having been given a 45 record of the great Swedish tenor Jussi Bjoerling singing that beautiful song. My aunt Kaethe, who had lived in Sweden for a few years, had given it to me, and I had never forgotten its haunting melody. I sang it on the bus for the rest of the bus crew, and they liked it very much, and then to be able to sing it again in church was a rare and welcome treat. After the church service, we watched the dance troupe go through their paces, and then had a 10-minute talk by Mr. Alf Brorson, historian, pastor, and educator, on Swedish religion and emigration to America in the early 19th c. After our stint in Sunnemo, we went to a country restaurant called Medskogs Aktivitetsby, where we had a traditional Vaermland lunch of "potatiskorv" (potato sausage) and meatballs, boiled potatoes, salads, and a dessert of rice pudding with lingonberries. The lingonberries were to die for! After lunch we took a short drive to Ransaeter to tour the Ransaeter Homestead Museum, a collection of home and farm buildings dating from as far back as 1680. Our final stop was Karlstad, for dinner and overnighting. It sits on the N shores of Lake Vaettern and is named after King Karl IX, who granted the place its town charter in 1384. Since then the town has been beset by several disasters: devastating fires whipped through the center in 1616 and 1729, but it was in 1865, when fire broke out in a bakery, that Karlstad suffered the worst calamity--virtually the entire town, including the cathedral, burned to the ground. Of the 214 buildings that made up the town, only seven survived the flames. A national emergency fund was set up to help pay for reconstruction. Building began, with an emphasis on wide streets and large open squares to act as firebreaks and so prevent another tragedy. We were situated in our hotel, the Clarion Collection Hotel Bilan, which had once served as a prison and now preserves an incredible prison museum on the bottom floor, complete with cells, handcuffs, photographs of prisoners eating Christmas Eve dinner outside their cells, grated windows, etc. Incidentally, on the same floor but on another wing, were a dry sauna, a wet sauna, a hot pool, and tucked away and offering an extensive dining room table and chairs, a conference room which had once been two prison cells. An interesting combination I will remember for a long time. Four of us from the group rambled to the Domkyrka to see the altar, which supposedly possesses a baptismal font and crucifix made by Orrefors, but the church was closed and we were not able to do so. We also passed the Gamla Badhuser, which functioned as a spa and swimming baths until 1978. The building is worth a glance for its fine stonework. We also walked along a canal and watched locks being open and closed, and then discovered a high school on the main square. The square features a Peace Monument unveiled in 1955 commemorating the peaceful dissolution of the union between Sweden and Norway in 1905, which was negotiated in Karlstad. Its inscription reads: "Feuds feed Folk hatred; Peace promotes people's unterstanding." Upon returning to the hotel at 7:30, we had dinner with about six other people in our group. The theme was Mexican, and the offerings, the making of tacos, were quite excellent and well appreciated by the hungry crew. For dessert, chocolate mousse won the day. While a rhubarb crumble, the second one in two days, was very fine, it was not quite as yesterday's offering. Exhausted, so will turn in soon. The high today was about 65--fabulous temperatures. What a fine time was had by all!