everyday life

first day at work 2013

So, the Christmas holiday is over. And today I had to go back to work. But I did go back in style. This bag has been mine for 2 years. Bought it here, in Edinburgh, January 2011.

A great way to spice up a gray January.

lucia

It's that time of year again, it's Lucia! And we celebrated as usual with a choir singing to us at work. It's always a joy to watch and it's always makes me cry a bit. 

December 13 (if it's a working day) starts of with this and after we have coffee and Lusse buns & ginger bread cookies to eat. A perfect way to start of a work day.

tofta beach yesterday evening

I just came back from a 2-day trip to Gotland. I had a work related work shop with 6 colleauges about Knowledge Management. Two intense day with lots of fun, food and work.

We stayed in the village of Tofta, about 20 minutes south of Visby, and very close to the beach.  So after the dinner I walked down to the beach and saw an incredible sun set. These are the best photos from last evening.

 
 
 
An empty beach. It was really nice to walk around. But we also sat in the sand and just looked at the amazing view. Really, really nice.

the sture glove

On Friday I got a bit surprised at work, just before lunch I got the magazine "Knitting Tradition" in my hand. I knew my colleague had been looking for this photo in our collections this summer, but I never knew it was to show up in a knitting magazine. 

On page 58-59 there was an article written by Nancy Bush - and the photo on page 59 showing a yellow glove is actually a photo from my archive! The actually glove can be seen in Uppsala.

The story of this glove is that Captain Sten Svantesson Sture wore the glove when he died in a battle 1565, against the Danish. The words Frevchen Sofia are worked in knitting across the palm. Textile historians had thought that Sture was engaged to a German girl, that the glove likely was hers, worn as her favor in the battle, an that the word Frevchenmeant "miss" in Middle Low German. Recent reseach by a Danish textile historian, Lise Warburg has shown the frevchen was a sixteenth-century Swedish word for "princess".

Princess Sofia - born 1547, was the daughter of King Gusav Vasa (ruled 1523-1560), and it's now believed that she was engaged to Sten Svantesson Sture. She most likely knitted the glove herself and made it for Sture to carry with him into battle. (Nancy Bush - Knitting Tradition, Winter 2010).

In anyway, regardless if the knitter is a German girl or a Swedish princess, the work is excellent done and it's a joy to see the great photo of it.

visby

Yesterday morning I left my flat early to take a bus to my nearest the airport, Bromma.  About an hour later I arrived, with two colleagues, at Visby airport. A crisp and absoultly blue sky welcomed us to the island of Gotland.

the ruins in visby are famous, this is st karins ruin

The Archive and the Library wanted to show our service to our colleauges in Visby, and show them we have a service to them despite the distans to the record hall and the book shelves. And it was a joy to meet up with our colleauges in Visby!

I talked about the Archive service we have. We are more the happy to scan or copy at their command. I told them about our online services: the photo database KMB and to our blueprint database and to our catalouge over our records. (And by the way - have you seen this ? I was not involved in this, but some of my colleauges!)

We were busy the whole day, but we had a chance to stroll through Visby and before we took the cab  to the airport we had a great dinner at Bakfickan. A lovely day!

the importance of cultural heritage

What is Cultural Heritage? And what do you think is Cultural Heritage? Since I work at The Swedish National Heritage Board I live with these questions everyday.

the church in Kiruna

Is  the ancient sport of Glima (Icelandic wrestling) Cultural Heritage? Sports in general? Food? Gardens? Knitting? Crafts in general? Music? In my opinion everything above is Cultural Heritage and everything you do is in the context of a Cultural Heritage. The upcoming holidays are filled with traditions and cultural heritage. The food you put on your Christmas table, what  you drink, the songs and the playful games around the Christmas tree.

I have been to a 2 day conference about the Importance of the Cultural Heritage and had listen to seminars about this important topic. How can we make the Cultural Heritage available to everyone? Old buildings and churches are listed buildings and you aren't aloud do make big changes to the buildings to build entrances for wheelchairs. And for those who can't see, those who can't hear, those who speak a minority language, tourists who visit these sites and buildings and how to get the people of Sweden interested of their local heritage?

The conferance was very interesting. It was located in a listed building, the Skandia Movie Theatre, in central Stockholm,  from 1920s. A very beautiful movie theatre - this is what a movie theatre should look like!! Not like the ones built today.

skandia movie theatre

Now it's time for some breakfast!

churches, gotland

The island of Gotland has about 92 medieval churches. During my trip to Gotland I saw two of them. Anga and Dalhem.

anga

Anga Church is from 13th century. It's one of the smallest church on Gotland.  And the medieval paintings are the most preservde mural paintings on the island. 

the older paintings

The oldest mural paintings is from 13th century and the younger is from 15th century. 

the younger paintings are showing the life of Jesus.

 

dalhems church, part of the doorway

Dalhem is another medieval church, on of the biggest churches on the island. But between 1899- 1914 they did some major work on this church, and made new paintings, to look like medieval paintings and destroyed the real medieval ones.

 

The medieval windows in Dalhems church.

roma abbey ruins

On Friday morning we had breakfast at the hotel - Hamnhotellet. And after breakfast we were divided in 7 groups. Every group was walking off or driving off in buses in different directions. My group headed to the east side of the island. Our first stop was at Roma Kloster  - Roma Abbey ruins.

 

the ruins of roma abbey

The Abbey was founded 1163 by  Cistercian monks from the Nydala Abbey in Småland (on the mainland Sweden). The governing abbey was Clairvaux in France. The abbey became a religious and agricultural centre for the region around the Baltic sea. It was a prosperous time for Roma.

 

With the reformation, 1530s, the abbey was abandoned and was resigned into the Danish Crown's(Gotland was part of  Denmark at this time) ownership. When Gotland became Swedish 1645, the abbey was in a very sad state and when the Governor began to build a new residence at Roma, he took the stones from the abbey and put in the abbey doorways in the new buildings.

the (former) govonor residence, roma kungsgård

During the 1930, 1940s the area become in the hands of the military, they left in the 1970s. Nowdays you can see theatre in ruins. Every summer a Roma theatre companysets up an Shakespeare play and it's very popular. In the former residence you can find a crafts and arts shop and in one of the buildings next to the residencet you can find the Roma Glasbruk.

Click on the photo's to come to my Flickr page for more Gotland.

visby

Last Thursday and Friday was spent on the beautiful island of Gotland, in the Baltic Sea. Since October 1st my company has an office on the island, in the town of Visby and the trip was kick off the new office and to visit our colleauges who has moved from Stockholm to Visby. It was great to see the gang  in Visby and to see the new office. 

  the great hall at artillerigatan in visby, before the party begins

Later in the evening we had a party, about 500 guests, great food and great band playing, Bacchi Bröder - photo below.

Even later that evening we ended up at one of the classic Visby joints - Munkkällaren . It looks the same as it did when I was here the first time in 1991 (?).

...and look who is standing in the bar...

Next post will be more about this trip. See 'ya.

friday, finally...

Some weeks are longer than others, and this week has been looong. Even though I have been doing lots of fun things this week. But I have tons of things at work (and here I sit and writes a blog post during work hours... Shame on me... Shhhh - don't tell...) and meetings everyday. At the moment, being at the office is not fun at all. We have a work load that is unbelievable, and we are loosing staff members in every month now, and we have no money to replace them, so we who are left behind, is slowly drowning. I am thankful to have a work to go to every morning, but at the moment it's "sink or swim".

Thank god for fun things to do after work, and that is football on TV every night. I have been watching a lot of football this week (and upcoming weeks). Alone at home, with friends in a pub, home at friends houses. But no football tonight -GASP! I ditch Italy, Romania, Holland & France for some good country/bluegrass music tonight. Tonight you will find me along with this gal (and her bf) and this gal at Stockholm's stadium, watching Dolly Parton for a couple of hours.

And during most of all these football matches on TV, I have been knitting - exept for the Sweden game. I have been knitting a lot on the Waving Lace Socks, and I'm about to turn the heel now.

Ok, I guess I need to do some work now.. Have a great Friday! And I guess I will see some of you tomorrow at Mariatorget / or at Marias garn?