Got to Gothenburg

I got to Gothenburg just before 1:00 in the afternoon today after an almost three-and-three-quarter-hour train ride from Örebro.

The first thing to know about Gothenburg is that it’s not Gothenburg, at least, not to a Swede. The Swedish name is Göteborg. That’s what it’s listed as on the Swedish rail website. But it’s easily findable by typing “Got” in the station field and then selecting Göteborg from the drop-down list when it narrows down to just that. However, I did have to check—several times because I’m neurotic—that it was indeed the same place as Gothenburg.

All three of my guidebooks use Gothenburg as the name of the city. So, that’s what I’m going to go with here. I’m easily swayed when it saves me from having to conjure up an umlaut whenever I need to type the city name.

I think that my guidebooks use the Swedish name for all of the other cities I’m going to on this trip. I haven’t checked carefully, but I’m pretty sure that the city-name signs in the train stations I’ve been to before Gothenburg have all matched what my guidebooks have called them. And four of the seven cities I’m visiting on this trip have umlauts in their name. Why would anyone in their right mind include an umlaut when aglicizing a Swedish name?

Why does Göteburg (the last time I intend to use the Swedish name in these pages because of the burden of the umlaut) get an anglicized name, which seems to be universally used in English texts, when other cities don’t? I don’t know. Not the foggiest. But there you have it.

I’m going to be in Gothenburg for four nights. So, settle in. We’ll be here for a while.

My hotel is only a few minutes walk from the train station, so, after going to a coffee shop to remedy the effects of not having had lunch on the train, I still had most of the afternoon to explore a little bit of central Gothenburg.

I only chose a single destination for the afternoon, the Gothenburg City Museum, and planned to just wander after that. In my wanderings, I inadvertently stumbled on one of the sights listed in my guidebooks, Gothenburg’s Cathedral (Domkyrkan) and went inside.

(Because I had only the afternoon here today, this will be my only post of the day.)

Gothenburg City Museum

The Gothenburg City Museum (Stadsmuseum) is located in a building that used to house the offices, store, and auction house of the Swedish East India Company. The facades of the building might be handsome, stately, grand, gaudy, or plain ugly. I haven’t a clue.

When I was there, the whole building was entirely shrouded with scaffolding shielded with opaque, white plastic. But the museum inside was open.

One of my guidebooks tells me it’s the city’s biggest museum. That may be so. I haven’t been to any others here. I didn’t think it was huge. But I found navigation within it to be confusing. I not only think I missed a section, but I know it. When I got back to look at the museum’s website again before writing this up (I’d looked at it before going just to check hours), I found that there’s at least one room, and maybe a whole gallery or two, that I missed.

On the museum’s website, there’s a section that says, “In this exhibition, we present the largest retrospective exhibition to date featuring art from Lillhagen Hospital.” So I missed the largest of that exhibition theme to date. Then again, I don’t know how large other retrospective exhibitions of art from Lillhagen Hospital have been. So, maybe I missed a broom-closet-sized exhibition, with the previous ones being half-broom-closet-sized. But, based on the pictures on the website, it’s probably larger than that.

Oh, well. I missed some art. Art from a hospital, no less. What ya gonna do?

But I did see a fair bit of stuff at the museum.

One two-floor room houses an exhibit on Vikings. I say two-floor, but the upper level is essentially a balcony that wraps around the room, offering a view of the floor below. That view is of recovered wood from an old Viking ship laid out in the shape of the floor of the vessel. There are also a few small exhibits, both on those balconies and on the lower level around the ship.

The exhibits in this room include a variety of Viking relics, such as swords, jewelry, household items and more. There was also a lot of text in Swedish and English. I assume that the English was a translation of the Swedish, but I wouldn’t know if it said something completely different.

I learned a lot from the text, and I took pictures of some of it so I could remember it here. For example, I learned that:

• The Viking Age, between 790 and 1050 CE, only came to be referred to as the Viking Age in the 19th century. Obviously, it couldn’t have been known as that before the Vikings’ time. It’s not like people before that were saying, “Hey, the Viking Age will soon be upon us. We’d better tidy up before they get here.” But why did it take people so long to give it a name? What did they say until the name stuck? “You know. That time when the Nordic marauders were mucking about. Come on, you know.”
  
  
• The Vikings might not have minded if the people before the Viking Age didn’t tidy up before they came.
  
  According to at least one account, they weren’t the most hygienic of people. In 922 CE, an Arabic diplomat by the name of Ibn Fadlan gave an eyewitness account to a Bulgarian earl of his encounter with Vikings. He reported that, “They are the dirtiest people ever created by Allah! They do not wash after they have relieved themselves. Nor do they wash after sexual intercourse or wash their hands after meals. They behave like donkeys running wild.” Um. Okay. Way too much information.
  
  
• The Vikings believed that there was a Tree of the World. It had a lot of names, but the most famous one was “Yggdrasil.” I wish the museum provided an audio presentation on this. I would have liked to have learned how that’s pronounced. No word needs two adjacent Gs.
  
  According to legend, “The Tree of the World had three roots reaching down into the underworld and each root drank from a well.” Quite a tree. I wonder if the Vikings could tap the sap in the spring to make Yggdrasil Syrup. I bet it would have been a big seller.
  
  
• There was a spring at the foot of Yggdrasil known as the Well of Mimer. The water from the spring bestowed great wisdom on anyone who drank from it. I can tell you one thing. I clearly never accidentally drank any water from the spring. People who know me can confirm that.

The much larger exhibit in the museum was on the 400-year history of Gothenburg. That’s really why I chose the museum as my only specifically selected sight of the afternoon. I thought learning about the city’s history would be a good introduction to it.

The exhibit starts not in that 400-year history, but before it. There was a predecessor town nearby called Nya Lödöse, which was founded in 1473.

Nya Lödöse lasted until 1621, when the powers that were determined that they were going to build a more perfect city, Gothenburg. Without consultation or choice, the residents of Nya Lödöse were forced to move their homes, possessions and selves to the new city.

Gothenburg was a walled city built with five gates so they could keep the riff-raff out. In truth, it wasn’t the riff-raff they barred, but rather at least a couple of the age-old targets of bigotry, hate, and small-mindedness. Jews were allowed to visit, but not live there. Roma, who were then known as Tatars, weren’t even allowed to visit. Grrr.

The museum displayed several artifacts from over the centuries. I forgot to note what period it comes from, but one display case held a tool of law enforcement. It was a long stick with a horseshoe-shaped metal prong on the end.

Watchmen used these to corral an arrested person’s neck and push them along with the pole. Please, for the love of all that is sane and good, nobody show this to Donald Trump. He’ll order a large supply of them for his ICE goons.

The same sign that mentions the law enforcement device also said that capital punishment was rare then.

When executions were done, it was by decapitation. If an axe was used, the victim’s head was held down on a block. If the deed was done by sword, the victim knelt upright while their head was chopped off. I don’t imagine they stayed upright long after that. The latter method was considered to be more refined. Well, isn’t that just so very splendid?

Moving on to more pleasant topics, another display case contained Chinoiserie. According to the sign, there was a China craze in Gothenburg for a period in the 18th century, heightened when the Swedish East India Company was established and brought wealth to the city. China was considered exotic because Europeans were banned there, so Chinoiserie was sought after.

Further along, a large glass display case held one of the first Volvos. It was made in the summer of 1926. The car was a convertible, black, and a beautiful beast of a thing. (The case’s glass was highly reflective, so you can’t see the car well in the picture.)

Obviously, above, I touched on only a very small percentage of the highlights (and lowlights) of the museum. It was quite extensive.

Gothenburg Cathedral

I came upon the Gothenburg Cathedral midway in my walk, but because it was recommended by my guidebooks, I’ll give it a separate section rather than lumping it in with the rest of my walk below.

To say I came upon it gives the wrong impression. I didn’t have a clue what it was until I got very close, but I should have guessed. I was drawn to it because it has a tall clock tower that rises above the rest of the central part of the city.

Atop the tower, there’s a small cross. It’s so small that I didn’t notice it at first. When I read on a sign that the building was the cathedral, I thought, “No. That can’t be. It looks like an old, cream-coloured municipal building.”

With that thought in my head, I looked more carefully at the clock tower and saw the cross. Now that I’ve told you, you can’t not see the cross at the top, but many of you probably would have missed it too if you weren’t looking for it.

One of my guidebooks tells me it was built between 1825 and 1825 in a Neo-Classical style. By the way, none of my guidebooks do, but the English portion of a plaque on the cathedral calls it the “Gustavi cathedral.” My guidebooks just call it the Cathedral or the Domkyrkan.

Inside, I found the cathedral disconcertingly modern. The curved ceiling is starkly white. The walls are such a pale green that it would be accurate to call it off-white.

The primary lights are two large circles hung from the ceiling with a dense series of what are probably LED lights around the two rings.

There are also hidden recessed lights along all the walls, near the top, highlighting architectural elements just below the ceiling.

There’s also a large, fancy, schmancy gilded altarpiece up front.

Like the St. Nicolai Kyrka in Örebro, the cathedral had a rainbow runner down the aisle. (Runner as in a long, narrow rug, not runner as in someone who runs.) That’s not something you normally expect to see in a church, but this is June, after all.

It’s a small cathedral. Enough said.

Wandering Around

While I haven’t checked the population stats, I’m confident that Gothenburg is the most populous and most bustling of the cities I’ve visited so far on this trip to Sweden. However, I’ll be in Stockholm for the latter part of this journey, so Gothenburg will be knocked off its perch then.

If you’ve been following along, you might remember that the day I arrived in Uppsala, Sweden, I came upon some celebrations for graduating high school students in which they wore jaunty sailors’ caps and were driven around on the backs of open-topped trucks, creating considerable hooplah in the trucks as they drove through the streets.

Today must be Gothenburg’s day for that. I didn’t see as many trucks as in Uppsala, but the students were at least as boisterous, and they wore the same caps. Here, however, in addition to shouting, waving, and blowing whistles, the students practiced synchronized jumping on the spot, so there was quite a bounce to the trucks.

As I walked to the museum, I passed a public square dominated by a large statue of Gustav II Adolf, Gothenburg’s founder. He might have dominated the square, but a pigeon sat on his head when I was there. So, who was dominating whom?

I took a stroll down to what I later learned is the Lilla Bommen harbour. There were some boats/ships used for day cruises docked there.

There were also two ships, although I’m not sure one of them was indeed a ship, parked in the harbour. One is a large, four-masted barque called the “Barken Viking” that I believe is a permanent fixture. During the summer, it’s used as a hotel and conference centre. I don’t think I’d want to stay in the hotel. The portholes were tiny.

The other large boat, the one I’m not sure is a boat, had a car ramp permanently affixed to one end and leading onto the ship. Inside, there were what looked like three levels of parking for cars. The sign on the “ship’s” side said, “P-ARKEN.” I assume it’s not floatable or sailable, but it’s sitting entirely in the water, immediately ahead of the Barken Viking. Weird.

There’s an interesting building down by Lilla Bommen harbour. It’s got a slanted roof with what looks like an observation deck up, or maybe a restaurant, up top. The upper levels are bright red and there’s another wide band of red further down on the building. My guidebook told me it’s nicknamed the Lipstick Building.

Oh, that harbour is off a river that runs by Gothenburg, the Göta älv. Okay, now, as often happens, I’m confused. The couple of rivers I’ve come across so far on this trip have always had “ån” jammed up immediately behind a name, without any space between them. An example is Gavleån, which is the Gävle River. And the river that flows through Örebro is the Svartån, or Black River.

Google Translate told me that ån is the Swedish word for river. After coming across those two instances, I thought slamming “ån” directly on the back of another word or name is the standard way of naming rivers here.

But, no, the river in Gothenburg is the Göta älv. (The lower case on älv is not a typo. That’s the way it’s written.) Google Translate translates “Göta älv” to “Göta River.” Please make up your mind, Sweden. Is it ån or älv, and one word or two?

There are also some canals in the city.

As I walked around, I saw some attractive architecture and some meh architecture. I’ll post a picture or two of some of the buildings I liked.

I haven’t decided how I feel about Gothenburg yet. I liked a lot of what little I saw, but some, less so. I’m here for another three full days, so I’ve got time to make up my mind on how I rate it overall.

Aside

Preaching

During my walk, not knowing where I was going, I unexpectedly ended up back at the train station. There’s a large square in front of it. Off to the side of the square, there’s a handsome hotel with four pillars on each side of it. Atop each pillar, there’s what looked to me like a samovar. But it might have looked that way only because I have old eyes that, even with corrective lenses, don’t see perfectly.

It doesn’t matter if they were samovars or not because that’s not the point of this aside.

Here’s the point.

He wasn’t there when I came out of the train station earlier, but when I passed by again, a guy was standing in the square, preaching with the benefit of a loudspeaker. He was passionately droning on about how we’re always being watched by God and our actions are recorded by Him.

At one point, he told the assembled crowd that we would all come to Jesus, and pardon me here because I’m quoting, “when shit starts happening.” He repeated that a few times for effect.

Oh, the assembled crowd? I listened to him for a bit with an unavoidable smirk on my face. There was a guy standing next to him holding a related sign.

There were two tripods holding phones with their cameras pointed directly at him. There were also two people generally moseying a few steps this way and that, but never far behind the tripods. But they didn’t lay their hands on the phones. Instead, they had their own phones in their hands, pointed at him.

I think they were tripod camera attendants, but I couldn’t be sure.

I wonder if his performance was broadcast over the internet. As best I could tell, it wasn’t a stunt. I think the guy was a believer and a street preacher, professional or amateur.

The point is, that was his entire assembled crowd for the time I was there. (I was standing back at a respectable distance; like, almost the other side of the square.)

You might be thinking, “But, Joel, you’re in Gothenburg, Sweden, where people speak Swedish. You don’t speak Swedish. How could you possibly know what he was saying other than hearing a name close to “Jesus” every once in a while?”

Easy. He spoke entirely in English.