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Gammla Uppsala (old Uppsala)

We took a fifteen minute bus ride to old Uppsala where there are Royal burial grounds, a museum, and fortuitously when we arrived there, a Viking festival.

I liked this poster of one of the runes from about 600 AD at the museum.
Viking festival, lots of people dressed in Viking clothes and showing the technologies of the time. Was a great day for it.
Viking food.
You can see one of the burial mounds in the background.
Vikings getting ready for a battle. I felt for them in their chain mail, it must have been hot.
This rune is now embedded in the church wall.
Translation is: Old Uppsala church
Uppland runic inscriptions 978
Rune stone with inscription from the 11th century AD.
futharkhniastbmlr
Sigviðr [ræist]i stæin þenna Ænglandsfari æftir Vidiarf, faður . Sigvid Englandfararen [raised] this stone after Vidjärv, [his] father ….
The rune stone used to be an altar table in the church. In 1856 it was moved from there and walled into its current location in the church wall. When the stone slab was shaped to fit as an altar table, a large part of the runic loop was lost and the end of the inscription disappeared.
England was the destination of many Viking voyages. Sigvid has probably been there several times, as he was nicknamed the Voyager of England.
The National Antiquities Office
From wikipedia: “The old cathedral was probably built in the 11th century, but finished in the 12th century. The stone building may have been preceded by a wooden church and probably by the large Temple at Uppsala. After a fire in 1240, the nave and transepts of the cathedral were removed, leaving only the choir and central tower, and with the addition of the sacristy and the porch gave the church its present outer appearance. In the 15th century, vaults were added as well as chalk paintings.”
The clock tower is separate and somehow very Swedish looking!

It’s an interesting place with history like we just don’t get in NZ. I always thought that places like Sweden were probably discovered by the English in Victorian times but that may have something to do with the british biased history we were taught when I was young, well that and my shocking ignorance of course 🙂

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