Yesterday

I have decided that people don't read long posts, and because this is a long post, I'm going to divide it into two.

I was planning today to go walking around Visby in the morning and walk the wall that surrounds the city, but when I looked out the window I could see it was raining, and I decided against that idea. I wasn’t going to deal with the cold and rain in order to get my walk. So instead I went back to bed and slept for another hour. A good thing, because the day was packed full of stuff, so much so that I’m worried that I’m going to forget some of what we did.

We had breakfast, and left a nine to head out to look at some Medieval churches in the countryside. We passed Pippi Longstocking’s house, but we didn’t get to actually see it, much to my disappointment. We made our way to where ferry boats can take you across to Fåro (pronounced Fah *rolled r* oh) a nearby island. There we visited another church. This church is special because it is where Ingmar Bergman is buried. We got to see his grave. For those of you who don’t know, Ingmar Bergman is a Swede that created these very creepy movies that are very artsy and famous. The people of the island are extremely loyal to him, going to the point of misdirecting tourists who wanted to see where he lived. Bergman apparently was very generous to the community and also very private. However, Gunnar knew him personally, as did most of the people on the island, it being very small with the exception of when the tourist season happens. We made our way to one of the limestone beaches were we went climbing on rocks and enjoyed all the really cool fossils in the stones. (See pictures… I’ll post them later)

Meanwhile the whole time Gunnar told us stories about the countryside, ghosts that haunted churches, trolls that would come avenge themselves on you if you did them or their farm any wrong or violated a grave. We stopped at an amazing little bakery that made really good baked goods and had quiche. We got to see some people thatching a roof, and a bunch of windmills. Then we stopped at another beach were I went wading and took a bunch of pictures.

On the way back we stopped at a place where there were these standing stones formed in the shape of “boats” that were a type of grave, and other stones that made circular graves. Gunnar told us more about the two-foot tall trolls that fiercely guard the holy sites in Sweden against evil people or forces that would seek to destroy them. He also told us about how the landscape of the islands is created because of the livestock that live there… they keep most the trees from taking over the fields by eating them.

Then he took us to… well, the best description of it would be a cairn. It was a great stone mound with a crater in the center. According to Gunnar they are graves of very important people. It’s interesting, in Viking history there are all these amazing buildings and graves, and then later the society seems to have regressed- we can only guess why. Perhaps there was a disease that wiped out a large part of the population and the people could no longer create the great cairns that they liked to… perhaps a war happened or there was a great change that caused them to regress. But it was very fascinating to listen to Gunnar talk, in part because Gunnar has ties all over the island. He also has a brother who is an archaeologist, as has a result knows a lot about the island.

He was a really good tour guide. I’m going to write him a thank-you note.