Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Cabins

Cabins ("Stugor") in Sweden cover a wide range of styles, as you can see for yourselves on consolidator sites like stugnet.se.  Some of the ones we looked at were obviously furnished sometime in the mid-seventies...full of dark knotty-pine paneling and brown/green/orange plaid couches.  Not sure Sheila could tolerate the decor for a whole week, in some cases.

Others didn't respond to queries...often, a glance at the bottom of the page would inform you that the posting hadn't been updated since, say, 2013, and is probably no longer an active rental.

What we ended up with was two completely different experiences...with an odd common thread.  The cabin in Rimbo turned out to be on the same road as a fiddler Sheila had known from Ekebyholm, Tore Lindqvist.  He used to sit out in front of the castle and play the tunes for the concert that ends the week's course.  The same six tunes, for hours on end, until everyone had learned them.  When he was 90, he made his first CD, with a second two years later, shortly before he died.  We invited his family over for evening coffee and some tunes and memories, provided by Sheila and our friends Lars and Tommy.  Sadly, we were so taken up with preparations that no pictures resulted.

Here's the cabin on Lillkråkenvägen, Rimbo. (Sorry if the spacing is wonky...Blogger can be quirky):





 














After our week in Uppland, we moved to Södermanland, where we have something that was originally built as an outbuilding for a farm, maybe to house farmworkers.  It's called a "Flygel", or wing, and is a separate building close to and usually at right angles to, a large house.  This one was built in the 1750s....gotta love that iron-rich red paint that is such a good wood preservative.  It's basically a log cabin with finishes added over the years.  You can see part of the log wall behind the fireplace in the pic with Sheila sitting in a chair. (Click on pics to enlarge...).  There are typical original style fireplaces in the living room and bedroom and a fireplace-oven (not seen in posted pics) in one wall of the kitchen.

Shortly after we moved in, Sheila posted something on Facebook about it being good to have wifi again.  An hour or so later, after a trip into town for groceries, she got a puzzled query from Ida, who helps organize the course at Ekebyholm....Did I just see you at the store in Nyköping?  Why aren't you at Österbybruk?  Well, rentals are from Sunday to Saturday, so....  Oh, okay.  Are you in Nyköping?  No, we've got a cabin out a ways, near Runtuna.  .....I live in Runtuna. Where exactly are you?  A place called Onsberga.  ....!!!! You're in my old house!!!!  So we hadn't been here two hours before we had our first visitor....something about musicians from Ekebyholm makes for some really weird connections.

Onsberga Lillstugan:

    


Front hallway...note high threshold (6"...pick your feet up going from room to room!)


Cozy bedroom with fireplace (NOT needed at the moment!!)


Farm kitchen with chandelier....


Another view of those thresholds....and you gotta love a kitchen with a sofa!


Part of the log wall can be seen to the right of the fireplace.


It's Sweden...you have to be outside as much as you can in the summer.



3 comments:

  1. I can see that you are having a great time. Yes I do recognize some faces! Would be great to be over there but not sure it is much cooler.......San Rafael had temp of 100F on Sunday....
    Keep having a good time, Jill and Peter

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  2. We made it all the way up to 73 a couple of days ago, but mostly it's been 66-68. Supposed to rain for Midsommar...

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  3. The latest forecast I saw for Midsommer events will be morning showers then rain should stop in the a.m. Beautiful cabin!

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