Nomads i Norden 3: Östersund

After a day in Jakobsberg with our friends Ami and Gus, letting Sheila recover from her busy week, we were off to Östersund, farther north and west in the province of Jämtland. We had planned to take the train, but there have been some issues since the system was privatized, so we decided to fly with Braathen Airlines. About the same price, and MUCH quicker…a bit over an hour in flight, as compared to 6-7 on the train. On a fairly small plane…

Östersund greeted us with a gorgeous summer day…clear skies and temps in the low 70s. So we took advantage and walked around town and down to the lake, Storsjön (Big Lake…).

Yes, that’s a ski area across the lake….

We spent quite awhile watching people “surfing”…being towed on a zipline by that blue triangle in the upper right…but nobody went up the ramps.

The next day was much cooler, with a chance of rain, so we opted for the Jamtli Museum, which has both indoor and outdoor sections.

Entrance Fancy horse-collars (oh,those long winter nights to carve fancy designs!) and fancy butter-molds.

After an hour or so of looking at things indoors, we had a bite of lunch and went on to the outdoor museum, where they have assembled buildings from around the province and grouped them according to time-period. As it was Sunday, the re-enactors were in full swing!

Laundry day Farm buildings from 1760s

Painted ceiling in the house of a wealthy farmer. Inn sign, 1694

The “prost” was very insistent that we follow him to church! The farmhouse’s main room was quite smoky. This fireplace is same basic design as those in the 2nd stuga (“cabin”) we stayed in, also from mid-1700s. The enclosed bed is to the left.

Linen cabinet in the end of the bed, and a lovely painted ceiling. Wealthy farmer, this!

Time for fika! Just as we sat down with coffee and goodies, it started raining outside. So we went back to the museum part. One of the important collections at Jamtli is period textiles. These are from the 16- and 1700s, so all hand-woven. A simple linen underdress logged in at 92 hours…including planting, harvesting, and treating the linen, spinning the thread, weaving the fabric, and then hand-sewing it together.

Weaving

Embroidery

A very fancy fiddle case!

And more textiles…Jamtli holds the oldest and most complete textiles ever found in Europe. They’re called the Överhogdals-bonaderna…”bonader” is Swedish for tapestries (not to be confused with the Norwegian “bunader” or folk-dress). The panels have been dated to sometime in the Viking era (800-1100 AD), and were found after having been “clumsily” sewn into a coverlet, then eventually bunched up and tossed into a storage shed, where they were discovered in 1930. Nobody really knows what story they might be relating. The really amazing thing is that the plant-dyed colors are still so vibrant after 1000 years!