Sweden into Norway
Sorry for the late delivery of Europe Roadtrip Week 8 and youtube video but I have been busy climbing mountains!
We were in Sweden most of the week, easily travelled, they love speed bumps and speed cameras!!
Love it how their road signs for corners, are all colour coded in their flag colours, blue and yellow.
OK, So here it goes…
July 3
Lots of driving today. Found a fantastic wild camp WITH free power! Yay, I hear all the wild campers say. It is a really special moment while roadtripping, along with finding dump points and fresh potable water. This is the real life side of roadtripping, the unglamorous side!
We stumbled across a town called Nykoping and it is a little treasure for
worldschooling families in particular.
A lovely argument with Vodafone today. My dad borrowed our mobile phone last year, when exploring Scotland. He put a Vodafone sim in the mobile phone. They said it was fine to use the same sim. Family had the number already so this would be helpful. Just pay for our monthly bundles and all will be fine. Wrong, when it came time for the month to roll over, it didn’t.
There was issues with the sim not being in my name. Sooooo frustrating. Enter lots of swearing here. I tried to explain I had discussed this with the sales rep before leaving. My father is in Australia. I am in Sweden. Anyway I managed to get it sorted. Emailed my dad on our skyroam internet, which we had days left over from last year. During my initial discussions with Vodafone they charged me 2 pound for 50MB – can you believe it!!!
July 4
Nykoping is particularly well known for an event that happened back in 1317. The Nykoping Banquet, at which King Birger imprisoned his brothers in the dungeon and allegedly starved them to death! You can visit their museum for FREE! It is actually a really great museum! Great exhibits and the kids can treasure hunt the rats (which they learn during their visit spread the black plague). There is dress up opportunities and they have really tried to make this interesting for kids and adults alike.
During summer they have a play that is put on beside the museum showing
an enactment of what happened all those years ago (in Swedish).
The first night we stayed here, we were not connected to power. First in best dressed only 8 -10 spots. You can check it out on youtube video here.
We stayed a second night cause we loved it here. Later this day, about 100 classic cars rolled into town (a love of mine). So, we set off to marvel at the old classics. Later we found out there was a special gathering of 10,000 in europe! Each day 100 got to go to different towns for locals to admire and drool.
July 5
In 1628 the vessel Vasa, the pride of the Swedish fleet at the time, sunk after sailing only 1300 metres!! The Vasa Museum, in Stockholm is a must see. We spent hours here and loved being able to share some of our boat lingo with Miss B. We have also just started Voyage of the 
Dawn Treader by C S Lewis (from the Chronicles of Narnia) so all the lingo came in very handy with her comprehension of the book. Winner!
All of us rated this Museum high and we have done a few. Brett is particularly found of old ships. He has even built one out of matchsticks that took over 10 years, and a few drinks. There is a movie explaining the details of what happened. We recommend watching this, before you begin walking around. It takes about 25 minutes. There is a family booklet if you ask at the desk on entry. It will provide additional activities to keep the kids attention.
Amazing museum.
We walked around Stockholm city and people watched. Both men and
women dress so beautifully, it is a pleasure to watch them going about their day.
Visiting parts of the Royal Palace, just the free parts. Love seeing the guards at the various
palaces. Miss B really, really wants to make one laugh. But so far, we have managed to keep her behaved.
Very excited to find an old fashioned telephone booth for one of our projects and an antique shop with lots of locks, but the prices were like eeeekkk!
Finished off at a great free camp with a gorgeous lake to swim (but go there a bit late). See Europe – where we stayed for GPS co-ordinates.
July 6
Lot of driving today also and a visit to Runhall, The Sigurd Carving. There is
much clearer footage in youtube video of Week 8 Weekly Wrap. It has been dated to the Viking
era of about 1000 years ago! Having been talking about Vikings a lot lately this was well timed and with future Viking lessons planned this was a great intro.
The Sigurd Carvings consist of snakes with decorations and runes framing a pictographic field. The custom of carving runes on erected stones or exposed bedrock became common around 1000AD. Almost one fourth of the runic inscriptions were ordered by women. This is evidence that women were independent and had their own social and economic responsibilities.
Wild Camping with Power
Onward we went, to yet another wild camp with FREE power! Sweden we love you! This one was at Tanum Shopping Centre which had an amazing amount of Tesla car charging stations. There were loads of tesla cars. Mainly with Norway number plates, using the charging stations during our short stay here. We stocked up on supplies for crossing into Norway. Knowing it is ridiculously expensive, we started wording Miss B up. Any and all pleas for donuts, ice creams and general non necessity items will fall on deaf ears while in Norway!!
July 7
Again lots of driving today and other than beautiful scenery and lots of cows and sheep not a lot to report!
July 8
Vitlycke Museum – Viking Museum. We visited this FREE museum with
wonderful descriptions and kids section. Before going out, on a field trip to visit the number of stone carvings nearby.
There were a number of different sites to explore. Some within walking distance but you also need a vehicle. We walked many trails, saw many carvings and had lots of discussions about what the carvings might have meant.
Crossing over into Norway!! Very excited we have all been looking forward to doing our 3 treks in Norway for so long that it feels great to know they are finally here!!
Stopping off at the Fredriksten Fortress, arriving at 4:30pm so not having to
pay an entry fee – YAY! Got to walk through take beautiful photos looking out over Norway and reading some amazing facts on plaques on each of the buildings. Sensational views from atop the belltower lookout.
Wild Camp again which we will continue to do for our whole time in Norway. Great spot on the water.
July 9
Arriving in Oslo, the capital of Norway we parked up at a wild camp early in the day above where the winter Olympics ski jump was – yikes! They are seriously brave pushing off from that height down a small run – amazing!! A referral from our worldschooling friends 1 Cat Four Bees.
We walked to the train station and had the exciting time of working out 
how to buy a ticket to the city from a machine (very rare you get an actual person these days). While there we helped some people visiting from America navigate the machine too. Travellers help other travellers whenever possible! 
It was an overcast day but we did not want to waste a day with so much to see and do in Norway. A worldschooler meetup is on the cards, if we get our butt into gear and head North. We set off exploring the city. Opera House which is meant to represent a glacier slipping into the water. You get to climb onto the roof for a view of the area and it is a great spot to stop when the rain starts! Speaking from experience. We did get a little wet exploring Oslo.
Wet weather in Oslo
Miss B may be 10 but when asked to put on a rain poncho you would of thought we asked her to pull
out a tooth with pliers!! We got her to agree to wear it. On the proviso, that if anyone stopped and told her she looked ridiculous. Which she swore would happen. She would get a box of icecreams. Which of course didn’t happen and we saved our $25 lol. Crazy, what is the teenage years going to be like!
We continued our walk around the city towards the Viking 
Museum. You will see the world’s best preserved Viking ships (this was quite the walk. But all good training for our upcoming treks). All their treasures from the burial ships Oseberg, Gokstad, Tune and Borre.
The Oseberg ship was built around the year 820 and is richly decorated with detailed carvings. The Gokstad Ship was built around the year 900.
We have loved learning more about the Vikings and have plans to share more of what we have learnt in the future.
Loving Norway and the beautiful landscape. Sometimes, when you have wanted to go to a place so much for so long, you get there and are disappointed. This is NOT the case with Norway! She is beautiful and I look forward to exploring more…
What did we take
What we took, electronics, kitchen and all things we needed for the duration of our roadtrip click here. (we are slowly adding each week as we have data/time)
Having done a three and half month roadtrip last year in South Europe and 5 months in UK & Northern Europe in 2018 we were pretty confident in what we would need’this time. Also, what worked and what we would not bother taking again.
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