I was going to talk a little about Egil, but common sense and giggle signals from the outside world tell me this thought train has arrived at its final destination.
So I'll just inform interested parties that I've got my tickets and beds for a little summer excursion to new and Old Uppsala and to Stockholm and and the islands of Birka and Ädelsö (both the latter are world heritage sites).
Not much left there to see at the ancient sites except crumbling foundations and new museums, alas no heathen temple, of which not even the pole holes have ever been found. Although under the old cathedral at Old Uppsala, pole holes of some long houses and remains of an earlier wooden church were discovered during repairs. (Isn't it amazing what archaeologists can do these days)? But since we know that churches were always built on top of old heathen temples, the clues may be long vanished.
The post-glacial rebound has altered the waterways and island boundaries considerably (about five meters elevation each thousand years). But the currently melting glaciers should soon fix that!
In the former Virgin Mary chapel of the new Uppsala Cathedral (late 1200s) lies bad-tempered King Gustaf Vasa, confiscator of church property and responsible for Sweden's forced conversion to Lutherism around 500 years after the forced conversion to Catholicism. He is depicted on a sarcophagus between two of his wives. The third one is somewhere nearby since she outlived him by many years, being only 18 when she wed him. (He died thate same year, and there is surely a moral to that tale.)
If the weather holds, some nice water cruises and walk-abouts are sure to ensue among the burial mounds and on the campus of Uppsala University (est. 1477) where the Codex Argenteus is on display.
Stockholm and Uppsala are at their very best this time of year. And I always meet lovely people when I travel. So some good has come of my querulous blackbird query after all.
(Of course all this fades in comparison with what the UK has to offer in historical sites. BTW Bill is the expert here. I'm just a babbling amateur.)
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