Vaxholm Fortress Photo Gallery
Day 135 29 June 2017
Left by ferry at 11.30
After a pleasant ferry ride we arrived in Vaxholm and caught the ferry across to the fort which took all of three minutes.The fort itself is very impressive with a central courtyard that we had to cross to access the B and B.The fort was started in the 16th century and was built in conjunction with other fortifications in the archipelago.In fact at one time one side of the islet on which it sits was filled so that the channel could be closed off to ships.This meant that to get past the fort required ships to go by the side where the cannons were placed.This was a successful strategy as the Poles Danish and the Russians both failed in their attempts to get by the fort and on to Stockholm.Its strategic location earned it the title the “padlock of Stockholm”.
Swedish Tourism Information Link
In the afternoon we spent a a pleasant couple of hours exploring the grounds, visiting the museum and walking around the whole island.The visit to the museum reinforced the view of the naval imperative to protect Stockholm. Over time this meant that the defensive strategy was to build fortifications further out into the Baltic and in a defensive north south line and this strategy continued during the cold war.Also whilst we might have a benign view of Sweden as we know it today it has a naval and military history of continual tension with its neighbours particularly the Russians and the Danes.I also don’t think we had appreciated that Sweden had occupied Finland from the middle of the thirteenth century up until 1809.An interesting geographical hangover of this is the islands of Aland which are an autonomous region of Finland that has its own government and Swedish as the official language!.
After our walks and discoveries we went back into Vaxholm had a gentle roam around the backstreets and then a dinner at a dockside restaurant the Lilla Strand, with a great seafood stew.
Day 136 30 June 2017
Next morning had a lovely breakfast and then a visit to an exhibition held in the grounds featuring an art exhibition on Swedish approaches to the Global Sustainable Development Goals that are a subset of the Millennium Goals.
The exhibition was housed in a part of the Vaxholm fortress designated as the Global Goals Lab run by a group called Quantified Data which collects and publishes realtime data on urban environments and how they are doing. See the links Global Goals Lab and Quantified Planet .
Got the ferry back to Stockholm and then out to a new home and doggie friend.
