Additional choir training

Today the tenor voice of Olle's choir had an extra practice session at one of the choir members. After a couple of hours it sounded quite well. We have sung wrong in some of the parts of the tunes, but today we polished these passages.

Christmas concert and potluck

1:30 pm the last rehearsal with Olle's choir before the real Christmas concert began downtown at "Kafé Station". At 3 pm the guests arrived, including Maria and Olle's uncle with wife.
The performance took about 75 minutes, 21 songs including talks in between.
The audience seemed to enjoy it, and the choir too. It is always much more fun to perform in front of an audience than just practicing. Olle had only had about three weeks to practice the different songs (the main part of the choir have performed most of the songs earlier years), but taking that into the account, it went quite good. A couple of songs were harder to sing, during these he leaned back a bit on the more experienced tenors.

Half past six it was time for the annual Christmas potluck for the choir. Most of the members showed up, some of them with their partners. We brought home baked bread. Even though it was a Christmas potluck, there were not that many typical Christmas dishes. Olle had some interesting discussions about choir life with one of the conductors.

Choir camp

This weekend Olle and the other choir members went to choir camp (körinternat) close to Husum about one hour's drive south of Umeå. We arrived around 10 in the morning, had some coffee and then the singing began. We started with the full choir, but later during the day we split in order to let the men and women practice their own voices.
The dinner consisted of fermented herring, which was a first time for me.
Around six the cans with the fish were opened outside, and the smell could be felt from a long distance.
But, the smell was diminished a lot when we started to skin the fish at 7:30. The taste was interesting, not so bad, but it is an acquired taste. I had two herrings (and a lot of potatoes) which was enough for this time.
Since we are a choir, there were also a lot of singing during the night. Unfortunately I don't know that many of the "old" songs (the choir started 1997), but this is something I will learn eventually.

A lot of people seemed quite tired "the day after", but 9:30 we were back in business again.
We practiced until lunch, after that followed cleaning of the cottages and common areas that we had used. It really felt good to sing through the whole repertoire that we are going to perform next March. There is still a lot of work left, but at least you recognize the songs next time you see them. It was also nice to have the opportunity to get to know some of the choir members a little bit better, during the two hours of practice every week there isn't a lot of time left for socializing.

Enjoying the craft exhibition

The craft exhibition "Självklart - 100 år med Västerbotten läns hemslöjdsförening" (Eng.: "Of course - 100 years with the home craft association of Västerbotten county") ends early September, so today we decided to visit it again. When we were here during the opening day, there were so many people all over the place, but today we were almost alone. You can't do others than envy the handy people working with natural material.

Norrbyskär - "the islet that was the world"

Towards the end of the 19th century, one of Europe´s largest sawmills grew on the islands of Norrbyskär. The sawmill company bought the island and built a steam powered mill, but also housing for the workers. This was a community on its own (at most 1200 people); the workers were drawn with good salaries and houses (with electricity!) and good education for their children (the future workers), but were also expected to be very loyal to the work place.



The mill was in operation 1892-1952.









We took the 9:30 ferry from Norrbyn to the harbor on the island closest to the mainland.









First we went to see the street with wooden workers' houses. Most of them were split into four apartments, evidently the apartment on the first floor closest to the street was the most popular. There were also some larger houses for the foremen. The social classes were much more obvious during these days.

On the way we passed the remains of the (electrical) railway on the island, used to transport all the sawed boards. Next stop was the remains of the harbor where everything were shipped from the island.



On the easternmost island, YMCA/YWCA ("KFUM") has some activity, among other things an adventure course, several kinds of small boats and confirmation camps. We went up to the northernmost part of this island, where a breakwater was constructed of stones. This was a nice place to have some snack and with the sun shining nothing to complain about.

Next to the island there were some ships left in the water. We are not sure exactly what these were used for, either for moving boards or sawdust.








Back on the middlemost island, we went down the street past the school. In this area, some holiday houses were built already during the sawmill days.









Back through the woods, we passed the place were the big planer was situated. The only remnant now was a tiled floor, it was really hard to realize how this place looked only about 50 years ago. The trees do a good job taking back the nature, if you let them be.


Close to this place, we thought that the dirt on the ground looked strange, until we realized that it was sawdust that we walked on. Pretty long decomposing time for this matter!








Right after we arrived on the island(s) during the morning, we just passed the museum since it was closed. Now on the other hand it was time to pay it a visit. A lot of artifacts and photos told about life in the sawmill society, but the most interesting part of the exhibit was the scale model of Norrbyskär during its high time. Piles and piles of sawed board everywhere.









Next to the museum there was houses built in scale 1:3, all prepared for the kids to get a view of the daily life of the early 19th century.








We finished our trip with a visit to "Kalmar'n", the place where all the sawdust from the sawmill was transported to with cable cars and then shipped to the mainland.





The workers' houses here were in same style as the other wooden houses, but made of bricks instead.







Next to here was the big house for the manager. He had his own house, with stables next to it. The area was marked with a fence, so that the workers wouldn't come too close.

War history tour

As mentioned before, Sweden lost Finland to Russia 200 years ago this summer. This is noticed in many ways in Umeå and the surrounding county. This afternoon we and twenty more people joined a guided tour of the eastern part of the city, which theme also was the war. We stopped at some memorials which were discussed. So know we know a lot more history about the kings in northern Europe at this time, as well as the background of the war .

Guided tour of Gammlia

Today we decided to visit Gammlia again - the open air museum that is not far away from where we live. We joined a guided tour, that among others featured two farmer's buildings from the 1800's. The houses are original, but moved to Gammlia (from northern Sweden) and the museum is about showing how it could have been 200 years ago. The houses are filled with old furniture and tools.

To make it more authentic, the guides were dressed in time-traditional clothes. The wooden fence around the yard helped to keep the hens within the farmhouse area. The forge ("smedjan") was usually placed outside the yard, for security reasons.


We also visited a forest Lapp cot, that was built last year. Unfortunately we were late for the tasting of the traditional bread, but we sure will try to show up for that later on.

The west parts of Umeå

Today we joined a guided tour featuring the west part of the city. We felt a little as tourists in our hometown, partly due to the Swedish with German accent the guide spoke. During the 1½ hour tour the guide told us a lot about Umeå and different houses in town.

We learned that Umeå got its city privileges already 1622, so it's an old town.

"The butter box" ("smörasken") was built as a bank house in 1877. Later it has been used as library and school, but is today office for Umeå Energy.








In the west parts there are still some old wooden buildings, but in the city center everything was destroyed in the big city fire 1888. Many of the old houses are today protected under the Heritage Conservation Act, so only restricted renovations are allowed.

Lieutenant Leopold Grahn had this house built for him in 1893. At this time the yard houses were stable and bakery, but nowadays renovated to apartments.


Already 1764 the first hospital in northern Norrland was opened here in Umeå. The big yellow wooden house was built in 1785 and is today the oldest building in Umeå. Nowadays, the buildings have changed to offices. The building to the right was built 1893 to be the surgery, but the hospital moved to larger buildings just 10 years later and the house hosts the office of our landlord today.

Typical Swedish Midsummer Eve weather

Midsummer Eve has more of traditional celebration than the National day here in Sweden. It's also a day off from work, so everyone can enjoy being outside. For some reason this day most often isn't a nice/warm summerday, rather colder temperatures and some rain is the standard. And so also this year...

Some campers found their own island to celebrate midsummer on.







After breakfast we and Olle's brother took a three hour long boat trip along the coast, in a traditional wooden boat. The goal was Olle's parent's summer house on a small island. We relaxed and enjoyed the landscape, which was more comfortable the moments when the sun didn't hide behind the clouds.

When we arrived it was time for the traditional Midsummer lunch, newly-harvested potatoes ("nypotatis") and herring. A snaps (herb seasoned vodka) was optional, but the songs obligatory.

Thereafter it was time to collect flowers for the Midsummer pole, arranged together on a small meadow. We met all summer neighbors again, as well as some new ones. We can admit it felt good to be back.

Before going to bed Maria went to look at the flashes from the lighthouses. Three are in sight from the island. It is so relaxing just sitting there and watching, it is quite except for the sound of waves. Even down here the summer night is not totally dark, even if it is lighter up north.

A cold National Day

At lunchtime we went to Gammlia, the open-air museum, were the official National Day celebration occurred.

The weather was not warm at all; about 10 C for maximum and the rain was waiting to start any minute.






A male choir were singing summer songs.
A group were dancing traditional folk dances (photo taken before they started), and also dressed in traditional folk costumes (hard for us to tell from which region of Sweden the dresses came from, too little knowledge).



In the afternoon there was the opening for the craft exhibition "Självklart - 100 år med Västerbotten läns hemslöjdsförening" (Eng.: "Of course - 100 years with the home craft association of Västerbotten county"). All kinds of material were included. One of the most impressing arts was the carved moose antler.