The Rough Guide to Sweden (Travel Guide eBook) by Rough Guides

Author:Rough Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Sweden
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2019-11-01T04:57:54+00:00

Smålands Museum

Södra Järnvägsgatan 2 • June–Aug daily 10am–5pm; Sept–May Tues–Fri 10am–5pm, Sat & Sun 11am–4pm • 80kr combined ticket with Utvandrarnas Hus • smalandsmuseum.se

The best place to kick off your exploration of Växjö is the Smålands Museum, behind the train station, which holds two permanent exhibitions: a history of Småland during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a section dedicated to Växjö, and the infinitely more interesting “Six Centuries of Swedish Glass”. The latter shows sixteenth-century place settings, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century etched glass and stylish Art Nouveau-inspired pieces, with subtle floral motifs. “Trees in Fog”, designed in the 1950s by Kosta designer Vicke Lindstrand, illustrates just how derivative so much of the twentieth-century work actually is. Look out, in particular, for the Absolut vodka bottles made in nearby Limmared, which formed the basis of today’s design.

Utvandrarnas Hus

House of Emigrants • Wilhelm Mobergs gata 4 • June–Aug daily 10am–5pm; Sept–May Tues–Fri 10am–5pm, Sat & Sun 11am–4pm • 80kr combined ticket with Smålands Museum • 0470 201 20, utvandrarnashus.se

In a plain building directly in front of the Smålands Museum, the inspired Utvandrarnas Hus explores the intense hardship faced by the Småland peasant population in the mid-nineteenth century and their ensuing emigration; between 1850 and 1929, one quarter of Småland’s population left to begin a new life in America. The museum’s displays, which include English-language translations and audio narratives, trace the lives of individual emigrants and recount the story of the industry that grew up around emigration fever. Most boats used by the emigrants left from Gothenburg and, until 1915, were British-operated sailings to Hull, from where passengers crossed the Pennines to Liverpool by train to board the transatlantic ships; conditions onboard the ships were usually dire and the emigrants often shared their accommodation with oxen, pigs, calves and sheep. Exhibitions change frequently but there’s generally a mock-up of a street in early 1900s Chicago, a popular destination for the emigrants, where all the stores are run by Swedes – everything from a grocer’s to a photographer’s shop.

The Moberg Room

The museum also contains a section on women emigrants, entitled “Not Just Kristina”, a reference to a fictitious character in The Emigrants, a trilogy by one of Sweden’s most celebrated writers, Wilhelm Moberg. Upon publication, it became the most-read Swedish history book in the country, and was made into a film starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman. On display in the museum is Moberg’s writing cabin, which was given to the museum after his death in 1973. Moberg would himself have emigrated, only his father sold a farrow of piglets to pay for his son to go to college in Sweden.

Domkyrkan

Linnégatan 2 • Daily 9am–6pm

In the centre of town, the distinctive Domkyrkan, with its unusual twin green towers and apricot-pink facade, is certainly worth a look. The combined impact of regular restorations, the most recent in 1995, together with a catalogue of disasters, such as sixteenth-century fires and a 1775 lightning strike, have left little of note except an organ. There are, however,

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