The Ham Nomads

23 Aug 2015. <SE> Malmö; Øresundsbron; <DK> Copenhagen —

Today, into Malmö. Basically, three aims — to visit the Turning Torso, to go to the Malmö Castle (now containing the Malmö Art Museum and the Natural History Museum), and to wander in the old part of town.

As today was Sunday — and our 46th wedding anniversary — and we didn't anticipate any parking problems in town, we checked out of the campsite and took our chances.

First, we drove into the Västra Hamnen (Western Harbour) area to find the Turning Torso. We actually parked in a nearby Maxi shopping centre car park — we needed to shop, and the place was well and truly open for business. Then we walked around to the Turning Torso building. This is an icon in Malmö, being architecturally unusual as well as being the tallest building in Sweden — indeed, in the Nordic countries! It's a residential building, so you can't go in, but it's quite unusual from the outside, and there were quite a few tourists there making its acquaintance.

After inspecting the exterior of the Turning Torso, we left for the Castle — not even a kilometre away. There was a paid parking area outside, so we found a spot in the shade and set ourselves up for a few hours' stay, both in the museum and also time to walk through town, only about 500 metres away.

The building is rather unprepossessing — it looks from the outside more like an old warehouse than a castle, but the way it has been set up inside is rather good. Instead of having separate exhibits of paintings, of furniture, of sculpturs, of glassware, and so on, the exhibits are collections of everything from a given time, most often set up as a room of the period, with all the artworks, furniture, whatever, arranged as they might have been in a home of the time. A refreshing approach. Suzie was rather impressed by the paintings of Lotte Laserstein (1898-1993) and of Alexander Yakovlevich Golovin (1863-1930).

Carl Larsson. Cartoon for mural in the National Museum (1896)

Lotte Laserstein. Portrait of Hilding Rosenberg (1942)

Alexander Yakovlevich Golovin. Portrait of sculptor Dimitrij Stelletskij (1911)

Gustaf Fjaestad. Sunlight on shallow water (1906)

Alexander Yakovlevich Golovin. Lady knitting (1914)

A magnificent Baroque inlaid cupboard!

In a separate display of modern art upstairs
was this graphic suggestion of what to do with a laptop!

There is a concert hall, Skovgaard Hall, in the museum which contains a superb mosaic presumably lifted from a church, as well as a medieval organ dating to the early 16th century, which came from St Peter's Church in Malmö. It had extensive additions and 'improvements' over the years, but since being placed in the museum, it has been returned as far as possible to its original state. The present pedal keyboard, made by the Norwegian Knud Olsen, is easily recognised as his 'by the quaint and rather impractical shape of the short keys'.

And the lower floors contain a really good aquarium display — they stretch the definition to include live displays of amphibians and land reptiles (lizards and snakes) as well.

There is also a rather different natural history museum which has displays arranged to contrast variations in form, or in colour, and even in function, of different animals and plants — at first glance, a rather motley, disorganised approach, but then you begin to appreciate the similarities and contrasts in the features being displayed.

After some time at Malmö Castle, we wandered over Slottsbron (the Castle Bridge) and, via Kungsparken (King's Park), into the old city. We got to Lille torg (the Little Square), and through Stortorget (the Big Square), down Sõdergatan, through Gustav Adolfs torg and down to the Malmö City Canal, walking back through Gamla begravnings platsen, back through Kungsparken and back to the van. Malmö has been in the grips of the Malmö Festivalen for the past week, and the whole place was in pack-up/clean-up mode!

By the time we got back to the van, if was after 4pm, so we set off for points Danish, a short drive across Øresundsbron, the bridge between Sweden and Denmark. It was a joing project, and if it were given a Swedish name it would be Öresundsbron, whereas in Danish it would be Øresundsbroen, so they have compromised to Øresundsbron. Brilliant. This must be one of the great engineering achievenments of the 20th century!

We landed in Denmark, and drove directly to Copenhagen City Camping, quite near the city centre, where we would be set up for visiting the city on the morrow. Even though this place was supposed to have WiFi, Warren couldn't get out to any sites, so we just settled in for a night of movie watching!

We were led to our site by scooter!

The canal behind the campsite

Distance driven — today, 32 miles ( 52 km ); to date, 26,648 miles ( 42,888 km )