LearnSweden Blog

Peter Åström Gotland

This spring I met the painter Peter Åström in New York City

and wrote a couple of blogposts about him, his wife and their work.

This summer I met Peter a couple of times on Gotland, as he has a summer house near our house.

I had seen his lovely house several times in magazines but now I had the chance to see it for myself. It is a charming, lovely, old Gotlandic house, redesigned by Peter and his wife.

 

 

 

After seeing it, I can completely understand why he gets so inspired here and becomes inmeshed with his painting and creating.

 

 

This summer saw Peter working together with Orrefors to design some art glass. The autumn will have Peter staying near Orrefors constructing different pieces of art glass.

From Peter I bought a lovely picture to hang in our apartment in Stockholm. what a lovely souvenior of a shared moment on Gotland.

 

 

The Blue Lagoon

There is a lot of limestone in the Northeast section of Gotland. on the south part of the island it is sandstone. You will find old broken and closed limestone factories but there is still one working in Slite. Eventually, as more and more limestone was taken from the earth there would come a point when the mine would fill up with water.

These quarries are deep and the water is very clear and turqoise, just like one might find in the Caribbean. The most famous quarry is called The Blue Lagoon. In the summer it is crowded with people swimming and sunbathing.

Auction

One - two - three - sold. An auction outside means summer. All around Sweden you will find summer auctions, where people put up their unwanted items for sell. Often things come from homes of people that have died and new generations want to have things from the older generation and if you are lucky you may buy things very cheaply.

The auction is totally run and ruled by the auctioneer. Sometimes the bidding is slow and suddenly he just knocks the gavle down after the first bid. Someone just got something very cheap. So you have to be attentive. And as that, you also may buy things you didn´t plan to buy. But that's is a part of the game.

So what can one buy? The answer is easy, everything - furniture, skates, carpets, paintings, bikes and you name it, everything is possible. It is very common to later see people on a TV program telling stories of how they bought a box of something at an auction for no money and in the box they found a small statue which happens to be worth millions. So it is really fun, ten crowns, twenty crowns, one - two - three - sold

The Stockholm week

Every year for one week in July, Visby is filled with young and beautiful people from Stureplan in Stockholm. This week the harbor is full of big fast yatchs. The town is full of people partying all day and night and the town is full of police.

 

This year the week that usually is after Båstad tennis week, was the same week, so the jet set people had to choose either Visby or Båstad. Well, it seemed most of them chose Visby, as the town was crowded all week.

 Many people dislike this week in Visby. Because of  all the parties means a lot of work for the police, with fights, stealing and drunk people. The restaurant owners and Systembolaget  (packaging store) have a very good week as they sell a lot of food and drinks and most of the drinks and bottles are champagne.

Near the water is Kallbadhuset, were you can dance from early morning until very late and when you are warm you can just jump into the sea and get cool to be ready for dancing again. 

New potatoes

Early this year my wife started planting potatoes in old milk carons. In her work room she left them to start growing, 80 inall. These new potatoes, along with all of her other plant seedlings, waited in her work room until it was time to plant them in summer.

During this summer we have been eating from the garden. Potatoes,lettuce, red beets, carrots, tomatoes, strawberries and more.

What could be better than to go out into the garden before I start cooking dinner and fetch exactly what I need? Dig up one or two plants of potatoes, clean them and then boil them together with salt and a bunch of dill weed. Add a little salt and butter and serve together along with herring, salmon or lamb from the grill.

 

The Military museum in Tingstäde

In the first week of July a new museum opened on Gotland, The Military Museum of Gotland. Located in the northern part of the island. The opening day, was a sunny and warm day and a lot of people wanted to be there for the grand opening.

The County Govenor of Gotland, Marianne Samuelsson, held the opening speech and then all things were opend to the public. There was miltary equipment, trucks and a lot of everything else from the military history of Sweden and Gotland.

 

Everything was open to try and when you were tired of looking at it all, you were invited to the outdoor kitchen for coffee and cinnamon buns or a hot dog in bread with something cold to drink with it.

The museum is open everyday except Mondays. So if you are on the island, I can recommend a visit there. It's very enjoyable.

Roses in Visby

Along Visby's medieval walls, cobble-stoned streets, and along the chalked stone walls of little cottages, grow the roses of summer. Visby, known as the city of Roses and Ruins,showers it's passersby with the fragrance and beauty of over 200 varieties of roses.

Rute Stenugnsbageri

In the White Guide as I wrote about yesterday, I will now present Rute Stenugnsbageri ,a fantastic bakery. In 2006 Erik Olofson and  Heikki Hyytiänen built the oven with stones. This was their second project together. The other oven, was built at Rosendahls Trädgården café in Stockholm, where Erik were a baker. You can bake 50loaves of bread at the time. You start the oven the evening before and use about 50 kilos of birch wwod. With that you can bake about 300 loaves of bread. All ingredients are organic and as local as possible.

At the bakery you can buy fantastic and tasteful breads as Ruteråg, Fruit and nut bread, lanvin and a lot of other sorts of bread. They also bake cinnamon buns, biscuits and cakes. Just to take away or to sit inside or out and eat them together with coffee, tea or a lemonade.

But you have to be prepared, because the line is often very long, so it takes time until it is your turn to be served, But I can assure you it is worth it.

The White Guide

My summer cottage is in Rute in the north east of the island Gotland. It is a small village with about 200 people in the winter and about 600  in summer. Every year there is a white guide coming out, presenting the best restaurants in Sweden. About 600 hundred restaurants are presented and this year Mathias Dahlgren won, with his restaurant at Grand Hotel in Stockholm.

Rute has three reastaurants in the white guide, compare that with a big city like Södertälje, which just has one in the guide. This is very special, so I am very proud of living here in summer and having a lot of choices for good food and bread. To add to this is that there is a very good fish restaurant and hotel here, that I should have taken in the guide too, but unforthunally, it was not in this year´s guide.

In the three following blogs, I will present the three restaurants. Until then, here are some pictures from Rute.

Breakfast

When working, you don´t have time for a really, big and perfect breakfast. Then you often take a fast fruit plate with yogurt, made buy cutting fruit. Well, we do in our family anyhow. Fresh fruit and yogurt is our families ordinary breakfast. On the weekends, we may add an egg or so to it. But in summer, we have all the time in the world. No work waiting, just the things we have planned for the day and these don't have a scheduled time.

So this summer I will tell you about two big an memorable breakfasts we had.

First, strawberries, wild strawberries and pomegranate. OH, how red and delicious it was. Just together with cold organic yogurt, with between 4 and 4,5 percent fat. It was so lovely eating it outside in the rising sun and having the whole day free.

 

Second, bread from Rute Stenugnsbageri (the local baker), butter, cheese, jam, freshly squeezed juice and eggs from the local farmer. From hens that have lived outside, free and happy. The taste of these eggs, you can´t find in eggs bought in a shop. And then of course a cup of strong Swedish coffee.