National Museum Of Scotland Takes New Look At Vikings

by Sean McLachlan on


How much do we really know about the Vikings? A new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh asks this question and comes up with some interesting answers.

“Vikings!” collects more than 500 objects from the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm to show a side to Scandinavia’s most famous culture that most people don’t know.

While most of the public is aware (hopefully) that those horned helmets are a product of Victorian imagination, some other facts about the Vikings may come as a surprise. For example, we tend to think of them as fierce pagans bellowing war chants to Odin and Thor as they cleaved their battle-axes through the skulls of whimpering Irish monks. As appealing as that image may be, in fact the Vikings converted to Christianity before much of the rest of Europe. There’s a beautiful ninth century silver cross pendant on display, and a house key with a crucified Christ on the handle.

Even the term Viking itself isn’t accurate. They were Norsemen who occasionally went “on a viking,” which means setting sail to trade or loot while the majority of the population stayed where they always did – at home fishing or growing crops.

There are also objects revealing their home life, like a folding bone comb and a little cat carved out of amber that some Norse kid probably used to play with. I’ve seen many of these objects at their permanent home at the Swedish History Museum (formerly the National Historical Museum) and can say that they are some of the best preserved and finest objects of medieval Norse culture you’ll see anywhere.

Visitors will get to some in-depth knowledge of Norse religion, shipbuilding, art, politics, the role of women and storytelling. A series of lectures are open to people who want to learn more. The exhibition is kid-friendly with lots of interactive displays. They can learn to spell their names with runes, dress up in period gear, or play Hnefatafl, a Viking board game of military strategy. If you can’t make it to Edinburgh, check out their online Viking Training School.

“Vikings!” runs until May 12.

[Image courtesy Swedish History Museum]

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Photo Of The Day: Winter Wonderland

by Chris Owen on

This Photo of the Day, titled “Winter Wonderland,” comes from Gadling Flickr pool member mjlacey who captured the image using a Canon PowerShot S100.

“When the sun comes out, it’s nice weather, whatever the temperature! (-12 °C on this particular morning),” says mjlacey of the image, which can also be found in their “Sweden” set.

Upload your best shots to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. Several times a week we choose our favorite images from the pool as a Photo of the Day.

[Photo Credit- Flickr user mjlacey]

Gadling Contributors’ Favorite Restaurants Of 2012

by David Farley on

I take pictures of my food at restaurants. Do you hate me now? Yeah, I thought so. I do it because I’m a food writer and I use the photos to jog my memory when I’m writing about a restaurant. But also sometimes I do it for the same reason a lot of other people do: because I’m so smitten with the taste of what I’m eating that I want something to take with me when the flavor has long disappeared from my palate. There’s an anti-foodie backlash, that dismissive irony that hipsters gave to the world – the one that says: we can’t be enthusiastic about anything and if we appear to look that way, it’s just because we’re being ironic.

Remember when you had to go to an Italian specialty shop to get olive oil? Or when the only tacos you could find were made of ground beef and impossible-to-melt cheddar cheese? No? Well, trust me. The year 2012 is a much better time to be a lover of food than the past decades. It’s a good thing that we care about what we eat; that we want to know where it comes from; that we’re supporting more farmers and fewer corporations. And it’s okay to be so crazy about what you’re eating that you can’t help but snap a picture of your plate. Go ahead.

Below is a list – in alphabetical order – of Gadling writers’ favorite restaurants of 2012. No word on if they snapped shots of their food. They did, though, leave very satisfied.DAVID FARLEY
Gastrologik, Stockholm
There’s been so much talk about the triumph of Nordic cuisine the last couple years. I spent my first time in Scandinavia-in Stockholm, to be exact-eating my way through the handsome city of water and islands. My favorite meal was at chef Jacob Holmstrom’s restaurant, Gastrologik, where I feasted on a multi-course dinner. Dishes included a smooth crème of rooster liver, deep-fried cod belly, and fork-tender reindeer.

L’Osteria Monteverde, Rome
I spent one night in Rome earlier this year and my friend Pancho took me to this unassuming restaurant in the Monteverde neighborhood. It’s part of a trend in Roman dining right now where a talented chef takes over the space of a neighborhood eatery outside the center of town (where the rents are cheaper), does little to the décor, and quickly transforms the place into a destination restaurant. The menu listed what seemed like some tricked-out versions of classics but I went with the traditional carbonara and didn’t regret it.

In New York, there were just too many to keep it to one, so I’ll briefly mention my faves: Ngam in the East Village for an impressive fusion of American comfort food and northern Thai cuisine (the massaman curry pot pie makes me salivate); Mission Chinese Food on the Lower East Side for just about everything on the menu; and ditto for Fort Defiance in Brooklyn’s Red Hook which hit the mark on everything I ate there.

RACHEL FRIEDMAN
Bernys, Bateman’s Bay, Australia
This summer a friend and I drove Australia’s little appreciated south coast roads from Sydney to Eden. Along the way, we stopped off in the seaside town of Bateman’s Bay. Eager to get an insider’s view of the popular tourist destination, we asked a group of local fishermen where to get lunch. They recommended Bernys, a brightly painted but ramshackle place serving up fresh oysters, a dozen for a mere six Aussie dollars. We piled back into the car with two loads and headed to the nearest beach. Parked at a picnic table, we spent a blissfully lazy hour snacking on our mouth-watering mollusks.

ALLISON KADE
Flatbush Farm, Brooklyn
I really loved Flatbush Farm when I was there and had this incredible bean dish, and an incredible polenta dish. But they change their menu all the time, depending on what’s seasonal, which is part of the charm.

COLLEEN KINDER
Barboncino, Brooklyn
I have only love songs to sing for Barboncino, a newish wood oven pizza place on Franklin Avenue. Their basic, cheese-less marinara pizza, as sweet as it is garlicky, makes you wonder whether cheese is a cover-up for inferior sauces. Delicious and the perfect portion for one. For brunch, the egg pizza is surprisingly good, and well-paired with a Nutella calzone. Decadence.

JEREMY KRESSMAN
Pok Pok NY, New York City
New York is probably the last place you’d expect to find mind-blowing Southeast Asian cuisine – many of the tropical herbs and fragrant spices that make cuisines like Thai so wonderful and flavorful are hard to come by on the other side of the world in a cold-weather climate like New York City. So I was dumbstruck to discover earlier this year that Portland chef Andy Ricker would be opening an outpost of his award-winning Thai restaurant near me in Brooklyn. There’s no shortage of standouts on the menu, but the Northern Thai-style specialties are the best: the outstanding Chiang Mai-style Khao Soi soup is a wonderful sensory and flavor overload–crispy noodles, tangy citrus and milky coconut broth held together by a fiery mixture of spices. The “Sai Ua Samun Phrai” (Chiang Mai grilled sausage with spicy green chili dip) is a “punch in the mouth” in the best possible sense of the term – pairing, savory, smoky sausage with bitter squash and a spicy dipping sauce.

PAM MANDEL
Bakery Nouveau. Seattle
Sometimes I go for coffee and baked goods – they make an amazing twice baked almond croissant that’s stuffed with marzipan and smothered in butter, but they also make a beautiful custardy quiche and their California club sandwich is avocado, bacon, Havarti, and a not to garlic-y aoli on their own crumbling, delicate croissants. There’s nearly always a line and it is always worth the wait.

JESSICA MARATI
Wolfnights, New York City
The Brother’s Grimm at Wolfnights NYC is quite possibly the most delicious wrap I have ever had in my life, and I don’t even like wraps. This little roll of heaven contains spicy grilled chicken, pickled shitake mushrooms, raisins, plantain chips, and a generous dose of chipotle aioli sauce, all wrapped in a freshly made chestnut and chilly dough. Cost? A reasonable $7.95. I go at least once a week.

GRANT MARTIN
Longman & Eagle, Chicago
Longman & Eagle has been getting some well-deserved great press for the past couple of years due to a combination of great food, warm atmosphere and the cute six-room inn that they’ve established above their Logan Square restaurant. The fare could be best described as local comfort food that’s pricey but not expensive, while the clientele and staff could be in the same category. The menu changes seasonally, but if you get the chance try the delicious wild boar sloppy joe. And don’t forget to sample part of the whiskey menu – their selection is unparalleled.

LAUREL MILLER
OAK at Fourteenth, Boulder, CO
Dinner with Grant and Liz, last week. They have a dish of San Marzano tomatoes-braised meatballs and burrata cheese, served on Anson Mills grits. It’s like nirvana on a plate.

MEG NESTEROV
Thinking about my travel this year, I’d recommend a few places:

Kantin, Istanbul
One of my favorite neighborhood spots in ladies-who-lunch Nisantasi is open just for lunch. There are no printed menus, just whatever is seasonal and fresh is written on chalkboards. I’m still trying to recreate their watermelon lemonade, and you can’t go wrong with a savory pastry or kebab. Even better is the dukkan (shop) downstairs where you can take more treats home.

Pesti Diszno, Budapest
The chalkboard pig outline logo drew me into this “gastropub” (pork was always inviting when I didn’t get much living in Istanbul), and it was one of my favorite meals in Budapest. The design and lighting feels like a hip bar, but the waiters still treated us like VIPs even with a baby and no Hungarian. I had one of the best hot dogs of my life there, if you could call such a wonder of meat a hot dog. Fun place to try traditional Hungarian food with a twist.

Beast, Brooklyn
I’ve had many a boozy brunch and extended dinner at Beast in years past, and I’ve returned there more than any other place since I’ve moved back to NYC. It feels unpretentious and cozy, yet the food is surprisingly innovative and gourmet. The outstanding burger made with a mix of meats, and the fried manchego cheese bites are so good, you’ll order a second plate. They also have some of my favorite bathroom graffiti ever.

DAVE SEMINARA
Carmelo’s Brick Oven Pizza, New York City
Growing up, my brother Peter was known as the family garbage disposal. You could put a pile of pig slop in front of him and he’d rave that it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. So I was more than a little surprised when he spent a small fortune on a mobile wood-fired pizza oven a couple years back in order to found a small mobile pizza business, Carmelo’s Brick Oven Pizza. He studied the art of pizza making and within a year, he was hitching his mobile oven to the back of his truck and catering parties and events. When he bragged that he made the best pizza in New York, I assumed that he was full of crap. That is, until I actually tried it this year and had to admit that it was just as good as the famous Da Michele in Naples and much better than just about every other Neapolitan-style pizza I’ve had anywhere. Sometimes the most prolific eaters also make very good cooks.

[Photo by David Farley]

Stockholm’s Spirit Museum, A Bizarre Museum

by David Farley on

Sweden has a strange relationship with alcohol. After going through a period of prohibition in the early 20th century, booze officially resurfaced but under strict government control. Today, for example, you can only find three brands of vodka on store shelves: Absolut, Good ol’ Sailor, and Explorer. If you want a more high-end variety – say, Karlsson or Purity – you’d have to find it in a bar or order it online.

Whatever the case, you might need a bit of vodka before visiting the new Spirit Museum, or as it’s officially written, Spiritmuseum, in Stockholm. This is not a place dedicated to the ghoulish and ghostly; it’s all about alcohol. You won’t, though, learn much about the history of booze in Sweden. You won’t learn, for example, that Swedish Protestants played a large role in implementing Prohibition in the United States. Or that in Sweden, a “bar,” as we know it cannot exist: the establishment has to serve food. Or even that in the 1950s the Swedish government had ration books that kept track of how many bottles of booze you were purchasingInstead, you’ll enter a bizarre booze-themed fantasyland, created by someone who most certainly was under the influence of a Swedish spirit. The bi-level space is separated by seasons and guests are given a packet of spirits and to drink at each the season. In spring, I tasted an orange liquor. Summer was elderflower, late summer was caraway and dill, and autumn was wormwood. And each room/season had a particular theme: spring had fake trees and the summer room contained two campers, like the kind you pull behind your car – the back windows of each showed videos of people singing Swedish drinking songs.

Upstairs there’s a “hangover room,” a small space bedecked to look like someone’s apartment. As soon you shut the door, a recording of a hung-over woman begins. She’s talking to herself about how crappy she feels until the recording culminates with the woman vomiting. In the next room, you’re encouraged to lounge on a cozy banquette and watch a video of a guy’s night out. The show takes us on a journey through his inebriation, labeling each stage: sober, tipsy, loaded, hammered and wrecked. By the time we get to “gone,” he’s passed out in the snow.

It’s admirable they don’t necessarily romanticize alcohol. But neither does the museum seem to make much sense.

Fittingly, there’s a bar inside the museum as well (one that, of course, serves food). Of the cocktails on the list, I was intrigued by the Brooklyn Cocktail: Four Roses single barrel, Amer Picon, and Dolin vermouth. As I was contemplating getting one – maybe it would have helped me understand what I had just experienced – I met the museum director, Helen Ericsson.

Did I like the museum? Um … yes, I did. “It’s not about the production of spirits,” she told me. “It’s about the human experience with alcohol.”

And then she added: “Next year we’re taking a step back and adding more about the history of spirits. People now think the museum is a little strange.”

I’ll drink to that.

[Photo by David Farley]

Uppsala, Sweden: A University Town With Viking Roots

by Sean McLachlan on


Uppsala University in Sweden is 535 years old today, having been inaugurated on this date in 1477. As one of the older universities in Europe, it has quite a few sights to see and is located in a town of ancient importance.

The city started as a religious center for the pagan Vikings and the location of their Thing, a general assembly. An ancient temple at Uppsala was said to have had statues to Thor, Odin, and Freyr and the entire building was encircled by a golden chain hanging from the gables. While the old temple has disappeared, there are still some Viking remains in the form of runestones and three large earthen mounds. Legend has it that they’re the barrows (tombs) of the three principal Norse gods, but excavations showed them to be the resting places for three early Norse rulers.

As with many pagan sites across Europe, Uppsala was turned into a center for Christianity and became the site for the country’s first archbishopric in 1164. There’s a little medieval church dating to the 13th century and a much more elegant cathedral from the 15th century. I wish I could describe the interior of the earlier church to you, but on my visit I walked in on a wailing baby getting baptized and had to walk right out! Such are the hazards of travel.

The later house of worship still serves as the cathedral today. Its brick exterior has a warm, homey feel, but when you go inside you find the soaring arches and fine stonework that you’d expect from a European cathedral. Inside you can find the tombs of important Swedes such a King Gustav Vasa (of Vasa ship fame), scientist Carl Linnaeus and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg.

As for the university itself, such an old center of learning is bound to have some attractions. In good weather visit the Linnaean Garden, a beautiful botanical garden founded in 1655 and reorganized by Carl Linnaeus, who created the taxonomic system still used to categorize plants and animals today. He got in trouble with church authorities for categorizing humans as primates. Above is a view of the gardens courtesy Andreas Trepte, who caught them on one of those warm, sunny days that are so precious this far north. The gardens are an easy stroll from Uppsala Castle, complete with throne room and a rich collection of European art.

%Gallery-167737%The Gustavianum, formerly an operating theater where 17th century medical students could watch dissections, is now a museum showing off the university’s art and archaeological collections. There’s also a cool exhibit of early scientific instruments. The old operating theater still exists if you want to see what it was like to get cut up in public.

Take some time to soak up Uppsala’s atmosphere. Stroll through the narrow medieval lanes and along the riverside where the students like to lounge. Being a northern city, it changes dramatically with the seasons. My first visit was in winter and was in fact my favorite. Standing atop an old Viking barrow and looking out across the snow-covered fields as the church spire rose in the gray distance, I felt like I was seeing Sweden at its best. Sure, we all like sunshine, but biting cold wind and short, overcast days seemed more properly Scandinavian!

Uppsala makes an easy day trip from Stockholm and is one of the top places to see in Sweden. Gamla Uppsala (“Old Uppsala”) with its pagan remains and early church, is just outside the more modern town.