• Mood: productive
• Music: Aqua—Around the World

FLAT STANLEY VISITS FLYINGE

Flat Stanley arrived in Sweden last week, but since Martin & Karin, and more importantly, the camera, were gone, we were forced to wait until today to give him a tour of Flyinge. He was sent here by my sister's daughter Rachel, and will be heading to Germany tomorrow for a quick tour of "Mad King" Ludwig's castles with johann_metzger before heading back to Virginia to share his travels with Rachel's class. He'll be taking along a viking helmet and a Swedish flag and we've uploaded photos of his visit to Flyinge.

Yesterday was a gorgeous clear sunshiney day, but I didn't have the camera until Anders and the kids got home in the evening. So, today we started out after lunch, and it was SNOWING LIKE CRAZY. Which it still is. :) Which made it a bit hard to take decent pictures.

Anyway, Stanley went with us (in his very own stylish pink snowsuit, as you will see) to the Flyinge Kungsgård Stables, the former Royal Stables for all of Sweden. The horse center and stables is one of the oldest in the world, with buildings from the 12th century. In 1661 it became a national royal stable by order of King Karl Gustaf the Tenth, and in 1983 it turned over to Flyinge Township. (Official photos from Flyinge Kungsgård) Not just a stable, it is also a breeding center, a vocational college, a veterinary school and a competition training center. The stables house over 200 horses, and in cooperation with other farms and estates in the area, there are over 600 horses in Flyinge. We took a photo of him with one of the horses (named Brunte) and behind the stables we took some photos with the storks.

The Flyinge Stork Project raises storks and releases them into the wild. Parts of Flyinge are protected wetlands where the storks can move freely and find the kind of food they need. We often see them out in the fields, and their huge nests cover almost all of the chimneys at the stables.

Then we went to Flyinge's very own runestone. The inscription reads: The East-Gårdstånga Runestone: Cited by Skonvig circa 1623, by Worm 1643, and Wadbeck 1667. It originally stood in Västervång in a group of raised stones. Around 1593 it was moved to an estate near the present East Gårdstånga, and in the 1830's it was moved to Flyinge Kungsgårds Park, then brought back to its present site in 1947. The stone is from the Viking era (800-1050 B.C.) The text of the runes on the stone reads: "Tholv and Ulv raised these stones in memory of their comrade Asmund Lippe."

See Flat Stanley's visit to Flyinge, Sweden!

Pronounciations:
Kungsgård: Kungz-gourd; Flyinge: Flee-ing-eh; Gårdstånga: Gourd-stow-ng-ah; Västervång: Vest-er-voh-ng

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