Sweden (1 Viewer)

I was fortunate to fly over the fjords in a little 4 seat Cessna and had an amazing view. Somewhere I have a bunch of pictures on that format we called film :)


I havent been there in forever, but want to go visit friends in Stavanger and Ålesund. Couldn’t live there, but great places to visit!
 
I havent been there in forever, but want to go visit friends in Stavanger and Ålesund. Couldn’t live there, but great places to visit!
Nolaswede, there's an ancient, Old Norse temple called Uppsala, in what's now the university/cultural town of Uppsala? If there was an Old Norse equivalent to ancient Greeks Oracle of Delphi or the first and second Jewish temples in Jerusalem, it would be Uppsala. Many historians are unsure if Viking Age Uppsala was an open-air sort of religious Temple(many pagan Celtic and Germanic tribes worshipped their deities or conducted rituals out-in-open in groves, forest clearings, river beds or bogs in England or Ireland) or it was a combination of the two. We know that human sacrifice was practiced at Uppsala due to the various Old Norse indigenous tribes meeting their every 9 years and sacrificing 9 out of every animal species, including humans.

I just like to ask if you've ever been there and if its not nosy, how much of the contemporary historical descriptions of the religious rituals done and performed there were accurate or just fanciful exaggerations or distortions by disapproving, hostile Christian writers, historians or authors expounding upon these tales centuries after the Viking Age ended?
 
Have any of you been there and if so what parts of the country do you recommend for a couple of 50 year olds to check out? My wife and I have a good friend who lives in France and we are going there to meet his new wife and travel around there for a few days before heading off to Sweden.




Sweden is nice, but it’s no Carriere, MS.
 
Sweden is nice, but it’s no Carriere, MS.
That’s a good one. Carriere is a good place to live at least for me. Where I’m at it’s close enough to the country but then again not to far out.
I have so many European countries that I want to travel to I feel like this is just a start. When I was a kid in high school my girlfriend at the time had some very rich parents. They were going to Greece and invited me to go with them. Foolishly I turned them down because I was afraid to fly back then. Looking back that was of dumbest things I did as a teenager.
 
These days, when i think of Sweden, the very first thing i think of the all-time G.O.A.T. of any sport - one Mr Roger Federer... so maybe Sweden has some has capitalized on that with some tennis-related activities or places to see(?)


ETA Nevermind he’s actually from Switzerland... is there a difference? :shrug::hihi:
 
These days, when i think of Sweden, the very first thing i think of the all-time G.O.A.T. of any sport - one Mr Roger Federer... so maybe Sweden has some has capitalized on that with some tennis-related activities or places to see(?)


ETA Nevermind he’s actually from Switzerland... is there a difference? :shrug::hihi:
Also Serena Williams is American
But that’s only two strikes- hang in there slugger
 
These days, when i think of Sweden, the very first thing i think of the all-time G.O.A.T. of any sport - one Mr Roger Federer... so maybe Sweden has some has capitalized on that with some tennis-related activities or places to see(?)


ETA Nevermind he’s actually from Switzerland... is there a difference? :shrug::hihi:
Don't worry, Sweden put out what I believe may have been one of the greatest tennis players of the post WWII generation, Bjorn Borg. Any tennis fan or any sports fan who has maybe a little more then a cursory interest in tennis Pro Major championships over the age of 50 knows just how great and dominant Borg was from the mid-late 70's---early 80's. Their also keenly aware that Borg was one half of some of the greatest, most intense, physically exhausting matches in history---his epic series of championship matches between John McEnroe, particularly the 1980 Wimbledon Men's Finals.

That match was the sort of contest where a whole generation of future tennis pros could point to and say "This was the match that made me want to pick up a tennis racket and make a career out of this sport". The high-stakes, nervous frenzied, energy shown from both players, the loud, visceral reaction from the crowd at Wimbledon knowing they were watching something epic unfold in front of them. Borg/McEnroe had many epic great matches, but this was their best and they were pro tennis version of Ali/Frazier and we, as fans, were the ultimate beneficiaries.

Bjorn Borg went on record in an interview back in the late 90's and said that grueling match was probably the first time in his entire career, up to that point, he felt he might lose because McEnroe was like a caged animal who wouldn't go down and kept pounding, scratching and gnawing at the steel cage so much it almost cost Borg the match.

Until Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer entered the picture and redefined just how we view and assess legendary, long epic championship tennis, this was the match and contest that when I found about it later out about it, gave me a firm appreciation of just how physically exhausting, mentally and psychologically tacking and how the tension affects individual players to rise to that unknown higher level and win, or just fall apart and descend back into a kind of mediocrity, being seen as a very good tennis player by your peers, media critics, and fans, but not capable of reaching that proverbial MT. Rushmore "immortal status".



Sweden and Switzerland do share an important 20th century historical connection: neither country was militarily involved in either World War I and World War II, although Sweden's contributions, in a humanitarian sense, was that in 1943, over the course of one night, Danish resistance fighters, covert anti-Nazi Danish civilians organized, assembled all of their country's Jews, from cities, towns,.etc. and smuggled them on to fishing boats, barges, small and medium-sized passenger ships and ferried them to safety to neutral Sweden with the covert assistance and aid of Swedish border guards and civil servants.

This action prevented the Gestapo, SD, SS, and Danish Nazi collaborators from mass arresting, documenting, then herding most of Denmark's Jews into depot camps which were then sent to death camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sorbibor, Chelmno, and Balzac in Poland.
 
Don't worry, Sweden put out what I believe may have been one of the greatest tennis players of the post WWII generation, Bjorn Borg. Any tennis fan or any sports fan who has maybe a little more then a cursory interest in tennis Pro Major championships over the age of 50 knows just how great and dominant Borg was from the mid-late 70's---early 80's. Their also keenly aware that Borg was one half of some of the greatest, most intense, physically exhausting matches in history---his epic series of championship matches between John McEnroe, particularly the 1980 Wimbledon Men's Finals.

That match was the sort of contest where a whole generation of future tennis pros could point to and say "This was the match that made me want to pick up a tennis racket and make a career out of this sport". The high-stakes, nervous frenzied, energy shown from both players, the loud, visceral reaction from the crowd at Wimbledon knowing they were watching something epic unfold in front of them. Borg/McEnroe had many epic great matches, but this was their best and they were pro tennis version of Ali/Frazier and we, as fans, were the ultimate beneficiaries.

Bjorn Borg went on record in an interview back in the late 90's and said that grueling match was probably the first time in his entire career, up to that point, he felt he might lose because McEnroe was like a caged animal who wouldn't go down and kept pounding, scratching and gnawing at the steel cage so much it almost cost Borg the match.

Until Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer entered the picture and redefined just how we view and assess legendary, long epic championship tennis, this was the match and contest that when I found about it later out about it, gave me a firm appreciation of just how physically exhausting, mentally and psychologically tacking and how the tension affects individual players to rise to that unknown higher level and win, or just fall apart and descend back into a kind of mediocrity, being seen as a very good tennis player by your peers, media critics, and fans, but not capable of reaching that proverbial MT. Rushmore "immortal status".



Sweden and Switzerland do share an important 20th century historical connection: neither country was militarily involved in either World War I and World War II, although Sweden's contributions, in a humanitarian sense, was that in 1943, over the course of one night, Danish resistance fighters, covert anti-Nazi Danish civilians organized, assembled all of their country's Jews, from cities, towns,.etc. and smuggled them on to fishing boats, barges, small and medium-sized passenger ships and ferried them to safety to neutral Sweden with the covert assistance and aid of Swedish border guards and civil servants.

This action prevented the Gestapo, SD, SS, and Danish Nazi collaborators from mass arresting, documenting, then herding most of Denmark's Jews into depot camps which were then sent to death camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sorbibor, Chelmno, and Balzac in Poland.
I was a big Johnny Mac fan (borg also) and watched every match that they showed
i do feel Pete Sampras is the forgotten man who fell in between the 2 big tennis epochs
 
Borg was amazing. It was like watching a machine. Resistance was futile.

Okay, I'll stop.
 

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