Tourism – Super Facts

I am currently traveling in Scandinavia with my oldest son and his wife. Therefore, my blogging activities are a little bit less intense than usual. This post is factual, but it is not a super-fact post.

Yesterday, we visited Uppsala, a city north of Stockholm. Uppsala is Sweden’s fourth largest city, and it is the home to one of Europe’s most prominent universities, Uppsala University. This is also where I studied engineering physics before coming to the United States.

The largest cathedral in Sweden, Uppsala Domkyrka. This is where Gustav I Vasa is buried. Gustav I is arguably Sweden’s most prominent king.

During the Viking era Uppsala was the religious center of Sweden. Later as Sweden became Christian it remained the religious center of Sweden, however, the Viking temple in old Uppsala was replaced by a Christian church. Sweden’s largest cathedral, Uppsala Domkyrka, is located in Uppsala. Inside Uppsala Domkyrka is the tomb of the king that is considered to be the father of Sweden, Gustav I Vasa.

The relationships between the Scandinavian countries were quite complicated in the past, especially that between Sweden and Denmark. If you do a google search using the phrase “which two countries fought the most wars with each other” the top results all claim that this was Sweden and Denmark. The websites in question, Quora, Twitter and Reddit, aren’t reliable sources, so this may not be true. However, more reliable sources, such as historical sites, encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia state that Sweden and Denmark fought at least 11 wars with each other.

Denmark vs Sweden. The yellow and blue flag is the Swedish flag. Red and white is the Danish. Shutterstock Stock Photo ID: 1114320377 by Hasanov Jeyhun.

In 1397 a union was formed between Denmark, Norway and Sweden called the Kalmar Union (Kalmar is a city a Sweden). The Kalmar Union came to be dominated by Denmark and eventually Sweden rebelled against the Danish King Christian II. He was called Christian the Good in Denmark and Christian the Tyrant in Sweden.

This rebellion was led by a noble, Gustav Eriksson who later would be crowned as Gustav I Vasa. He was the first of the Vasa kings. Sweden declared its independence from Denmark on June 6^th, 1523, which is why June 6^th is Sweden’s national day, or Independence Day.

The Kalmar Union. Finland was part of Sweden at the time. Ssolbergj, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Painting of Gustav I Vasa. Fashion was somewhat different back in the day.

Sweden and Denmark had a complicated history that included a lot of hostilities and wars, but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the situation today. There hasn’t been a war between Sweden and Denmark in more than 180 years and Swedes and Danes get along very well, well as long as you don’t talk too much about the past. In my opinion Swedes and Danes get along better than Texans and Oklahomans. Maybe it helps that Swedes can’t understand what the Danes are saying.