Walking in a (Nautical) Winter Wonderland...

As the saying goes, "March comes in like a lion..." But here in Sweden, it comes in more like a Snow Leopard. Recently we've been getting steady snowfall for days on end. It comes drifting down over the city around the clock, occasionally increasing to a blinding whiteout. The snow piles up on every little surface and ledge, turning Stockholm's aging, elegant buildings into impressively intricate displays of contrasting white snow and time-stained stonework. On these beautiful but eerily silent days when the muffling snow is sifting down in dense, swirling clouds, I find it is well worth a walk out to the shipyard on the island of Beckholmen, just around the point from Vasa Museet. If you don't mind a short virtual walk, let's head over there. Beckholmen lies near the center of Stockholm Harbor, about 100 meters from where the Vasa took her chilly plunge into the depths.

The island is reached by a short wooden bridge with well-worn planks and strict weight limitations...

...from the bridge we get a decent view of the assorted private and commercial craft clustered around the boatyards, all in various stages of disassembly, reassembly, or just dereliction. They sit absolutely motionless, frozen fast in the ice with long icicles encasing their sagging mooring lines--undisturbed since the ice took up the strain in December.

Then we move onward until we have the solid ground of Beckholmen under our feet and there we find the classically nordic-looking shipyard buildings. The red barn standing at the left of the frame is the site of the treatment tanks from the Vasa excavation and conservation project. All of her thousands of sculptures and shattered pieces of planking were conserved in there.

Then we return to the graving docks that we visited in a blog almost two months ago. The Swedish naval vessel we saw drydocked there and crawling with welders is now floating, the work finished, and the ship's crew preparing to get her underway at last.

But to depart will require breaking out of the ice.

Well, the snow is coming in heavily, we've seen most of the tiny shipyard island of Beckholmen, and we have a boat to catch.

Back across the bridge and around the point we return to the ferrydock just in time to hear the little motorbarge come crashing through the thin harbor ice and loom out of the falling snow like the resident swans to take us to Slussen and the train home.