Sweden Road Trip #8: Döda Fallet (The Dead Waterfall)

Now considered a natural wonder of the world, Döda Fallet has become a nature reserve and a major tourist spot on the roads through Jämtland in Northern Sweden. But this beautiful place is the site of one of Sweden’s biggest natural disasters, and as its name suggests it was once a powerful waterfall, known as Storforsen (which translates roughly as big whitewater rapid), with a fall height of 35 metres (115 feet) coming from the Indalsälven river and the 25km lake Ragundasjön. Now, that lake is dry and is used for farming (it looks like a field), the river has a different course (which some speculate may be similar to its course before the ice age), and the waterfall is non existent, with nothing but collapsed boulders and ground and a few ponds to hint at what was once here.

The disaster occurred back in the late 1700s, when logging was becoming a major industry in this part of Sweden. Storforsen was a bit of a problem for the loggers, as the logs often would not survive the sharp drop down the waterfall. In 1793 a man named Magnus Huss, later nicknamed Vildhussen (The Wild Huss), was given the task of solving this problem by trying to construct a new canal to bypass the waterfall. The forest was cleared out in the area but attempts to build the canal were repeatedly sabotaged by angry locals who objected to the whole project, and construction wasn’t started until 1796.

Despite a couple of delays and stoppages, work on the canal had begun and slowly it was being built backwards towards the lake Ragundasjön. But the canal was built on porous ground, and this became a major problem on the night between June 6 and June 7 of 1796. The spring flood that year had been much heavier than usual, and on this night the lake began to leak into the canal at an alarming and uncontrollable speed as the canal couldn’t hold together. Within only four hours the entire lake had emptied itself out, sending a 15 metre (49 foot) wave of water down the river, causing much destruction. Storforsen, the once powerful waterfall, had been silenced.

Amazingly, it seems nobody died in the wave that resulted from this accident. A lot of the soil and sediment washed down the river ended up forming new land near The High Coast which now hosts an airport, and the lake was turned into agricultural land which was actually useful in the aftermath of the disaster. A new waterfall also formed at the bed of the lake and that is now a hydro-electric station. Logging did become easier, but the river itself never became fully navigable. Storforsen completely dried up, along with the old path of the river in this area, and it became known as The Dead Falls.

At the time Magnus Huss received the scorn of a lot of locals, as his ideas were both genius and disastrous as this event indicates. There are even rumours that he may have been killed – the following year he died on the river on a boat trip, but some say that locals stole his oars and pushed him out into the river. These days, however, there is a statue of him to commemorate his work (or attempts at it), and Döda Fallet has a 2.3km walkway with information on him and the disaster (the walkway you can see in some of these pictures). Some Kings and Queens have also visited and carved their visits on a rock now known as King’s Rock in the area too.

While it felt in the middle of nowhere (and it kind of was), this little brief stopover at Döda Fallet was worth it, and was a fascinating experience learning about this natural disaster from so long ago and seeing the obvious devastation it caused. If you’re ever up in Northern Sweden, this is definitely worth checking out. There’s even an outdoor theatre here and once or twice a year they put on a play about these events (presumably during the tourist season in Summer).

Sweden Road Trip #4: Stockholm Part 2 – Djurgården, and The Swedish Sin

We ended up spending a lot of our day in Stockholm in an area called Djurgården. It has a strong naval history in the area, which means there are ships and galleys everywhere still, but nowadays a lot of it has been turned into museums – the model to the right shows roughly how it looked back in the 1940s. There is an old ice breaker docked which is a museum and also a restaurant. There is the Vasa Museum, which has a ship in it sticking out of the top (left – yes that ship is real and old). And there is the Spirit Museum, which we entered into because the exhibitions looked too interesting to pass up. The whole area of Djurgården was quite clearly a tourist destination, as there were people everywhere and plenty to do – I think you could spend a day here alone just to get everything done, because we sure didn’t have the time to.

The Spirit Museum (I think that’s what it was called anyway) had three exhibitions going on – one on spirits and drinks of Sweden, one on Artpop and Record Sleeves, and one on The Swedish Sin. There weren’t too many fascinating photos from the Spirits exhibition but alcohol is an important factor in The Swedish Sin exhibition, which looks at Sweden’s relationships with alcohol and sex over the last half a century or so.

Starting off, however, with the Artpop exhibition, for a music fanatic like me this was a lot of fun. There were a lot of classic album covers on display from the age of vinyl, and lots of information about particular artists behind some of these covers, as well as the styles and similarities between some. It was nothing life changing, but it was a nice reminder that once upon a time a lot of work went into designing an album cover and at times the liner notes inside too – something which gets lost as music becomes increasingly digital around the world. There were also some bits of information that were just funny, like the fact that inside an album by Frankie Goes To Hollywood was a quote about how he was excited to know that Andy Warhol had heard of him because Picasso had heard of Andy Warhol. Anyway, this was a good exhibition to ease us into the museum before the more serious stuff!

The Swedish Sin was by far the most interesting of the exhibitions. While in the mid 20th century the world was looking at Sweden in shock at their sexual values, as sex became less and less of a taboo topic and the society as a whole encouraged sexual freedom and rights in ways much ahead of their time, alcohol restrictions in the country were some of the most severe in the developed world. It’s interesting because this was the reverse of America and much of the western world of the time, which had an easier relationship with alcohol but still saw sex as a fairly taboo subject. I can’t show pictures from the sexual side of all this because, well, you can figure it out I’m sure, but the alcohol aspect was quite a spectacle back then. For a long time there has been a total alcohol monopoly in Sweden – you can only buy it (to take home, I mean) from Systembolaget, a government owned chain of shops. This is still the case now, and even now the Systembolaget sells no cold drinks (meaning you need to “plan” to buy them in advance so you can cool them down), they shut early and don’t open at all on Sundays. Still, back in the 1950s you had rationing of alcohol where they wrote down how much you had bought and could refuse you if you tried to go over your rations. In the late 1950s they dropped the rationing, trying to encourage responsible drinking through campaigns like Operation Wine in which they encouraged people to drink wine instead of vodka so they wouldn’t get so drunk. For someone like me who comes from a country like Australia where the attitude to alcohol is quite liberal, it is fascinating to see that the current restrictive system on buying alcohol stems from something much more complex and culturally embedded.

So what turned out to be a spur of the moment decision to enter perhaps the least majestic museum we had come across in Stockholm turned into a really interesting and enlightening afternoon for us. We soon headed back towards the main part of town, walking past the Stockholm Royal Theatre (somewhere else to see on a later visit) and chilling on a jetty for a while by the water as we considered dinner. Oddly enough, all the waterfront restaurants had really boring menus which is something I found quite frustrating – plenty of other cities by the water that I have visited have great restaurants on the water. But all of these had not only dull menus but the same menu, and I was almost at the point of giving up when we found a really nice Lebanese restaurant further in town which ended the night perfectly. According to my Fitbit we had walked some 20 000 steps and nearly 20km, and I definitely felt it.

Coming up next, we head up a lot more north finally to the High Coast, a place of beauty and, oddly enough, significant geological interest. Stay tuned for more!

Sweden Road Trip #3: Stockholm Part 1

It’s a little sad that it took me almost six months of living here to finally make it to the capital city of Sweden, but a couple of days into our road trip in July I finally got there. I actually had to go there anyway to visit the Australian Embassy about something (it was hiding upstairs in some totally random building that we could have so easily missed, too, but the people there were nice at least). After half an hour, we were done and headed off for a day around Stockholm.

The city itself is like a lot of the other bigger cities of Sweden – not all that big. There is about a million people living in Stockholm altogether, which compared to many cities of the world is tiny, and the effect on the overall scenery is that there is a distinct lack of high-rises which in turn makes the place kind of cosy. Like a lot of the main cities of Sweden, water is the key natural feature of the whole place, and added to the usual modes of transport here are ferries (which we boarded on our way to a place I’ll cover in Part 2 of this post).

The architecture here is amazing, as you would expect, with churches and cathedrals littered everywhere. I could go on and on about the architecture, but I’ll just include a bunch of pictures towards the end of the post to show you what I mean. As we didn’t have much time in Stockholm we didn’t go into most of these buildings, which is kind of a shame but I plan on spending a lot more time exploring the city later, and when I do I’ll probably be able to say something more profound about these places other than “oh look, dey so purdy!” (But they are.)

After some sight seeing, we dodged the crowds through the main part of the city and found ourselves on the back streets. After a little bit of wandering we came across an amazing little cafe called Under Kastenjen, which translates as Under The Chestnut Tree, called this because…well I’m pretty sure you can work it out. We had a surprisingly cheap lunch while relaxing here, and halfway through our meal a keyboard player appeared in the middle of the courtyard and started performing for us (I say appeared, but he did walk into the courtyard – I don’t want you to think that not only do Swedish people just materialise places but that it’s accepted as nothing unusual (although that would be cool)). Naturally, we didn’t find ourselves in a rush to leave and decided a dessert would also be a good idea.

We eventually left our little lunch spot and roamed some more of the back streets, going into a few different shops along the way while we looked for a pharmacy. What we weren’t expecting to find, however, was a pharmacy from the 1600s that was still in use! A lot of the historic feel to the place has been kept, which I thought was fantastic (I’m sure most people who live there think it’s no big deal, but then again I am a big nerd). There was an extension out the back that looked a lot newer, but the original pharmacy was definitely still in use, and I believe that computer monitor also dates back a few centuries (I made that same bad joke on Instagram with this particular photo…extra sorry for those poor souls who had to see the bad excuse for humour twice). There was also an old mortar and pestle and a plaque with all the owners of the place since 1674 – interestingly the only female owner was not in the last century at all, but back in the 1700s.

There were plenty of other interesting finds along some of those streets. We walked past some awesome antique shops, many of which weren’t open frustratingly. We heard a lot of different accents on our way, including a lot of different English speakers too (it was the middle of Summer so the peak of the tourist season). We also walked past some darker aspects of history, such as a street named Svartmangatan – translated as Black man’s street. For all the wonderful ways that Sweden has been progressive socially, racism has long been an issue throughout the history of the country and, judging from the election results here last night, it still is an issue (to cut a long story short, an incredibly racist party has somehow become the third biggest party, which has left a lot of the country devastated, embarrassed, and a little bit scared).

As I said before, this was a rushed tour of the city, and so there were a lot of places we just didn’t have time to visit. One place which I regret not going into, and yet I feel I probably needed to dedicate a full day to anyway, was the rather majestic looking Nordic Museum. It was so huge that taking a picture of the longer side required me to stand back. Several hundred metres back, actually. I adore the architecture with this place – I think all good museums should put the effort into looking nice from the outside (because I have visited plenty in my life that look drab and awful until you go in). Anyway, I have heard a lot of good things about this place, so this is definitely deserving of a return trip one day. It was also surrounded by some nice gardens and place to eat and drink.

After this, we went and rested in a park for a little while while we decided what to do next. The rest of the day would be spent in a part of Stockholm called Djurgården, which I will cover in the second part of this post. There we did go into a museum, looking at a couple of different exhibitions from Artpop music covers to Sweden’s cultural history with alcohol and sex. In the meantime, I’ll finish off this post with a few more pictures of the architecture around Stockholm. Enjoy!

What I love with this is just the sheer amount of detail that has gone into it! Beautiful!

This was a door. I want this door.

Suddenly this statue doesn’t look so tough with a bird on its head. For some reason this made me laugh a lot.

 

Return to Copenhagen Part 1- Around town, The King’s Gardens and Rosenborg Castle

On Thursday just passed I spent the day over the pond in Denmark, wandering all over Copenhagen. I visited for the first time in July last year when I was visiting Sweden, before I moved here, and I fell in love with the city so returning at some point was a given. With it being Spring and all, we spent a lot of time outside exploring parts of the city we missed the first time.

In this first post, I’m going to show some pictures from around town when we first got there, the King’s Gardens and Rosenborg Castle. In the second post I’ll give a tour of the Botanical Gardens in Copenhagen, along with some funny pictures we took as we left the city to go back to Sweden. Also, if you follow me on Instagram then you’ve already seen these (I figured I took so many they were worth turning into blog posts, so sorry about the doubling up but at least now you can see them bigger, right?).

Let us begin…

In Helsingborg in Sweden, where we caught the ferry to Helsingør in Denmark. From there it’s about 45 minutes on the train to the country’s capital city.

Looking out across the water before the ferry left Sweden. Yes, that land in the near distance is Denmark. Europe amazes me.

One of the first things we see when walking off the train into Copenhagen. The city is going Eurovision crazy. Unless I misread this sign it begins in 3 days (well, now it’s probably begun).

What city is complete without a man painted in gold pretending to be a statue? (And as a friend pointed out on Instagram, a 7-Eleven in the background too). Note the ambiguous flag – does it protrude from the man or the shop?

Tiniest café ever.

Bicycles are a big part of city life in all of Northern Europe, as you can see by the multiple bicycle parking lots around the city. In the case of Copenhagen, the bike lanes are through almost the whole city, even having their own traffic lights. I think this is really quite awesome and should become a feature of all major cities.

Out the front of the Royal Theatre. I love the architecture here – it’s quite spectacular for somebody who has grown up outside of Europe.

Is this not the best ad for Coke ever? This is probably true about the bike lanes, too. It also claims on the side of the ad that Denmark is the happiest country in the world – this wouldn’t surprise me if it were true either – people seem very happy here.

A quick stop for lunch by the water at the oldest building on this little strip (built in 1681). I just love how colourful this part of the city is. I think it’s called New Haven but I could be wrong.

The King’s Gardens, with Rosenborg Castle in the distance at the end of the garden. It was the perfect day to be somewhere like this, and lots of people were just lying around, soaking up the sun.

More of the King’s Gardens. I’d love to see how these gardens change through the seasons.

A small information panel on Rosenborg Castle (obviously). Luckily in big cities like this there is often English translations.

All the best castles have moats.

Rosenborg Castle itself, from the side. It’s much bigger than it first looked. I’d like to explore it more in the future.

The National Gallery of Denmark. They’re currently renovating the gardens out the front there, but we spent a good while in the gallery and only saw maybe a quarter of their collection, so we’ll be back later for sure. Great displays of European art from the last few centuries.

I love houses with these climbing plants. It’s a much more common sight in this part of the world than back in Australia.

Last picture for this post is just a really cute and tiny house. Look at it, it’s so tiny!

Okay, that’s it for now. Part 2 will be up within a day or two, which will focus on the Botanical Gardens and a last few sights on the way out of the city. Until then, I’d love to hear from you if you’ve ever been to Copenhagen on what your thoughts are about the city, and if you’ve not been whether or not you would ever visit this place.

Göteborg Trip, Round One

Last Saturday I visited the city of Göteborg (Gothenburg), the second biggest city in Sweden and fifth biggest in Scandinavia apparently. It was just a bit over an hour’s train ride up north and despite the trains being severely delayed due to an accident the wait was indeed worth it.

So I thought I would share some photos of my day. There is still a lot left to explore, and some things such as the amazing Turkish restaurant I visited that night, and the archipelago, I could not take photos of due to the lack of light. I will definitely return to the archipelago next time I visit though. In the meantime, here is what I did photograph:

I thought I’d start with this picture, a close up (well, kind of…considering how far away I was when I took it anyway) of a church. I love the architecture of some of the buildings in this shot, even if it isn’t the best photography ever.

I just loved how this house looked. We think somebody lives there but we couldn’t quite tell.

This climb is steeper than it looks – that tiny crown you can see in the distance is our end destination (also it’s not actually tiny). This is the climb towards the Skansen Kronan, a several century old fort.

This is the Skansen Kronan, which meets us at the top of the stairs in the last picture. There is a second building like this, only that one has a lion on top where the crown is. We passed it on the train into the city but I was too slow with my camera.

Here is an information board on the Skansen Kronan along with a map. The English section is photographed closer on the next picture.

The English translation of this information. Quite interesting bits of history here. Click on the picture if this is too small to read.

This is the view from the top of Skansen Kronan, overlooking the city. We had to climb a rickety old staircase up the building but the view was worth it.

Back in town, we found this cool little house turned into a restaurant with a seemingly out of place spruce next to it.

More of the city’s streets. It definitely felt a lot bigger than my current home town.

Lots of cafés and restaurants in this area.

Café Kringlan, a new favourite I think. Earlier in the day they had a lot of their baked goods out on this table being sold on the street.

Inside Café Kringlan. It was nice and cosy and we stayed there quite a while.

Last but not least, while briefly inside a shopping centre we discovered a volleyball game being conducted, sand and everything. Different, but it certainly drew a crowd.

Well, that’s it for now. But at long last I have started exploring this part of the world outside of my new home town! Have any of you ever been here? If so, what were your thoughts?

Ghost Stations of the London Underground

About a year ago, I did two things in quick succession – I went to London (after not visiting England since I left at the age of 4, some 23 years ago), and then pretty quickly afterwards I read Neverwhere, a Neil Gaiman novel set in a fictionalised London Underground, using some of the shut down stations for its inspiration (among other things).

Ever since then, I’ve been really fascinated by the whole concept of all these shut down stations, and am slowly learning just how many have been shut down, for what reasons, and what has become of them. Earlier today I discovered some articles on the extremely interesting londonist.com that looked into this very topic, and found this amazing picture:

Click to see the full size. Created by Dylan Maryk, this tube station map is labelled only with tube stations which no longer exist – time capsules of the era in which they were used. For more information on it, visit http://londonist.com/2013/06/alternative-tube-maps-ghost-stations-on-the-london-underground.php which is also where I found this image.

Pretty impressive, huh?

Many of these old tube stations are now bricked off and difficult to access, looking perhaps a little like this inside:

Looks vaguely familiar, doesn’t it? Taken from http://londonist.com/2011/08/inside-a-ghost-tube-station-brompton-road.php?showpage=13#gallery-1

I also found this page – http://londonist.com/2011/02/what-shall-we-do-with-the-old-tube-station.php – to be quite interesting, as it looks at a few different stations and what they have become since they closed down. I’d love to go to some of these places and visit them, see if it is easy to recognise the station architecture still.

My interest in what lies beneath London will only grow though, and one book that has caught my interest is Peter Ackroyd’s London Under. This book looks at not just the tube stations but all the history lying underneath the great city, from Roman amphitheatres to Victorian sewers, Bronze Age trackways, the monastery of Whitefriars and so much more. I haven’t yet got my hands on this one, but when I do I suspect I’ll gobble it up in a single sitting.

It’s really no wonder that so many stories can and do come from the London Underground, with so much history there. When I think of how many other cities around the world must have their own stories to tell…it makes me yearn to put on both my historian and writer caps, and start seeing these things with my own eyes!

What stories do you know of the London Underground? What about any cities where you live – do they have their own hidden pasts?

Historical rant: My thoughts on the discovery of Richard III

I don’t know who created this, but it’s been doing the rounds on social networks this last week and makes me laugh every time.

Unless you have been living under a rock (or should I say under a carpark) this past week, there’s a very good chance you will have heard of the discovery of the skeleton of Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet Kings of England, in Leicester. It has sparked fierce debate among historians, has started a battle over where the remains are to be kept (though it’s more than likely they’ll stay in Leicester), it’s been declared one of the greatest archaeological finds of our time, and it’s sure made me excited!

The reason that many people are excited about this find, including myself, is because it could potentially rewrite a little bit of history. Richard III’s reputation has been tarnished since the moment he died, with historians accusing him of killing many people (including his two young nephews) to get to the throne. Much of the history we have of the man is written by the Tudors who were his immediate successors (and so naturally wanted to make him look bad to strengthen their position and right to be on the throne), and much of this history tends not to mention the important political reforms he introduced, such as the right to bail, and the idea of innocence until proven guilty. And roughly a century after his death, Shakespeare wrote a play about him in which the villainous portrayal was exaggerated greatly for the sake of drama – yet this of course has only further affirmed such views of the King in the eyes of most people.

A facial reconstruction of Richard III using artist’s impressions and the recently discovered remains. Credited to Rex Features/AP Images, found here

Some historians, or rather quite a lot of historians, are trying to quickly shut down the idea that anything at all is up for debate regarding the legacy of Richard III – the commonly asked question is, quite simply, how could a skeleton reveal anything new? It has revealed some things already – that he was not only weathered by battle at the time of his death, but was probably killed quite brutally. It also confirms a number of things regarding what happened to him after he died.

But I think these historians who think there is nothing new to discover need to open their eyes up a little, and remember that history is not something that stays the same. The past itself cannot change, of course, but history is ultimately our understanding and perception of the past, and this can, does and should change regularly. And it doesn’t take much for it to shift – simply the renewed interest in this controversial monarch could help bring about a lot more research into his reign and character, and that alone could rewrite the books at least a little.

We all know that old saying about how history is always written by the victorious – what we learn in history class at school is always from that one perspective of it, and even if we do learn from other perspectives it’s still very biased. I remember a big moment for me and my understanding of history came when it was pointed out to me that most of what we know about the Celts was written by the Romans, and so of course this is going to be biased against them and portray them as much more barbaric than they really were. It becomes more difficult the further back into the past you delve to find evidence to suggest differently to the current history of that period, but the general principle stays the same no matter what era you’re examining. And there’s a whole society and group of historians who are out to try and change the perspectives generally held about Richard III.

The thing that excites me most about this is not just the sudden interest in this king or this period of history even, but the explosion of interest in history itself. It is rare that something like this makes the news at all, but this king’s skeleton really has people talking all over the world and the internet, and for me, for someone who loves history, this is simply awesome.

Anyway, I’m going to end what has become a not even remotely cohesive post on the subject (but at least I conveyed my feelings somewhat). So I pose to you, my readers, the questions:

What does the discovery of Richard III mean to you? Do you care about it at all? Do you think it’s important, and why/why not?

It was never going to be very long before somebody made this joke. I need to re-watch this first series of Blackadder now.

The England Trip Part 2: Durham Cathedral (and other stuff)

One of the highlights of my trip to England was visiting Durham Cathedral, up north. Considered to be one of the greatest pieces of Norman architecture, this nine century old cathedral is astonishingly huge, and very beautiful. I was lucky enough to visit on a day the choir was singing too, adding to the atmosphere of the place, as I felt history seep out at every nook and cranny.

Here are a few photos, along with explanations as last time. Enjoy!

To get a feel for how big this masterpiece is, look at the adjacent buildings on the side of the picture. To climb to the top you need to climb 325 steps (and yes, I did climb them, as you’ll soon find out).

This is the Cathedral seen from quite a distance – there aren’t many places in Durham where you can’t see this spectacle.

This is the view from the very top of the cathedral, after climbing all 325 steps up. The view is definitely worth it, even though the climb did nearly finish me off. The last half of the steps become very narrow, so if somebody was coming back the other way it was a tight squeeze. Presumably, this would have been for the sake of defence, once upon a time. Definitely climb this once in your life – you won’t regret it!

Some of you may recognise this picture from a certain quite famous movie series, based on a much loved book series.

Just a random photo I took while in the town of Durham. The place is beautiful and just has such a nice atmosphere about it. For me it’s simply novelty to be somewhere with such old buildings.

This is Melbourne Cathedral, and like Durham Cathedral up north, this one is also about nine centuries old. It’s much smaller though, but still quite stunning.

Somewhere in Melbourne (I think) I took this photo. I don’t think this house is anything important, but I just thought it looked quite spectacular by the water, surrounded by green.

My next post in this series from my England trip will look at Alnwick Castle, as well as one of the coolest bookstores I’ve ever visited.

If you’re curious about Durham Cathedral, and would like to know more or see some pictures of inside the building (as photography was forbidden inside much of it), visit the official site here. And if you missed the first part of my England Trip series of blog posts, you can find that here.

The England Trip, Part One

Finally, the first of several blog posts on my recent trip to England!

Today I want to share some photos from one of the first places I visited, a medieval deer park called Bradgate Park, in Leicestershire. I’ll explain each photo as I go, and you can click on them to enlarge them too. The quality isn’t great, but neither was my camera…or my photography skills. Anyway, enjoy!

The park is quite beautiful from the outset – this is just after walking through the gates. It was very relaxing, especially for someone who still had jet lag.

This river runs alongside the path for quite a lot of this park. I imagine on a sunnier day it would look quite stunning.

I almost missed this – all the deer hiding a bit further in the forest.

Click this one to see the full size picture – I managed to snap a deer mid-air as it ran around in front of Bradgate House. One of my friends thinks I photoshopped this (I didn’t).

Bradgate House. Built around 1520, this house holds a lot of historical significance, including being the birthplace of Lady Jane Grey, who was Queen for 9 days before being overthrown by Mary I. It is now mostly in ruins, and is considered an “Ancient Monument” according to the sign on the gate.

 

The inside of Bradgate House – unfortunately it wasn’t open on the day we visited.

Okay, so this isn’t exactly Bradgate Park. But I saw it on my first day in England, and was stunned when I realised this nice looking building was actually a McDonald’s – I don’t think we have any that look this nice in Australia.

That’s all for now – I still have over 500 more photos to sort through, but I suspect there’ll be a few more posts on my England trip to come!

Have any of you ever been to Bradgate Park? What are your thoughts on the place?

Researching Fourteenth Century England with Ian Mortimer

I have always been fascinated with medieval English history, ever since I was a young boy. However, during my Australian education in both school and university I rarely had the chance to study the history of my country of birth, which as an adult has only served to heighten my interest in the subject area.

A couple of years ago I decided, for my second NaNoWriMo, to write a novel set in fourteenth century England, roughly based around the ascension of Edward III to the throne, the beginning of the Hundred Years War, and the path of destruction left by the Great Plague in 1348, while trying to include subplots that would reveal the lives and lifestyles of a range of different people across English society from the same time period.

It sucked. My novel, I mean. Apart from the fact that I scrambled to write it in under a month and it was probably a quarter of the length it needed to be (as my idea behind it was quite ambitious), the main problem that held me back was a distinct lack of research. Since writing this initial draft, I have been trying to squeeze in research into this period of history when I have spare time, and one author in particular has been very useful – Ian Mortimer, a historian with an expertise in this very century of British history. So I thought I’d share some of his amazing books I have been consulting lately.

The Time Traveller’s Guide To Medieval England 

I’ll be honest – I saw the title of this book, and knew I had to buy it then and there. The detail in this book is incredible, as Mortimer explores every aspect of life in the fourteenth century, such as the sights, sounds, smells, the food, the clothes, the law, hygiene and disease, the landscape and means of travelling, the beliefs and values, even what to do for entertainment. The book is broad in focus, examining people from all walks of life, from the royals and noblemen, to the peasants, and everyone in between, and the descriptions are so vivid you can easily conjure the imagery contained within. This is what really grabbed me about this book – even though it is a history book, it is written so well it could be enjoyed by even the least history-inclined readers! A must-read, and perhaps the most useful out of all the books I own when it comes to my research.

The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation

Just as The Time Traveller’s Guide To Medieval England is the definitive work on the general history of fourteenth century England, this book is the definitive work on Edward III, without a doubt. This incredible biography tracks his life, from a young boy forced to grow up too fast, to the young man who ascended to the throne after overthrowing the temporary rule of Roger Mortimer (who supposedly murdered Edward II), to the confident young King who taxed his people more than any ever king and started a war that would last for over a century. Despite all of this, Edward III united England in a way the country had never seen, and is now considered to be one of the most brilliant and influential monarchs of all time. This biography not only explains the historical aspects of his kingship, but also attempts to understand who he was as a person, as a son, husband, father and friend. The problem with a biography this detailed, for me, is to try and figure out how to use so much information and slim it down to fit inside the rest of my novel. But it is an incredible read, entertaining and enlightening.

The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, Ruler of England 1327 – 1330

Roger Mortimer is a fascinating character (and quite possibly a long lost relation of the author of these books…but I digress). After escaping the Tower of London in 1323, he sailed to France, where he eventually was joined by Isabella, the Queen of England, wife of Edward II, and mother of Edward III. They returned later with an invading army, and very quickly the first deposition of a British monarch had taken place, with Mortimer taking power (although Edward III officially was King, he held no real power initially). According to many historians, Mortimer then murdered Edward II in a most brutal manner – by placing a burning hot poker in a place best not to mention (especially if you are eating as you read this). This biography explores the full evil genius of this man, including his appeal to the likes of the Queen, while at the same time exposing just why he was so terrifying to his enemies, and ultimately how he lost his power. Again, the detail in this book is simply astounding, and the writing so good you’d almost think it were a novel.

Do any of these books sound like the sort of thing you would like to read?

Do you own any history books like this that hone in on a very small but significant part of history? Do you prefer these kind of history books or do you prefer those broader in scope?