Fantastic Boats and Where to Find Them: Our Scandinavian Trek

Time for the annual Kunz Europe Trek blog post. Let’s get right into it, ja?

STOCKHOLM

Our trip began in the lovely city of Stockholm, Sweden—a bustling fusion of the old and new atop fourteen islands on the mouth of the Baltic Sea. It’s a city full of history and culture, founded by Vikings in the Middle Ages. Both Norwegians and Swedes love their Viking forebears, whose legacy lives on wherever you look. They’re not allowed to openly raid and pillage anymore; instead, they just charge you $20 for a burger.

The oldest part of Stockholm is Gamla Stan, the Old City. Back in the Middle Ages, this was Stockholm. I’m not sure they had all the tourist shops selling souvenir Viking mugs back then, but I’m no historian. Still, if you’re after an immersive walk back in time, the quaint, medieval-style buildings and narrow, cobblestoned roads are something to see. (Surprisingly, there’s also an excellent, modern-looking sci-fi/fantasy bookstore tucked into an ancient row of shops. I think it’s just called Sci-Fi Bookstore. The Swedish are nothing if not straightforward.)

On our first night, we stopped at Meatballs for the People, recommended as one of the better purveyors of genuine Swedish meatballs in the city. We put our names on the waiting list and came back an hour and a half later to sample some truly excellent meatballs. Now, much of Scandinavian cuisine involves fish, which is basically meat’s version of salad, but meatballs are a notable and tasty exception. (I think they may have had fish meatballs among the many varieties available, but we passed.)

In the morning, we went for a run to one of Stockholm’s many parks. Scandinavians are very active—no matter where you are in the city, there’s always a jogger or a cyclist trying to pass you. It’s a wonderful thing. They could teach Americans a thing or two about getting off our butts and exercising. Speaking of butts, Europeans paradoxically also seem unwilling to give up their smoking habits. Sweden isn’t as bad as some European countries in terms of cigarette use (looking at you, France and Italy, which are Little Tyke cars driving around in giant ashtrays), but come on, guys.

Stockholm is built on 14 islands, so the canal tour was a must. After that, we visited Skansen, which is like This is the Place (if you’re from Utah), except larger and Swedish. It’s a bunch of original Scandinavian buildings transplanted into one spot and populated by guides in period clothing who will happily tell you about how Sven Kjieldsen or Lars Svenssen lived in this tiny one-room farmhouse with his family over the winter, eating nothing but frozen fish.

Next came one of our Stockholm highlights. Djurgården was once the king’s private hunting ground; now it’s a public park. We rented bikes and explored the shores, riding past grand mansions and watching boats sail through the bay.

The next day was full of beautiful old buildings and one really cool ship. We saw Stockholm’s main cathedral, where the princess of Sweden married her personal trainer a few years ago. (True story.) We also toured the royal apartments, the treasury of Sweden’s crown jewels, one random Swedish king’s collection of statues, and a museum dedicated to the old Stockholm castle, which burned down in the 1600s. (The chief fire watcher, who had one job and apparently sucked at it, was executed by running the gauntlet through hundreds of soldiers who had permission to beat him as hard as they could with clubs.)

(Another true story: Stockholm was founded in the Middle Ages by a guy named Birger Jarl. “Jarl” was just a title for high-ranking Scandinavian chieftains. Some historians think he was technically a king, but my guess is they don’t call him that, because nobody wants their city to have been founded by a dude named Birger King.)

And then came the Vasa, which might have been both of our highlight of the trip. In 1628, the king of Sweden really wanted to show the other powers in the area not to mess with him, so he had a giant warship built. The Vasa was the pride of the Swedish Navy, its hull decorated with hundreds of intricately carved statues, each gunport adorned with a roaring lion. It’s five stories tall, not counting the masts, and must have been a truly awesome sight sailing out of the Stockholm harbor to go kick some Danish butt…until, that is, it capsized before even making it out of the bay. It was built far too narrow and high, so it took on water and sank to the bottom. About 30 people drowned.

333 years later, the Vasa was raised to the surface. It’s still remarkably preserved. I’m a firm believer that every trip to Europe needs at least one moment where your mind gets blown, and for me that was when I walked in and saw this once-mighty warship, a titan of wood and rope rearing up to do in death what it never could in life: strike awe into the hearts of people from far beyond Sweden’s shores.

The museum itself is pretty great, too—you can walk through a replica of the gundeck, read the stories and see the bones of the people who died, and get up close to see the intricate carvings on the stern. It’s worth a trip to Stockholm just to see the Vasa.

But that wasn’t the end of our Stockholm adventure. In our quest to find the best Swedish food, we were led to La Neta, which the Internet called the best Mexican food in Sweden. This might sound like an easy claim—like having the cutest outfit in a nudist colony—but it was as good as pretty much anything I’ve had in the States.

I should mention that not everything was a source of wonder and joy: Stockholm provided us with the first negative Airbnb experience either of us have ever had. We’re familiar with the camera’s ability to add a hundred square feet to any Airbnb dwelling, but this one was more than just smaller than it had appeared: the broken couch looked like a sinking ship, the pillows were has lumpy as gunny sacks full of dead cats, and the mattress had actual bloodstains on it. (Fun!) We took one look at the place and bought our own sheets, pillows, and blankets, hoping that the Oslo place would be a bit better.

OSLO

Our Airbnb in Oslo was a huge step up. But we didn’t stay there for long before dropping off our stuff and heading off on a hike. Kolsåstoppen is a scenic overlook over the Oslofjord. Whichever Norse god is in charge of weather (I think his name is Freyr, but I had a really good joke in mind if it were Thor) blessed us with a clear blue sky that day as we hiked up and took in the vista we would be exploring over the next few days.

Our Airbnb was right next to Vigeland Park, a lovely park full of sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. Vigeland was a sculptor who promised to spend the rest of his life beautifying Oslo in return for a stipend. Whether he succeeded mostly depends on your feelings toward nudity. The sculptures include hundreds of nude figures engaged in a variety of different activities, some of which are left to the imagination. I call this one “First Day of School”:

He’s probalby wearing an invisible Fjällräven Kanken backpack.

The centerpiece of the park is this weird obelisk full of naked people. I’m fine with nudity in art (we did go to Italy last year, after all), but I also have no problem with clothing.

The next day, the weather turned decidedly less welcoming. Which was ideal for a few more museums, and less ideal for certain outdoor activities, which I’ll get to momentarily.

We saw a lot of boats on this trip. Seriously, we should have called this trip Fantastic Boats and Where to Find Them. In addition to the aforementioned Vasa, we saw two of the best-preserved Viking ships in the world, as well as a third ship that didn’t look quite as seaworthy these days; the polar exploration ship Gjøa (your guess is as good as mine as far as pronunciation goes); and the Fram, the ship that carried Roald Amundsen to Antarctica on his daring journey to claim the South Pole. (That was after it had already taken the explorer Fridjolf Nansen near the North Pole, where it was trapped in the ice for five years. That ship has seen more than any Instagram travel influencer.) We also had the chance to see the Kon-Tiki, the raft Thor Heyerdahl used to prove that ancient South Americans could have settled Polynesia, but by then we had seen enough boats to last us a while.

The story of the race to the South Pole is fascinating. It involves two men—the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and the Englishman Robert Falcon Scott. Both desperately wanted to be the first man to set foot on the Earth’s southernmost point, and each took a harrowing journey to get there. Amundsen brought sled dogs, while Scott brought motorized sledges that immediately crapped out when they tried to start them in the freezing air. Most of the Amundsen’s dogs died along the way (and were eaten), but Amundsen made it to the Pole first, leaving Scott a letter to deliver home in case he (Amundsen) didn’t make it back. But that proved unnecessary; Amundsen returned a national hero. After a grueling journey, Scott and his men arrived at the South Pole, only to find the Norwegian flag flapping in the freezing air. I can’t imagine the disappointment he must have felt as he turned around to go home, but it only got worse for him: he and his men were trapped in their tent for weeks on the return journey while a blizzard raged outside. Their bodies were found several months later.

You could walk around the Fram’s deck, exploring its cabins and imagining what it would be like to brave hostile conditions, get trapped in the ice for years, and eventually kill and eat your sled dogs. (They do not sell sled dog jerky in the gift shop.)

Speaking of hostile conditions, we had a tour of the Oslofjord scheduled for that morning as well. We had hoped it would be enclosed, with nice dry seats, like our tour of the Stockholm canals a few days before… but alas. The fjord tour was to take place from the upper deck of a small sailing ship, with only a tarp to protect us from the elements.

That, it turned out, only enhanced the experience—at least for me. We cruised around the fjord, getting a good look at lonely lighthouses and clapboard houses hugging the sides of stark green islands. There’s a kind of cold, austere beauty to the Oslofjord. The rain lashed the ship entire time, but it wasn’t hard to imagine myself as an explorer or Viking (or at least, something other than a tourist who had paid 330 Norwegian krona to sit on a boat in the rain).

While on the boat, the guide mentioned a ruined monastery on an island named Høvedoya. So of course the next day we took a boat out there and explored it. The monks here were apparently beholden to a rule where they had to get up and dawn and go to bed at dusk, which sounds fine until you remember that during certain parts of the year the sun rises at 4am and goes down at 10:30pm.

While in Oslo, we also met up with my famous YouTuber cousin Zack (Jerry Rig Everything, 3.7 million followers) and his famous YouTuber friend Dan (What’s Inside, 6.5 million followers) . Zack had seen my Instagram and messaged me, telling me he was on his way to Oslo right then to do something for his channel, filming Mercedes’ new car or building a rocket or something. So we had dinner. (See, Mom, I do hang out with my cousins.)

We were only in Scandinavia for slightly less than six full days, but we packed a lot in there. If you have a week to spare to take a look at beautiful scenery, cool cities, and lots of boats, you know exactly where to go.