On December 13 we boys woke up with the the daughter of a family friend wearing white, sporting a garland and candles on her head, and serving pepparkakor (Swedish ginger cookies) for Santa Lucia Day.
We celebrated Christmas in Uppsala with a small Christmas tree, candles, and other decorations Newlin purchased locally in Uppsala. She bought more on sale after Christmas.
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| Andrew, Joel and Eric |
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| Andrew, Joel and Eric |
This is Joel's description of that Christmas:
Here are some sledding photos from the Viking mounds at Gamla Uppsala. The little round sleds were called tefats 'saucers'. They were good for Andrew and Eric, but for anyone bigger, our legs dragged and we sledded down backwards. Erics was so light weight even in a larger sled that he kept going down the hill through the farm field next door and once disappeared into a snow-filled drainage ditch.
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| Allan sledding at Gamla Uppsala |
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| Allan and Joel |
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| Allan on the slopes of Gamla Uppsala |
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| Joel with a tefat |
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| Joel sliding backwards on a tefat |
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| Andrew with a sled at Gamla Uppsala |
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| Allan and Joel sledding |
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| Allan and Joel |
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| Allan and Joel |
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| Newlin with Eric, Allan, Joel, and Andrew in the distance |
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| Newlin at Gamla Uppsala |
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| Joel sledding backwards on a tefat |
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| Arnie at Gamla Uppsala |
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| Eric |
An odd thing happened one evening in December when Arnie and Newlin went for a walk in the dusk and arrived home at the same time as a neighbor on the top floor. Another person entered at the same time, with Arnie and Newlin thinking he was a guest of the neighbor and the neighbor think he was with them. As they got in the lift, all three realize he was with neither party. Since he bolted up the stairs, the neighbor, an older woman living alone, got extremely concerned and insisted Arnie come upstairs to check out the stairwell access to the roof and give her time to get into her apartment. The next day they found out there had been a mass shooting overnight of seven people with two deaths along the Fyris River, and they think, after the fact, that it was the suspect who entered their building.
The Gustavianum is the oldest standing building of Uppsala University, dating to the 1620s. It had a wooden anatomical theater which I recall as very steep.
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| Gustavianum in winter |
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| Gustavianum, Uppsala University |
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