by Jennifer Cox
Then it suddenly hit me with a jolt: Hey, I don’t get seasick on floating saunas. Pleased with my newfound expensive tastes and certain it was only a matter of time before I’d be bobbing for Godivas, I curled up on my seat and fell into a deep sleep that lasted until the train pulled into Stockholm five hours later.
Chapter Four
Stockholm, Sweden, & Copenhagen, Denmark
Date #7—The Viking Date
in Birka, Sweden
You’ve got to admire the nerve of the Swedes. At a time when the rest of the world was denying it had ever even owned a tank top, let alone worn a pair of beige slacks that fitted snugly around the (pre-thong) bottom, Sweden—in particular, Stockholm—was embracing and refining its entire 1970s back catalogue.
Man-made textiles were cherished, not vilified, and everything from couture to cutlery came in a variety of bold designs, resplendent in the entire rich spectrum of the color brown.
And then, as the rest of the world came back around to the idea that the seventies’ look wasn’t gauche after all but actually knowing and cutting edge, Stockholm was crowned the most knowing of them all. If cities were people, Stockholm, absorbed in its own fashionable introspectiveness, was Andy Warhol.
I’ve always wondered if the whole thing was just a double bluff. Was Stockholm really that hip, or was it more a case of not knowing any better than to have a soft spot for flares and flammable fabrics? Isn’t it possible Stockholm just got lucky that the rest of the world was too insecure to call them out and folded first?
The reason I’d been contemplating design issues was also the reason I’d been reluctant to get a later train: I had a Designer Date in Stockholm.
Date #6: Thomas Sandell, Designer—Stockholm, Sweden
Thomas Sandell was an über-award-winning Swedish designer whose interiors and furniture designs had earned him commissions ranging from the Swedish government to Eriksson technologies. He was even represented in the stores of what was arguably Sweden’s most effective cultural ambassador: IKEA.
I say the date was with Thomas, but it was actually with one of his designs. Stay with me on this: I’ll explain.
I was booked into the Hotel Birger Jarl, a hip, modern hotel in which all the rooms had been created by Sweden’s top designers. I was staying in one of the two rooms created by Thomas.
I wanted to test my theory that if your job is your most important relationship, it will eventually start to resemble you. I mean, dogs famously take on the appearance of their owners, so is the same true of a job? How much of who you are can be seen in what you do?
Specifically, would I get a true sense of Thomas by staying in a room he’d designed? I’d check into his room, then meet up with him in a couple of days, tell him the impression I had of him from his work, and see if I was right.
Feeling groggy from my weird new sleep patterns, and arms aching from dragging my case over cobbled streets (“God, it can’t be much farther” being the misguided mantra of travelers everywhere), I arrived at the minimalist lobby of the Birger Jarl. As I checked in, the desk clerk, chic and understated in his black suit and Bond-baddie wire glasses, handed me a number of messages.
I immediately wondered if one was from Anders. I didn’t think he knew where I was staying, so I doubted it, but that didn’t stop a flame of hope flaring up. So much for my trusting my instincts/he’s not the one for me moral high ground.
Scooping up the messages and the key to room 705, I went up in the tiny lift, en route to the first stage of my Designer Date.
A plaque outside my door told me my room was called “Mr. Glad.”
Oh, at last, an upbeat boyfriend, I thought as I slid my keycard into the lock and let myself in.
The first thing I did when I walked into the space was laugh. The room was long, bright, and silly. The windows that ran down the far wall were fringed with white window-boxes of bright green Astroturf. It didn’t even look vaguely natural or pastoral; instead it seemed like someone was growing green plastic broom-heads.
In the middle of the room, a white gauze curtain acted as a gossamer screen between the room and a larger-than-life bed, like something out of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The white wall behind the pillow-laden headboard was covered with black-painted dashes, reminiscent of a cow-print design. The chairs in front of the bed were equally who’s been sitting in my chair–esque.
Putting my bags down on the floor, I clambered up onto the bed. The whole room felt friendly and funny, generous and openly welcoming. Thank God, I thought as I bedded down in a nest of pillows and fished the messages out of my coat pocket; I could so easily have ended up in the scary room with the black bed and claustrophobic black-and-white-checked walls.
Hotel rooms are like relationships: intimate and powerful. The good ones nurture, making you feel relaxed and happy. The bad ones get under your skin and fill you with impotent rage.
Well, I was Ms. Glad; so far my Design Date was going very well indeed.
I opened the messages. The first one was from Lorna confirming my 10:30 at the Nobel Museum in a couple of days. Second message was from my sister Mandy, just calling to check I was doing okay. Third message was from Maria, my Designer Date Wrangler. “Uh-oh.” I sat up on the bed, sensing bad news.
“Hello, Jennifer, I hope you have arrived safely and are enjoying the hotel. I wanted to let you know that unfortunately Thomas will be on business in Moscow for the next few days and may not be back in Sweden in time to meet you. He has left his number if you want to call him.”
Not wanting to think about how much it would cost on my cell phone to bounce my voice via satellite from Sweden to England to Russia to England and back to Sweden, I decided to call tomorrow. It was a lovely evening; I was going to take a walk, find some food, then have an early night. I was dating a Viking tomorrow and needed to catch up with myself.
The hotel was a short walk from the funky Odengatan and grungy Kungsgatan areas, and I soon discovered that my trip to Stockholm coincided with a big Metallica concert and that the fans owned the city that night.
Heavy metal was king in Scandinavia, and Metallica was probably its oldest ruling dynasty. The streets were crammed with roving gangs of teenage boys looking strangely like baby hedgehogs, the backs of their denim jackets spiky with tiny metal studs. The bars spilled over with long-haired bikers—fueled by excitement and Jack Daniel’s, they roared across the street at each other like Norse warriors going into battle.
I have a bit of a heavy-metal soft spot and ordinarily would have enjoyed the display, even seen it as a warm-up act for the Viking tomorrow. But the atmosphere seemed tense and volatile rather than fun. I stopped at a supermarket for some chips and cookies (just because I was traveling was no reason to let my diet go) and settled in the hotel bar with a book and the internationally ubiquitous chill-out music of designer hotels.
Date #7: Ny Bjórn Gosterssen, Viking and Archaeologist—Birka, Sweden
At 10 a.m. the next morning, I boarded a ferry from the quay outside City Hall and set sail for Birka.
Birka was an island, situated one and a half hours west of Stockholm, along the inland archipelago of Lake Mälaren. Although there wasn’t much to see now, this UNESCO site was an important part of the Viking heritage. Founded in the eighth century, Birka had been Sweden’s first city and a busy trade center between Northern Europe and the Baltic Sea. It also contained the largest Viking-age cemetery—more than 3,000 graves scattered throughout the island—and excavating archaeologists were still uncovering important finds.
It was actually one of the archaeologists I was on my way to date. Each summer a number of them, specializing in Viking-age studies, stayed on the island as part of a living history display but also to learn more about the Vikings by emulating what is known of their living conditions and habits.
This was all good news for me, as I wanted to date a Viking.
I know this is going to sound terrible and wildly politically incorrect, but I’ve always t
hought the Viking image deeply sexy. Ruthless warriors conquering all in their path, Vikings always seemed to be depicted as having big hair, bad attitudes, and hard, hot bodies. I realized as a peaceful vegetarian I should have found this image appalling rather than appealing, but there you go, that’s hormones for you. Vikings were the stuff of daydreams, as far as I was concerned, and this was my chance to find out if my fantasies survived scrutiny.
Stockholm had been really warm when I’d left, but as I walked from the ferry down the metal gangplank into the steady drizzle that enveloped Birka, I didn’t need to be told I had got my outfit completely wrong. Although I’d thought to wear a waterproof coat, underneath I was freezing and being bitten to death in my open-toed sandals and capri pants. Rain and mosquitoes? I was failing Viking 101 from the outset.
I followed a gravel path toward a thin copse. The sound of wood being chopped rang energetically through the trees and echoed off the rocks, scaring dark clouds of guttural crows into the darker rain clouds that hung low above Birka. I knew that Ny Bjórn, archaeologist and part-time Viking, was re-creating a Viking-age kitchen with his fellow archaeologists. Unless IKEA dated back much further than I realized, I guessed that sound was them cutting up trees and building the kitchen from scratch.
As I came through a clearing, I saw a group of people surrounded by tree trunks stripped of their bark and piles of fresh shavings. The stakes were loosely laid out on the forest floor in the shape of a small one-room house. A cold-looking woman in a long woolen dress was crouched at the edge of the clearing, stirring a cauldron over an open fire. The rest of the group were men and stood in the center of the clearing, blunt saws and axes at their feet. Two wore long, woolen, monklike robes, cinched at the waist by long twists of thin rope. The rest wore sturdy leather trousers and boots, topped with rough woolen shirts and tweed jerkins. They all stared at the arrangement of wood, hands on hips and nonplussed expressions on their faces. Maybe it was early IKEA after all?
Catching sight of me, they immediately busied themselves, moving around bits of wood and generally trying to give the impression that they were very busy and knew exactly what they were doing. I was touched that they were bothered about impressing a woman who was dressed as if going for coffee in the south of France, when actually on a rain-sodden island that clearly hadn’t seen the sun in months. But I suppose none of us would have been on the island if we didn’t have some issues to work through.
One of the group, in leather trousers and a crazy flat cap, smiled and strode toward me. “Auch, hellooo, Jennifer, welcome to Birka,” he called out in a broad Scottish accent. I was confused: I thought my Viking was Swedish—Ny Bjórn was surely never a Scottish name?
He got close enough to shake my hand, by now so cold it was shaking anyway.
“Hello,” I said. “Are you Scottish?”
“Ooh, noo,” he replied with a grin. “But I’ve done a fair bit of excavating in the Scottish Highlands, so I’ve got a bit of a burr.” He actually had so much of a burr that just saying the word took him about fifteen minutes.
“But you are a Viking?” I asked, looking to establish some facts. “Or at least you’re dressed like one.”
“Yes,” Ny Bjórn replied, “or as we assume they dressed, from the remains we have found in Denmark, York, and Northern Germany.”
Rather than the ruthless warrior I had imagined, Ny Bjórn actually looked more like a wandering minstrel. My first impression was of a tall, thin, and engaging man, clearly having the time of his life on this cold, wet island. His long reddish-blond hair tied back into a ponytail, Ny Bjórn had a mischievous-looking face, punctuated by an energetic goatee that wagged up and down like a happy dog’s tail when he laughed. I knew straight away that he wasn’t my type: He looked like the smart kid you enjoyed chatting with because you sat next to him in chemistry but never fancied. I didn’t mind, though; I was still fascinated to learn more about him and what he was doing here.
Ny Bjórn and I retreated to a large, cold rock to talk. He explained that until they finished building the cookhouse in two weeks’ time, they would be sleeping rough on rainy Birka.
I had my first inkling that maybe Vikings were tough not because it was cute and sexy but because they had to be. And I—with my pathological hatred of the cold, not to mention mosquitoes—might not find myself a natural fit into Viking society. I asked Ny Bjórn to explain who the Vikings actually were.
“The word ‘Viking’ is used for all people in the North cultural sphere, but Vikings were really just a tiny part of the community, mostly those who went raiding and taking things with force,” he replied.
“So they were like unionized burglars?” I asked.
“Exactly, that’s the Viking part. They were seen as heroes by the local community who watched them come back loaded up with bounty, but by the end of the Viking age, to call someone ‘a Viking’ was really seen as quite rude.”
“Umm, so as a Viking you could be fairly prosperous, by the sound of it.” I found this reassuring from a comfort point of view, but what about from a dating point of view? The key question (which I was too ashamed to ask outright) was, exactly how hot were the Vikings?
I paraphrased: “We have an image of Vikings as being rough, roguish types and you’re sitting here in leather trousers, which have gone on to become the uniform of rock stars. Were Vikings seen as the sexy rock-star gods of their age?”
That was me—a Pulitzer just waiting to happen.
Happily, Ny Bjórn didn’t seem to think the question too idiotic. “The famous ones, absolutely. You just need to look at the Icelandic sagas to see that: Gretty the Strong—”
“Ohhh, I like the sound of Gretty the Strong,” I cooed, all pretense of dignity completely abandoned. “It sounds like the lead singer in a heavy metal band.”
“Oh, yes,” Ny Bjórn replied with equal enthusiasm, clearly warming to the subject. “He lived in the early eleventh century, and although he was finally killed, he was outlawed for eighteen years and seen as the superstar of his days.”
“Really?” I swooned, knowing absolutely nothing about him, but instantly having a huge crush on him anyway. “What did he do that was so great?”
“Well,” said Ny Bjórn excitedly, suggesting that if he wasn’t a man and a Viking and a thousand years too late, maybe he would have had a bit of a crush on Gretty too, “he did a lot of things: He was a great warrior, he was really strong, and he was a good wrestler.”
The idea of wrestling cooled my ardor for a moment, conjuring up images of bouffanted fools basted in baby oil working the WWF circuit, but then I had a mental picture of huge leather jerkins being ripped off broad, sweaty chests, as muddy warriors grunted and rolled around on the ground for real. I could barely contain myself. This was great: Vikings were every bit as sexy as I had imagined.
“He even killed a ghost once….” Ny Bjórn boasted, like a kid getting carried away in front of a playground audience and saying his dad could beat up all of theirs.
“Huh?” Dragged from my daydreaming, I picked up on Ny Bjórn saying something about ghosts. Ghosts? I wasn’t interested in “ghosts.” Ghosts weren’t sexy.
“Oh, yes, he was the idol for people back then,” Ny Bjórn continued unabashed. He was on a roll, delighted to have an audience for a subject that he clearly lived and breathed. “People who were ‘good at the trade’ of being a Viking were pretty much the role model of what men should be back then. There was deep resentment about the Vikings who came to settle around York, or Yorvik, for example, because they took away all the women from the Englishmen there. And the reason was that the Vikings washed every Saturday and combed their hair, etcetera. They were really well-groomed by the standards of the times.”
Back on safer ground and feeling that we shared an appreciation, albeit for different reasons, I summed up: “So can I just clarify, the Vikings wore leather and washed?”
“Yes, yes,” Ny Bjórn replied.
I gave a big happy si
gh. “This just gets better and better.”
We both laughed.
I knew why I was into Vikings, but what about Ny Bjórn? What was the appeal for him? The leather? The machismo? The beards?
“No, no…” he spluttered. “It’s…”
“Oh, come on,” I persisted, determined not to let him off the hook.
“Well, okay, yes,” he admitted sheepishly. “But the real attraction is I’m totally into artifacts. I really like ‘things’ and gizmos and how they were made. This is a great way for me to increase my understanding of things made by the Vikings.”
All my instincts went on “geek alert” when Ny Bjórn said this, but I suppose you don’t live on a cold, wet island for the summer unless you are seriously passionate about the place, and who was I to judge? I was passionate about Vikings; Ny Bjórn was passionate about Vikings’ “things,” that’s all.
“I mean, cooking fish over an open fire in an enamel pot,” he continued, now lost in a romantic reverie of his own, “it worked back then. If we can make it work here, we can learn from it, that’s one of the main reasons I do this.”
I was proving myself to be superficial and shallow: I wanted to go back to hearing about strong men wrestling, not how to cook fish over a fire. I guess that was the thing, though—the guys who were satisfied with leather and machismo were the ones who’d been gathering for the Metallica concert in Stockholm the night before. Here on the island, the fascination was with the life behind the myth. I’d arrived a thousand years too late.
Frozen to the core, I stood up and gently massaged some blood back into my hands and feet. The ferry back to the mainland had just docked and it was time for me to go. I had loved meeting Ny Bjórn, even if he hadn’t turned out to be the Viking of my dreams. I was interested to see how immersed he was in his work—even if my Designer Date didn’t end up proving my you look like your job theory, Ny Bjórn certainly did.
