Christmas market at Skansen

 Me and C decided to head to Skansen and the wonderful Christmas market that they have there during December weekends. Even if the weather was awful (rainy and cold) we still wanted to go out and do something fun. Skansen has this wonderful Christmas market keeping the old traditional Swedish style and heritige. 

 Here and there they have these fires burning so that you can warm yourself a bit when needed. Not only are these fires pretty but also very necessary.

 I love the old houses they have here. We went into the old pottery shop where this man was making a a ceramic mug. He was just about to add the handle. I really admire people that can make things like these. I have only tried working with clay and ceramics once and it was so difficult.

 At this next place where we stopped they were baking flat bread. The woman here has this special rolling pin with small spikes that makes holes in the dough of the flat bread giving it the typical characteristic look of Swedish flat bread.

 Next to her was another woman who was responsible for baking the flat breads in this old log fire oven. I find things like these so interesting to see. This is how flat bread has been made and baked before in the old times.

 A lot of different things were cooking and brewing in various pots and pans as one passed by. Here they were brewing some kind of porter I believe.

As today also was the fourth of advent and the last of advents before Christmas of course there were gingerbread cookies, glögg and lussekatter being sold.

Here they had a lot of different and very pretty wreaths. I also fell in love with the Christmas goat made of pine twigs. He is so cute.

Something else that was going on and that was special for this weekend was ice sculpturing. This is another form of art where I really admire the talent that people have being able to create sculptures out of ice. One day I just must travel up to the Ice Hotel in the very north of Sweden and see it. 

Here they were letting kids give it a try. Each child was given an ice block and a chisel tool and was then free to start creating and making their very own ice sculpture. They had also hung up some ice blocks of different sizes and you can see this woman on the picture to the left holding a special hammer. As she hit each ice block you got a tune. She was able to play music as she hit the blocks of various size and form.

At a another stall they sold special kinds of molds so that you could make ice sculptures like this one and place a candle in side. They looked really pretty.

 This woman was a professional when it came to making ice sculptures. She had made this angel that she was still putting the final touch to and the two dogs sitting next to the angel.

 We had a wonderful afternoon here at Skansen. Even if we did not stay for very long as it was freezing cold and the rain kept falling we had a nice time here. Both of us very grateful for the lovely and cozy fires. They really helped as you stood there heating up for a moment. We actually were at Skansen Christmas market last year as well and it was nice to come back this year as well. The major difference from last year was that there were tons of snow compared to this year. If it is going to be a white Christmas or not is still not known. Snow and sleet has been coming down tonight and tomorrow it is supposed to turn cold.