A few photos from Drachenwald Winter Coronation and from Åbo/Turku Castle

Since I don't like taking up my cell phone in public during events I mostly have posed photos. Of course I also sat in front at court and at the high table so it would have been absolutely impossible. I'm sure that there will plenty of good photos that I can direct you to later.

So most of the photos are of Åbo/Turku castle and it's collections, and of nature. But there are a few posed ones of me.

The first leg of the trip was train to Lidköping, some 130 kilometres north of Gothenburg, leaving at 1 pm on Wednesday. There my friend Vanna picked me up and we went to Karlsborg 100 kilometres roughly to the east, to pick up another friend: Jovi. From there qwe proceeded to Stockholm, more precisely the beautiful island of Ekerö, about 315 kilometres to the North and East. The roads were bad due to heavy snow fall and we weren't there until maybe 22 pm. There we stayed with another friend, Annika, over night, and until half past five in the evening on Thursday when we got into her car and went in to Stockholm to the ferry to Åbo/Turku which left at eight. It was very cold, around -15 C/5 F and a rather strong wind. It was also rather cold in the house where we slept, around 13 C/55 F, but with a woollen blanket and a woollen cloak on top of the quilt I slept well.
And it was stunningly beautiful.

The ferry takes about 10 hours and most of that (though not enough of course) was spent sleeping. There were lots of us going to the event on the boat and much merriment was had, as well as last minute sewing ;)

Since we arrived in Åbo/Turku before dawn we couldn't go directly to the site, so after breakfast at a hotel people set out to look at things - in my case I went to the castle with my friends Gudrun and Leif.
I hadn't been in Finland since 1979, and then I didn't see the castle, so I felt that it was a must. There are lots of stairs, so it's not for the faint of either heart or body.
It was also -22 C/-9 F and windy.

And of course there were collections in the castle. They had lots costums, but mostly from the 1830s onward and it was hard to take photos through the glass cases.

Here are some 16th, or possibly early 17th century objects:

Belt plates from gilt silver.

Necklace

Spoons with pine cone tips.

After the castle people had a late lunch and then we went to the site in Ahtela, which is a kind of scouting camp in the forest in Sauvo at the coast. It was snowy, but much warmer then - just below zero /32F.

I could write so much about the event, and I may do so later, but I am still very tired after the trip home - we left the site at 6 am Finnish time on Sunday and I was home at 00.15 on Monday "morning". The trip included car, ferry and a train which had to be restarted several times so that we were 20 minutes late to Gothenburg.

So I end with a couple of photos of me in garb:

Friday night court

After watching the tournament over the honour to be the Queen's Champion.

And for court on Saturday evening (I wore the same at the morning court where the old king and queen stepped down and the new were crowned, just a different veil then)

The rosy cheeks comes from my second visit to the sauna that day :)