Winter Market at Skansen Heritage Park

We braced ourselves and went out into the cold to experience this year's wonderful Christmas market at Skansen Heritage Park in Stockholm. Our son enjoyed being able to keep his feet warm inside his new Ajungilak Little Mammut winter sleeping bag. Swedish grandmom and mom posing for the camera at the market square at "Bollnästorget".







Shopkeepers selling anything from newly baked Nordic tunnbröd (flat bread) to sausages made of moose, caribou and wild boar (we bought a boar sausage for our Christmas smorgasboard - yum!) and lots of herring and smoked eel and candy and "glögg" (a traditional Swedish version of mulled wine, served hot) and reindeer hides ... and everything in between.








Tara inspecting the mistletoe stand. Notice how all the shopkeepers at the park wear traditional folklore costumes.





The candyshop. Adorable candy-cones hanging.

Horse and carriage through the snowpacked streets of Skansen.



Tara gives a guided tour of Bollnästorget and the Christmas market. Grandmom is "dancing" with WC in the pram.


Traditional Christmas dances in some kind of rock'n'roll version. See if you can follow Mom and WC and Grandmom dancing in the middle. Hint: Try to look for Tara's read hat. Oh... and notice the steam coming from everyone's breath...

Grandmom and WarrenC at Skansen.

Dad and Grandmom by Seglora kyrka in the snow.

Fishmongers: Smoked herring (cabinet in the middle) and grilled herring "sotare" (to the right).

Freshly baked bread. Already refrigerated...

A nice way to see Skansen is to use horse power. Notice the sky in this photo. It is around 1 PM when this photo was taken. And this is about as much sunlight as you can expect here this time of year. Around 2 PM the sun is starting to disappear by the horizon (it never really gets very high up on the sky anyways) and by 3 PM is is pitch black!

Tara is greeted by the local "townspeople" at Skansen.

 Warren Christoper and Grandmom dancing together to keep warm.

Lots of people, and then WC and his Grandmom in the middle of the line dance.

As soon as it got dark our son crawled back into his sleeping bag in the pram.

It might be cold and dark, but the "fish" at the kids' fishing pond were biting. Mom and Grandmom helps WC to hold the fishing rod.

View of Stockholm from the main stage at Skansen.

The park closed at 4 PM, and by that time the cute lanterns outside of the heritage park's many cottages were guiding us through the picturesque streets.