Platoon

Posted by Martin R on May 5, 2010
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The local cub scouts had asked me to accompany them on a forest walk to give them some culture and history. And so I guided them in the evening sun to the singing of blackbirds along the wooded southern shore of the Baggensstäket narrows. History is thick there.

  • Early and Late Modern sea-lane tavern.
  • Napoleonic era small fort.
  • 20th century cemetery.
  • Early Modern customs station.
  • Viking Period cemetery.
  • 1719 battlefield.
  • 1905 memorial celebrating the 1719 debatable victory.
  • Early and Late Modern cemetery.
  • And all the while across the water, Boo Manor with more Viking Period burials, a rune stone fragment and a shipwreck found recently in the shallows and largely destroyed by dredging.

There was a also a bit of personal history for me. One of the scouts, an unusually pretty and accomplished young person, turned out to live in the house where I grew up, and in my old room!

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Comments

  1. #1 codero
    May 6, 2010

    Bing maps has some nice aerial pictures, much better than Google’s – once you have actually found the location, which does not seem to appear under that name on any online map.
    Still not sure where the monument is – any chance of the coordinates, Martin?

  3. #3 harrync
    May 6, 2010

    In the USA the Cub Scouts deny membership on the basis of religion and sexual orientation. Do the Swedish Cub Scouts do the same?

  4. #4 Martin R
    May 7, 2010

    It would be front-page news and a source of public outrage if they did.

  5. #5 rsm
    May 9, 2010

    I’m imagining the uproar if the scouts started discriminating along those lines in Norway or Sweden…

    Made me giggle madly.

    The only ones I can imagine supporting something like that would be right wing Islamic clerics, and the odd nutty preacher who already has been dismissed as a moron for opposing same sex relations and abortions.

  6. #6 Thinker
    May 10, 2010

    Re “cub scouts” (and the fact that Martin found one of them “unusually pretty”): as this is an international forum, I think it is worth pointing out that since the 1960’s, the scouting in Sweden is not gender-separated; boys and girls are in the same troops.

    Out of curiosity, Martin: was this Saltsjöbadens Sjöscoutkår?

  7. #7 Martin R
    May 10, 2010

    Indeed, it’s co-ed scouting. And yes, Saltsjöbadens Sjöscoutkår! They were looking forward to the season’s first sailing expedition with the dinghies.

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