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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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?
http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=twhr3vjhqwgp&scene=53318243&lvl=2&sty=b
In the USA the Cub Scouts deny membership on the basis of religion and sexual orientation. Do the Swedish Cub Scouts do the same?
It would be front-page news and a source of public outrage if they did.
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.
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?
Indeed, it's co-ed scouting. And yes, Saltsjöbadens Sjöscoutkår! They were looking forward to the season's first sailing expedition with the dinghies.