Adjusting to a new town: Mora

Greetings, everyone! Today is Tuesday, and also my third day here in Mora. We left Jokkmokk Friday night, took a bus to Boden, and then hitched a night train down to Gavle. The train car we were staying in didn't have any room for our luggage, so we had quite the tetris experience in trying to get all 14 people's luggage into 2 sleeper rooms and a ski closet. We ended up with luggage under tables, on the floor, stacked to the celing, and shoved in nooks not even Madam Conductor had known of. De-boarding was a totally different issue...

When we got to Mora via a train from Bolinger we had a 5-minute walk to our Folkhogskolan, Skeriol. The school has three dormitories, one main building with library, classrooms, gym, ceramics department, library, auditorium, and a labyrinth of underground tunnels (among other things I have yet to discover) and other outlying buildings that house other 'profiles' like the textile building that was one a nunnery. It's a great place, and the food is delicious. Three meals a day, plus a few fikas here and there; even if we have to get up at 7 to make sure we get breakfast and eat dinner at 4:30pm, the quality is worth it. Of course, we have already started classes too: Lennart Sacredeus is teaching his Nordic/European Politics class Mondays and Fridays, and we have many meetings and lectures to attend daily and also our regular Swedish lessons. The politics class is really interesting, even though I have taken a similar version of the course before. A few of us are more familiar with the political and historical traditions in Sweden, but the setting allows us to ask questions that expand upon our previous knowledge while incorporating much of what we have learned in the past few weeks about Swedish and Sami politics in order to get a more complete picture of how the government and politics functions here. I also look forward to the field trips we will be making to the local seat of power in Mora as well as local hospitals, and in March, trips to the Riksdag in Stockholm.

As you have been seeing in these pictures, Mora is a very beautiful town in itself. Whereas Jokkmokk had a lot of hilly woods to go hiking through, Mora has a larger downtown area, and lies next to a large lake where people ski, walk, and skate. They have these giant river skis here, which have very long blades and boots that attach to them that people use to skate along the really long lake. The town has more than two resturants, which is a welcome change. It has many shops and lots of outdoor art. This is St. George slaying the dragon right outside the largest church in Mora, built in the late 1600s. The Zorn house and museum are right downtown, which we will be touring later during our 1-month stay here in Mora. Gustav Vasa on the rock was sculpted by Zorn, and is on the spot where Gustav Vasa gave a speech to rally the local farmers against Danish King Christopher following the Stockholm bloodbath (The King invited all the nobility to a party in Stockholm, and then beheaded everyone who came). Although he was initially unsuccessful, the people of Mora sent two of their fastest skiers after him, on the route that is now the Vasaloppet. The Vasaloppet will be held here on the first of March, and the picture below is of the arch under which the skiers will breach at the finish. Hopefully we will be able to watch that, as well as some of the qualifing that begins next Friday. Roland is going to race as well- not in the 90km race, but one of the other races that goes on here. I hope all of us can get out of class to go cheer him on.


The past few days I have been making excursions out to Mora, as well as to the gym, playing innebandie and getting exercise indoors and out. One of these days I hope to walk around the other parts of the city accross the lake, and mabe explore a little on the lake with xc skis that we can rent for pretty cheap. Outside of the temporarily cramped conditions inside the dorms here, everything is great here in Mora!