Hello again! This last week was jam packed with so many different activities it was hard to keep track of all of them! Next week we will be traveling on our short study tour to the most southern city of Sweden, Lund. We will have special events for the first half of the week, so keep a lookout that Thursday or Friday! Regardless, for my Swedish language and culture class this past Wednesday, we traveled to Stockholm’s city hall on the edge of Kungsholmen, and I snapped a few pictures for you all to see.

The gallery above me contains a picture of one of my favorite rooms in the whole building, the “gold hall”. Constructed with just over 18 million mosaic pieces in the first half of the 1900’s, this room took the artist just under two years to finish. You might be wondering how much this might have cost – in that case, the tiles aren’t actually full gold. Instead, they are tiny glass plates with gold leaf consisting of a middle layer. After world war 1, Germany’s economy was in poor straits, and Sweden was quick to take advantage of this. Sourcing the tiles from Berlin at a fraction of the cost allowed for the artist to hire additional workers to finish the mosaic faster. Still, the sheer magnitude and vibrancy of this artwork should definitely be something on your Swedish bucket list!