A 'Blitz excursion to Sweden' - Part 3: The Swedish Naval Museum

Today's destination is located on the Swedish south east cost in the fortified town of Karlskrona, where the Swedish Naval Museum is located. This is a place I've been wanting to visit for a long time, so my expectations were pretty high:

They have 3 ships on display outside:

This was the Swedish Navy's main wharf, and the area and town is heavily fortified:

When entering the museum, the presentation is neat, modern and educational:

They show the importance of models in early ship designs and construction:

Some of those models are really large:

The number of models are mostly limited to older sailing ships though. Perhaps because Sweden's naval battles are mostly limited to this period. 

On the other hand they have a very educational approach to Naval warfare with sailing ships; like the ship guns had a very limited range of about 300 yards and were very inaccurate due to roll, pitch and heave and took long time to reload. Therefore 'melee' and boarding of enemy ships were an important tactic. These factors gives a lot of ideas for a naval wargame. I haven't tried that before. Maybe I should?

The diorama of the 'Battle of Svensksund' between Sweden and Russia in 1790 shows how chaotic such battle could be. Swedish victory:

A 1:1 scale display from a gun-deck. Mirrors made a impression how it looked with several guns:

The museum also had a 'gun simulator' where you could 'fire a volley' against Danish (!) ships to see how to aim on moving targets when your muzzle velocity and range is bad:

The hall of 'Figureheads' from those sailing ships were impressive:

A small section of 'from sail to steam':

The 'Cold War' period was mostly displayed by interactive screens and boards and had just a very few models. 

This is probably the very first model of a submarine from the 18th century. It's made by a Swede:

Sweden's first submarine from 1905 is preserved on the museum. It's based on a periodic American design:

And Neptune from 1978:

The museum didn't mention any naval fleet arm, but showed a model of the Heinkel. A similar model is actually exhibited on the Norwegian Naval Museum as Norway had a 'fleet arm'. Perhaps I should make a blogpost from there too as well?

This is an overview of the museum shop. No model kits or Cobi kits (which have gained popularity in military museums lately). Just mainstream maritime products 'your wife could have picked':

Well, except for these 3 models. But the 'cheapest' costed hundreds of £, while the other two costed over thousand (!)

-And their  Café I never had time to visit, as it closed one hour before the museum. Right after they closed the Café, the staff started to close those 3 open ships in photo no. 2 in this post. So a lot was closed before the museum actually closed. 

As initially stated my expectations were high, so I was actually a little bit disappointed by this visit. -But I learnt new things about sailing-age warfare though, and knowledgeis why we seeks museums, isn't it? If 18th and 19th Century Swedish Navy's is your thing, this is the place to go. 

I'm some 570km away from home now, and I'll better start planning my return. I've been taking reservations due to the weather throughout the whole trip as the forcast have been changing every day and hour. But I've been lucky; no rain so far. So if the weather permits, there will be 'pit stops' on the return.  Please stay tuned.

Perhaps I should visit the Norwegian Naval Museum when coming back?

A 'Blitz Excursion' to Sweden - Part 2: Ljungby Miniature World

Today's destination was Minivärden i Ljungby or the Ljungby Miniature World:

Ljungby Miniature World are created upon a donation to Ljungby city given by a late local doctor under the condition that it would be exhibited to the public. The donation was the doctor's private model railway from 1953. So this very old style layout is the first you see when you enter the premises. It's not built to today high standards, but keeping in mind that his "Landet Somewhere (The Country Somewhere)" was built back in the days when modelling supplies were not as readily available as today it certainly has it's charm. To be a doctor I think the builder included surprisingly many 'alcoholic' industries on his layout:

It was fun to see that the doctor had (scratch-) built his own house, in which this old layout was located in the cellar:

The model builders at Ljungby has also started to create a narrow gauge layout in H0 on their own, based upon the different narrow gauge lines in this county, Småland.  The layout is set to a 50ies style as all the lines ate closed now. This layout is built to a very high standard, and everything is scratchbuilt:

They are not quite finished with their 'Småland in miniature' layout quite yet, and they are expanding it. -So this is a reason to revisit this layout in the future:

They had also made some simple layouts visiting kids could operate:

The effort to move and display the doctor's original 50ies layout, had collected a lot of different local modellers, who was into all kind of different models. This was represented with own displays showing a big range and diversity in modelling to the public. More trains collections in differentscales and makes...

...but also military modelling and dioramas...

There was also a big collection of diecast cars. This Tintin collection...

...made me think of several of some the readers of this blog. It's made to 1:43,5 scale:

The "car collection" also included unique scratchbuilt gas-station dioramas in 1:24 scale. All of them former prototypes from Ljungby, but all are gone now. This is actually one of the two such collections in Sweden:

Even more military modelling and dioramas. Even a whole section was devoted to this:

Columbus "discovering" America:

Battle of Hastings:

Stalingrad diorama:

Battle of Narva year 1700  recreate with Prince August 40mm tin soldiers:

A battle from the AWI:

This diorama is made by 'flats', and the opposing forces are just painted on the background (!):

More flats, Swedes vs. Danes medievals:

I think this submarine was 3D-printed:

They also had a own sections for models made with Meccano:

And a own section for Lego:

This 1:1 scale model made by Lego reminded me that it was time to "fika" again:

Their Café and 'specialty' is very recommendable:

This is their shop, where you can by very cheap second hand items:

Their map of visitors is very interesting. I wo understand if the one from England is a viewer of this blog? I placed my 'dot' and it was time to move on. If you have a 'dot' on the map, please let me know in the comment-section:

I think this must be one of Ljungby's biggest tourist attractions, as Ljungby is a small, quiet and very lovely town in southern Sweden. If you are in the area I recommend you to pay Minivärden I Ljungby a visit, and place a dot on your home location. It's run by a bunch of friendly modellers, who will gladly tell about their approach to the modelling hobby.

Please stay tuned as it seems like the weather forecast for tomorrow permits a motorcycle ride and another destination...