Kalmar Castle

Our next stop was Kalmar Castle.  A defence tower was built in 1180 where the castle now stands.  In the late 13th century  a fortress and the wall were built.  It is a fantastic castle to explore.

The boys loved the cannons on the top of the walls

Some of the castle rooms are now used for exhibition spaces.  One of the exhibitions was in the women's prison areas. 

Ann-Sofi Sidén has taken a series of photographs based on court verdicts from the 1500's of different punishments given to women.  The transcripts next to the modern photographs kept Nicole intrigued for quite some time while the boys played on the cannons up on the fort walls.

Women prisoners kept in the castle were forced to spin a certain amount of wool during their sentence.  If they had served the years of time in jail they were sentenced to, but the amount of wool had not been spun, the woman had to stay in jail until the required amount of wool had been spun.

Another exhibition that the whole family loved was by Yrjö Edelmann.

His paintings are fantastic, and kept all of us looking really really close at the paintings to see if they were really wrapped up in paper and string.  Check the link above and this link to see some of his work, it's remarkable!