knappen

Thursday, May 7, 2009
torsdag 7 maj 2009

Helloa!
No pictures today, I'm afraid.

Today was certainly more relaxed. I finished entering all the ansättare, laddskyffel, and viskare (that's rammer, ladle and...ok now even English is failing me) information we took down yesterday into the database (MarketStore), which is excellent practice in Swedish--some for everyday, some that I will never forget and probably never use outside the museum grounds!

We cleaned up the skeppsverkstad for the opening tonight, which I ended up attending instead of working at, and arranged all the neat-o artifacts in a comely fashion for all the VIPs!

In the afternoon there wasn't as much to do, since we didn't want to sully the sparkling skeppsverkstad, so we talked projects. The clothing portion of the samling (collection) already has scholars earmarked, but we wanted to find a project that would suit my interests as well as my background, and there are certainly a lot of other categories to choose from, even within the relative confines of "personal effects". Researchers past tended to arrange and assign categories based on material and medium, and I'm sure some still do, but Vasamuseet's team has chosen to break things up based on object groups, especially since that is the bulk, if not the whole, of the collection.
Fred suggested to me that I browse around MarketStore for topics, but I secretly already had, and more secretly wanted to study the buttons (knappen) in the collection, but assumed that it wouldn't be a sufficient topic. But, dream of dreams, that was the first thing he suggested! As of today I am an amateur button enthusiast! I hope that no one takes this with even the tiniest dollop of sarcasm--working on buttons and various other clothing hardware is a fantastic manifestation of my interests...some of them were found very close to bodies, some with fragments of cloth (textil), there is so much to study there! The aim is manifold, among other things making a full documentation and exploration of the collection as it stands, and from there to potentially figure out which went where and/or with whom.
So I got right to it and started a spreadsheet of known and documented information as a starting point, and hopefully tomorrow I will finish that and maybe take a closer look at the collection in the magasin. I peeked at all the buttons I could find in the exhibits, which led me to realize that the exhibits are far more extensive than I realized...maybe that will be on the agenda for tomorrow as well, for context's sake.
Embarking on such a project is so exciting! Individual scholarship (certainly with much help, but...)! Self-direction in its finest form! Hurrah! And doubly exciting is a potential trip to another museum whose name I cannot remember (apologies, Fred, so many names and places whizzing by me in svensk! It took me this long to get skeppsverkstad, and I'm not even sure I'm spelling it right) with a contemporary boat and a similar collection of buttons. If this is to be my future, I say, ope the gates!
Another great thing was, with much aid from an online dictionary, I was understanding enough of the Swedish descriptions (ok, with pictures too) to make rough translations in English for the "ever-popular comments section" of my spreadsheet!! I'll probably forget all the words tomorrow, but it was fun while I was in it. Except for some reason writing bronze everywhere I meant brass...really, Arianna? Mässing even has three of the same letters, you ass.

I went home at 1730 and changed quickly to get back to the opening, the word for which I really cannot pick up. At 1805ish I walked in and there was a man playing beautiful music that I believe to be contemporary (I can't be sure, he only spoke English during one song.) on a lute--make that two lutes! [Ed. note: I just reread this and feel obliged to add that he was only playing one at a time] One had this incredibly long neck that I'm positive he explained and made a joke about, but in light of that and the fact that I'm no musician, I can't imagine the purpose of it. But purpose aside, it was beautiful, especially to look up at the ship while he played; we were all crowded in the entrance, which specifically gives you the most powerful and dramatic view of her. It sounded like he had some really interesting stories and explanations of what he was playing, especially about the confluence of note/tempo and word in a song written in English (singing about the ground is done in low notes, the sky in high, etc). I guess I got enough of the gist of it, as I well had to, since two of the tallest Swedes in the Land stood right in front of me, and that's saying something.
Afterward everyone was invited to walk around the whole museum, but specifically the very beautiful yellow and grey new exhibit on the conservation of the Vasa. The process, though not always (and still not entirely) clear to me, was always such a big part of the story for me that I guess I didn't notice that it wasn't laid out explicitly in the museum. It's sort of like what some people have thought about at Plimoth, with the idea of an exhibit about the history and evolution of Living History. There I go with the comparisons again, but what are we if not a mass of experiences.
(also, I seem to like ellipses?)
I noted while I was looking down, everyone was looking up--the Swedish was above the graphics, the English below. I enjoyed the exhibit and would like to hear about the duality of what was on the walls and what were in appealingly arranged and designed cases between the walls and the ship.

I went for a much needed walk to examine the shopping mall, of which I obviously recognized no store but H & M, and decided my time could be better spent, so I kept walking. I knew relatively where I was the whole time (having noted where the water was, as usual) and that was encouraging.

There are two other girls staying on board tonight, hurrah! Even if we are all seperate, it's nice knowing that there are other people here, and I did get to talk to one, Lotta, a carpenter. So many woman carpenters! She says it's more of a museum thing...women who try to work with building companies here are just as discouraged as those who do in America. She said also that marinas are also relatively welcoming places for women to work, at least in her experience, which is awesome.

That's pretty much it for today (now that I've written a novella about hardly anything), I'll have to remember to take pictures of the host outfits for Penny tomorrow...you should suggest them at the Plant for those idiot hosts, at least they'd blend in a BIT.
Apologies for the occasional neo-Romantic overtones in this post, I'm reading a book called Possession right now, and it's full of literary references and Victorian letters and other blah-de-blah. It's my last book in English....please feel free to pick books up at free to a good home at the Mystic-Noank Library and send them to me!

hej då!