Study Away: Sustainability in Sweden Blog

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Learning from Linnaeus

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a view of a botanical garden exhibit in Uppsala, Sweden with green plants, grass, trees, and gravel in the foreground
A unique part of the garden shaped like a tree, with the branches made of pea stone and the leaves made of plant specimens.

(Post and image provided by Grace Moeggenborg)

Today we had the amazing opportunity to explore the Uppsala University Botanical Garden (Linnaean Garden), a special piece of botanical and Swedish history! Founded in 1655 by a professor at Uppsala University, this garden was the first of its kind and was later redesigned and curated by Carl Linnaeus, an 18th century biologist and scientist who created the taxonomy system we now know. Each species was originally cultivated by Linnaeus and organized according to his logic. There are currently over 1,300 plant species in the garden!


We had plenty of time to meander through the garden, seeing peonies in bloom, a host of succulents, and a burgundy-leaved beech tree. We visited the Orangeri, where warm-weather plants are kept inside for the winter and even got to see still-thriving laurel trees in pots, planted by Linnaeus himself! Afterwards, we visited the greenhouse, which was filled with a variety of tropical and desert plants, including a few breathtaking species of carnivorous plants.


Due to the chilly weather, we decided to use the afternoon for exploration of Uppsala or time for homework in between our field trips!

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Museum Day in Stockholm

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Aft of the SS Sankt Erik boat with the Swedish flag flying next to the pier
One of the boats from the National Maritime Museum that students toured today with their choice of museums to visit.

(Post and Image provided by Carter Debruyn)

Today our group got to check out many of the museums in Stockholm. We started off the day by spending our morning in the Swedish history museum as a full group. The museum walked us through the history of Sweden as well as about the lives of Vikings. From there the group split up for lunch, and we then went to various museums as smaller groups. I went to the Viking Museum, the Spirit Museum, and the museum pier of the National Maritime Museum.

At the museum pier there were three ships that we could learn about. The largest boat to tour was the Sankt Erik icebreaker, Sweden’s first icebreaker. It was launched in 1915, then converted from burning coal to burning oil in 1958. It has been a museum ship since 1980, but is still floating and is taken out to sea once a year. My favorite ship that we toured was the lightship Finngrundet. It serves as a lighthouse for places where it is too deep for a conventional lighthouse but still shallow or dangerous enough to warrant a lighthouse being there. In the case of the Finngrund, it was stationed above shallow sand banks where ships used to frequently run aground. It was very cool to see the inside of these big ships and to be able to go up the lighthouse tower in Finngrundet. The third ship was the Minesweeper M20. It was a minesweeping ship built in Stockholm and launched in 1941 for World War II. We were not able to tour this ship as much because it was being prepared to be taken on its yearly trip out to sea. It was nice to have time to check out any museum we wanted and very cool to be able to go aboard these ships!

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Välkommen till Skansen

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Two seals are on a wooden platform above water looking at a man feeding them fish
The grey seals at Skansen eat a lot of fish each day! They are the largest seal found in Swedish waters.

(Post and Image provided by Ian Wolney)

Hej hej! Our group took a tour around the gardens of Skansen, an open-air museum located in Stockholm. Our tour guide, Bosse, was dressed in 18th century attire and took us on a wonderful tour. He gave us insights into the sustainability and cultural importance of gardening in the life of Swedish folk throughout history by showing us different gardens and buildings from different eras of Swedish history. I learned a lot about Swedish history and gardening, but more importantly, it made me really want to start a garden!

After our tour we were able to choose to do glassblowing or paper making. I chose to do glass blowing, and with my group we decided to make a blue and green vase with the opening looking like flower petals to sort of resemble the earth. Each person in my group took turns heating, rolling, shaping, pinching, and cutting the glass. We added baking soda in it to make bubbles in the glass too. Surprisingly, our vase turned out great!


During the afternoon we were able to spend the day exploring Skansen, which has everything from historical viking runes to Nordic animal zoos (like the seals above). Skansen had so much to see and do that I felt like it was impossible to experience everything, but after we were done I felt very satisfied with what I got to do.

Later in the evening, I went with a small group to go shopping in central Stockholm and get coffee. During the whole day we traveled using the subway and trams to get across the city, which was an exciting and new experience for me as I’ve never used public transportation at home. I noticed there’s not a lot of cars because they have so many public transportation options, reducing the country’s carbon impact. I hope one day we decide to create the same infrastructure at home so that we can reduce our impact on the environment and improve the walkability of our cities.

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The Nobel Prize Museum

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Students and faculty standing in front of Nobel Prize Museum
Michigan Tech students and faculty standing on the steps in front of the Nobel Prize Museum.

We had a slow start this morning, letting students acclimate to the time change, and met up in the afternoon to take a short ride on the Metro and walk together to Gamla Stan!  There we had a guided group tour at the Nobel Prize Museum. Tucked into the old city’s historic Börshuset (formerly the Stock Exchange building), the museum felt both modern and timeless. It’s not huge, but it was packed with inspiring stories that make you think about what it means to change the world.

What many students expressed surprise at was how personal everything felt. Laureates have dedicated their lives to their work, but there were handwritten notes and personal items from other aspects of their lives, allowing visitors to relate to people they’ve only ever read about in textbooks. The museum does an excellent job of making complex ideas feel accessible.  Many students wrapped up their visit with a fika (coffee break) at the café in the museum and then posed for pictures with some of the medals – pretty surreal!

The Nobel Prize Museum was 100% worth a stop. It was a wonderful reminder of the incredible things people can accomplish. Afterwards, the students got to explore the shops and have dinner in Gamla Stan.  Later, we met up again in the evening to do a small painting project in a park surrounded by large oak and beech trees.   Overall, a perfect start for our first official day in class in Sweden 😊

(Post by Tara Bal)

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Arrived!

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View of underground subway with painted flowers on the walls and ceilings in blue and white.
The subway in central Stockholm

(Post by Maddie Green)

Arriving in Sweden was a whirlwind of planes, layovers, delays, flight transfers, and a whole lot of steps walking around airports and exploring the city of Stockholm. Throughout the day on June 1 students arrived in the Stockholm airport, ARN, and then boarded the Arlanda express, a high-speed train to get to our hotel. There are many sights to see all over the city from the cobbled streets to boats docked on the many canals crisscrossing the archipelago. Along every street and in every Resturang conversations in all different languages can be heard. There are so many new sights, sounds, and experiences to be had it is difficult to feel tired, even after the long hours and very little sleep. Even though we’ve had just a taste of the new city so far the food has been exciting and delicious. Pictured above is the underground of the T-Centralen. We are so excited to continue exploring the city and leaning more about the culture and environment around us. 

Eight smiling students eating dinner together
One of our first meals at a local Italian restaurant.
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Hello from Gamla Stan

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Lisa, Tara, and Molly in front of the historic buildings of Gamla Stan.
Hello from Lisa, Tara, and Molly in Gamla Stan’s central square.,

Hello from Gamla Stan, Old Town Stockholm. We arrived Friday night and have been getting ready for the students. We’re so excited to see them in person after learning about them the last four weeks during our online classes.

Something we are each excited for the students to see in Stockholm is:

Molly: Skansen’s Sustainable Walk Through Swedish History, a horticultural tour of historic gardening, forests, and ecology.

Tara: Historiska Museet – The Swedish History Museum, where we will see ancient rock carvings of Swedish people and trees (2000 years old).

Lisa: This iconic square, Stortorget, in Gamla Stan, filled with colorful historic buildings, friendly people, and delicious food. Students can grab a cup of hot chocolate at the famous Chokladkoppen, or enjoy panna cotta at  Stortorgskälleren (the best I’ve ever had1)

We’re so excited to have everyone here together to begin this adventure.

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Sister Forests/ Systerskog

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Water running through a pine forest in Sweden
Water runs through the forest floor in northern Sweden

Our program grew out of Sister Forests, an arts project that I started after spending time as an artist-in-residence at Björkö Konstnod (Björkö’s Art Node, or BKN for short) among the islands of Björkö -Arholma.  

BKN is located in the northern Stockholm archipelago, and when I was there in 2022, I was struck by how much the Björkö-Arholma landscape reminded me of the Keweenaw. From the forest floor to the rocks rising out of the Åland Sea, the feeling was a juxtaposition of being right at home and very far away. In my art, I have always been interested in how people connect, and I began to wonder how we could do more of that connecting around forests and environmental care.

Sister Forests is part of that wondering. It connects the forests of Björkö-Arholma and the Keweenaw Peninsula. Like “sister cities,” but forest-centered, the project links two forest-based places and the people living among them. One of our core ideas is that environmental stewardship and personal human connection go hand in hand.

Sustainability in Sweden is our first student cohort to be part of the project. Some things I’m excited about for this trip: visiting Uppsala’s Common Garden, where we’ll discuss tree migration and climate change; a community project we’re developing for the small island community of Singö; Swedish guest speakers in art, ecology, and holistic forest care who will share their perspectives with us; and Midsommar on the tiny island of Arholma.

Stay tuned! We’ll have more to share with you next week when we arrive in Sweden.

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