August, 2022 Research Update

Amici!  It is now September.  Well into September, in fact; apologies for that!

This update was delayed by me being in Stockholm for PDXCON2022, where I was part of the historians panel with Eleanor Janega.  It was the first time Paradox has brought historians to their historical-grand-strategy convention, but it seems to have been a big hit.  As far as I know it was recorded and that recording will be made generally available at some point, so I'll be sure to shout out when that happens.  There was also a live orchestra performing the main themes from HoI4, CK3, EU4, Stellaris and Victoria III (with Andreas Waldetoft, the composer in the audience watching); I really hope that got recorded and gets uploaded to, it was an impressive experience.

I also got a chance to put about two hours into Victoria III and while that's not long enough for a full review, I think the folks who have been anticipating this game are likely to be pleased with it.  The preview was unfettered - they started you at the main menu and let you go from there; all countries playable, etc.  I played Austria from the 1836 start through the 1840s; it worked well.  There are a lot of interacting systems - this may be the most complex Paradox game yet.  Very stable; I'm sure the computers running it were beasts, but I think over both days I saw a grand total of one minor crash which for a game two months before release is very good.  Overall, very good vibes.

August was certainly a banner month for my public scholarship.  I recorded four podcasts (three of which are out, one is up-coming), along with the Beyond Solitaire podcast which I recorded late last month coming out.  And then without meaning to I got into a surprisingly public debate with economics-pundit Noah Smith.  Combined with the high level of interest in the "Why No Roman Industrial Revolution" post, August ending up being the highest readership month on the blog ever with some 127,500 unique users according to Google Analytics (WordPress is less careful in filtering and so reported 165,000 unique visitors in the same period).

Finally, Article II (on Roman mail armor) is on the glide towards publication later this year; I got to check over proofs earlier in the month, which is pretty much the last thing I need to do for that article.  And of course on top of all of that as you may recall from last month's update, we moved hour right at the beginning of the month.  So it has been a busy time!  I am hoping to take things a bit slower in September, but then I always hope that and it rarely happens.

For this post's musing, I thought I'd do something a little odd and since I was in Stockholm I'd give my impression of all of the museums I was able to visit.  Paradox was nice enough to give us (I went with my wife) an extra two days in the city beyond the conference to be tourists and for my wife and I "being tourists" generally means "seeing museums."  Stockholm, if you weren't already aware, is very well furnished with museums of all types.  We weren't able to see them all, but we did see ten of them in about two and a half days.

The highlights:

 - The Vasa (or Vasamuseet).  This is the museum everyone will recommend if you go to Stockholm and they are right; it is a real one-of-a-kind can't-get-this-anywhere-else experience.  The museum is built around the raised wreck of the Vasa, a royal warship which sunk in 1628.  You can't walk on the wreck (it's almost entirely original timber!) but you walk around it at multiple levels.  The exhibits and explanations are good, but the massive ship itself is the star of the show.

- The Swedish History Museum (Historiska museet).  This museum is, I think, the other one-of-a-kind can't-get-this-anywhere else collection we saw.  While there is a separate 'Viking museum,' the Historiska actually has the largest collection of 'viking' artifacts in town (or anywhere that I know of).  It is a stunning collection of objects of all sorts (including at least one Ulfberth sword that I saw!).  And that's not all, because the Historiska also has the finds from the Battle of Visby (1361), along with many other good exhibits.  The Historiska also has a better collection of medieval artwork and artifacts than the medieval museum (below).  Absolute must see.

- The Swedish Army Museum (Armémuseum).  It has an S-Tank (a Stridsvagn 103), so you must go.  Inside the main collection is split over two floors, one covering Swedish military history to 1900 and the other from 1900 to the present.  Of these the pre-1900 is the strongest; this has a really good collection of 1500s and 1600s material along with some very vivid dioramas which do not shy away from the unpleasantness of war in that period.  That said the post-1900 exhibits, while the objects are good, leave something to be desired in the text explanations.  There is quite a lot of dancing around the edges of Swedish strategic decisions 1939-1945 which one might understand given the museum but is still somewhat disappointing.  Still overall a very solid museum of militaria.

- The Royal Armories (Livrustkammaren).  This is a smaller museum, but it's free so no complaints about its size.  It features mostly the armor, clothing and personal effects of Sweden's monarchs, with some very cool objects in display, including the buff coat that Gustavus Adolphus (Gustav II Adolf, r. 1611-1632) was wearing at the Battle of Lutzen (1632) where he was killed.  There are also a number of very impressive royal dresses and other outfits, quite a bit of parade armor and a number of other cool things.  Well worth a visit.

- The Mediterranean Museum (Medelhavsmuseet).  This one was a bit of a disappointment.  It is apparently the amalgamation of two museums - one of ancient Egypt and one of ancient Cyprus - along with a smattering of Greek and Roman material.  Now I don't want to bash the collection, which has some really neat stuff, including a massive collection of ancient Cypriot pottery and sculpture, but I found the layout and presentation frustrating - not enough information for objects presented often with unclear chronology.  The second floor is almost entirely dedicated to a museum cafe which means that displays packed with small objects are sandwiched between tables which makes it really awkward to look at the stuff without looming over someone's lunch.

- The City Museum (Stadsmuseet).  This one was fine but probably skippable.  It is set up as a neat chronological walk through the history and development of the city 1500-present (Stockholm in its current form isn't much older than that) and that's fine for what it is.  The collection isn't spectacular, but it is well laid out.  

- The Medieval Museum (Medeltidsmuseet).  First it is necessary to note throughout these museums that 'medieval' almost invariably means the 1500s (the Historiska is the exception, they distinguish between a 'viking' period pre-1000 and a medieval period 1000-1500) and maybe the 1400s.  So the medieval museum, constructed around the excavated remains of the city's 16th century wall is 'medieval' in the sense that it presents exhibits about Stockholm in the early 1500s.  The museum here is much more designed for school groups, I'd say, than adults.  If you can only make a few museums, skip this one and hit the Historiska instead.

- The Vrak, Museum of Wrecks.  A short museum about underwater archaeology that has some cool stuff but probably wouldn't be worth a trip on its own, however you can get in on a combined ticket with the Vasa (a very short walk away) and in that context it's a good 'second act' to the Vasa's main act.  I found the staging choices in the bottom floor of the museum a bit frustrating (as you may be able to tell, I prefer a fairly dry, informational approach which puts the artifacts front and center to more theatrical approaches), but the upper floor is good: it splits between one half that takes several wrecks in each period and discusses each in its own room (complete with a metal model of the ship) and a very good section of the methodologies of underwater archaeology.  A solid dessert after the main meal at the Vasa.

- The Skansen.  An 'open air' living history museum, the basic setup here will be familiar to anyone who has been to something like Colonial Williamsburg.  I'm pretty sure we caught it out of season so only a few areas were open, but it was still neat.  There's an attached zoo we did not go to, but the bulk of the museum itself includes both a full recreation of a 19th century town (with crafts practiced live for you to watch), around which are arranged a number of farmsteads with buildings that were physically moved to the area and set up, from different eras and different parts of Sweden.  Some staff were in costume, some weren't, but there's not an effort to be 'in character' here the way there is at Williamsburg, so it's a different sort of feel.  That said, when we asked questions of the staff in various buildings they were very able to answer at length, so it's just a different vibe.  This won't be everyone's cup of tea (or coffee, really; Sweden is very much a coffee country) but I enjoyed it.

 - The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Ostasiatiska Museet).  This was a very pleasant surprise - the museum's collection is fantastic.  The largest chunk is a stunning collection of Neolithic and Bronze Age Chinese pottery (so, pre-dynastic), but around that there's also a lot of other artifacts from China, Japan and Korea.  I get the impression folks don't get out to this museum as much which is a shame - it is not to be missed!

I'm sure I've missed a few here, but even this should give a sense of just how many cool museums there are to see in Stockholm!  The city also has a full suite of art museums (I should note there is a lot of late medieval art, especially wood-carved statues, split over these museums) which given just a few days we didn't see as much of (my better half went to some of them while I was at PDXCON; she is a gamer but not of grand strategy).

I should note all of the museums were fully functional in English - it's not like a lot of museums in France or Italy where the main text is in French or Italian but there is only perhaps a short (often quite poor!) summary in English.  Instead the English is almost always seems to be a 1-to-1 translation, which is really handy as I do not read Swedish!  That said, only the Vasa provided much of anything in languages other than English or Swedish; I assume since you are reading this you all read English just fine, but Sweden is very much Swedish, English or Bust, it seems to me (but seemingly everyone speaks extremely good English).

And that was the month!  My plan for September on ACOUP is to go forward with the next Paradox series (on Crusader Kings III) along with the Senate vote runner-up (Why was Egypt such an unusual place in the Roman Empire).  I am thinking that I may take either October or - more likely - November off from the blog to focus on book work.  If I do that, I'll arrange some sort of treat for the patrons that month (maybe chunky excerpts from what I've revised so far?).