Greetings! and welcome to another little bit of Friday-flavored fluff plucked from the litterbox of your fuzzy-headed host, Marko the Werelynx. This week I’ve got the final installment of my photos from my trip to Poland last year. We’ll also be finishing our visit to a great archaeological park, the earlier chapters of which can be found here and here.
It’s been one of those weeks, y’know. A week that need to end with the headphones on and something worth losing your hearing blasting through your head to drive out the ghosts. At the moment I’ve got some Eddie Vedder playing, but I may be moving on to Metallica before the night’s through. I dunno. We’ll see where this mood takes me. Yep, Fabulous Mother-In-Law left her apartment today. She’s currently getting the ol’ intravenous saline solutions and nutrient infusions in Amazing Sister-In-Law’s ward at a hospital near Prague. Somewhat ahead of schedule, Mrs the werelynx and I are back in our own apartment and Fabulous Mother-In-Law won’t be returning to hers. The joy of Alzheimer’s. On Sunday we’ll be driving back over to pack up some of her clothes to donate to charity, but for tonight and Saturday, the place belongs to the ghosts.
But let’s get back to Poland shall we?
The Archaeological Museum in Biskupin
The museum covers a lot of ground, both physically and in terms of time. They’ve recreated buildings from every early era of human occupation of the area. This week we go down the road from the Late Bronze Age settlement and enter the Age of Iron.
A stripped-down forge.
Community bread oven
There have been several film and television projects filmed on the grounds of the museum. Some of the buildings made by the film crews become part of the museum.
A panel about one of the better known film projects, the buildings they left behind and the towers and other bits that were torn down when they left.
The set of Wisz’s Farmstead, from the 2002 Polish film, “An Ancient Tale— When the Sun was a God”
A large area is dedicated to Medieval era farming and livestock.
Looks a bit like my neighbor’s place when he was still keeping goats and sheep.
Then there was a whole field adorned with ovens and kilns
A bread oven
A small kiln
Pottery kiln
Different angle of the pottery kiln. Torn open to remove the fired pots.
For decades an archaeological festival takes place in Biskupin every year. In recent years they’ve apparently begun a tradition of having talented Polish sculptors create facsimiles of notable ancient stone carvings.
“Lion Tangled Together with a Snake” a viking motif found on an 11th century tombstone in England.
“Akwanshi, Stone of Dead Ancestors” from Nigeria around the 16th century
“Lion Attacking a Deer” Byzantine art of the 10th/11th century
Here was a little thatched farmhouse that couldn’t have been much more than a couple hundred years old. Curious little man was selling potted willow branches that he’d beautifully braided together and allowed to take root. Surely that’d be a conversation piece to add to your garden.
But wait, there was another sculpture I took a picture of …
“Enlarged Image of a Lewis Chessman” from the famous stash of 12th century chess pieces found on the Isle of Lewis off the coast of Scotland. It was a bright and glorious coincidence that I was reading Peter May’s series of detective novels set on the Isle of Lewis during our trip to Poland and that the book I’d just finished featured a character who carved oversized Lewis chessmen from wood.
What better way to end than with a backward glace at the entrance?
Thanks for stopping by.
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