1.
Mora, Sweden
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Mora is a locality and the seat of Mora Municipality in Dalarna County, Sweden, with 10,896 inhabitants in 2010. There are signs of activity in the surroundings of Mora dating from 4000 BC. The earliest found buildings in Mora are from the 7th century, some of the buildings can today be found in Moras open-air museum Zorns gammelgård. Mora parish was established in the 13th century, in late 1520, Gustav Vasa stopped in Mora, in order to organize a rebellion against the Danish troops which occupied Sweden. The citizens of Mora first declined to help Gustav Vasa, but later changed their minds, according to the legend two men from Mora caught up with Gustav Vasa in Sälen and told him his people would now fight with him. The rebellion managed to overthrow the Danish government in Sweden and Gustav Vasa was installed as king of Sweden, in the 17th century, it was the place for the famous Mora witch trial. During the 18th century the area around Mora was struck by famine, most went to Stockholm and southern Sweden where they learnt new craftman skills. Returning to Mora they used their new knowledge to build up new industries, during the end of the 18th century and the 19th, cottage industries of clocks, sewing machines, knives and water taps were important to the economy. Water taps and knives are still thriving industries, Mora is located between the northern shore of lake Siljan and the southern shore of lake Orsasjön where the Österdal River enters Siljan. Mora lies on the west side of Europes largest meteor impact crater, the northern part of the municipality marks the beginning of the Scandinavian mountain range. Mora has a version of the humid continental climate, where it is at the periphery of the northern zone. Non-subarctic climates in areas at north of the 61st parallel are very rare. As of 2015, the mildest January was 0.2 °C in 1989, as the rest of the municipalities around Lake Siljan, also in Mora, the summer solstice celebration of Midsummer plays an important role in the cultural life. People dress up in traditional costumes, raise maypoles, play traditional music. The house where Swedish painter Anders Zorn was born in 1860 is located next to the Mora Church and is open to the public, a museum containing many of his works of art has been built next door. A statue of King Gustav Vasa, made by Zorn, is placed on a hill at the finishing line of Vasaloppet in Mora. Another statue depicting Zorn is located in the park behind the court house of Mora. A third statue of a cross country skier is placed in front of the house next to the towns characteristic red wooden clock tower
2.
Union between Sweden and Norway
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The Norwegian government was presided over by viceroys, Swedes until 1829, Norwegians until 1856. That office was vacant and then abolished in 1873. Foreign policy was conducted through the Swedish foreign ministry until the dissolution of the union in 1905, by the 1814 Treaty of Kiel, the King of Denmark-Norway was forced to cede Norway to the King of Sweden. But Norway refused to submit to the treaty provisions, declared independence, after the adoption of the new Constitution of Norway on 17 May 1814, Prince Christian Frederick was elected king. On 4 November the Storting elected Charles XIII as the King of Norway, Sweden accepted the unions dissolution on 26 October. After a plebiscite confirming the election of Danish Prince Carl as the new king of Norway, he accepted the Stortings offer of the throne on 18 November and took the regnal name of Haakon VII. After the establishment of absolutism in 1660, a centralised form of government was established. The united kingdoms are referred to as Denmark-Norway by later historians, the ambitious wars waged by king Charles XII, however, led to the loss of that status after the Great Northern War, 1700–1721. Sweden also invaded Norway in 1567,1644,1658 and 1716, to wrest the country away from the union with Denmark, the repeated wars and invasions led to popular resentment against Sweden among Norwegians. During the 18th century, Norway enjoyed a period of great prosperity, the biggest growth industry was the export of planks, with Great Britain as the chief market. Some members of the aristocracy saw Sweden as a more natural partner. Around 1800, many prominent Norwegians secretly favoured a break with Denmark and their undeclared leader was Count Herman Wedel-Jarlsberg. The Swedish policy during the period was to cultivate contacts in Norway. King Gustav III actively approached circles in Norway that might favour a union with Sweden instead of Denmark, such endeavours on both sides of the border toward a rapprochement were far from realistic before the Napoleonic Wars created conditions that caused political upheavals in Scandinavia. Sweden and Denmark-Norway tried to remain neutral during the Napoleonic wars, both countries joined Russia and Prussia in a League of Armed Neutrality in 1800. Denmark-Norway was forced to withdraw from the League after the British raid on the navy during the first Battle of Copenhagen in April 1801, the league collapsed after the assassination of Tsar Paul I of Russia in 1801. Denmark-Norway was compelled into an alliance with France after the British preemptive second attack on the Danish navy, the defenceless capital had to surrender the navy after heavy bombardment, because the army was at the southern border to defend it against a possible French attack. As Sweden in the meantime had sided with the British, Denmark-Norway was forced by Napoleon to declare war on Sweden on 29 February 1808
3.
Stockholm
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The city is spread across 14 islands on the coast in the southeast of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren, by the Stockholm archipelago and the Baltic Sea. The area has settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC. It is also the capital of Stockholm County, Stockholm is the cultural, media, political, and economic centre of Sweden. The Stockholm region alone accounts for over a third of the countrys GDP and it is an important global city, and the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region. The city is home to some of Europes top ranking universities, such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute and it hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the citys most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is known for its decoration of the stations. Swedens national football arena is located north of the city centre, Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city. The city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics, and hosted the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics otherwise held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Stockholm is the seat of the Swedish government and most of its agencies, including the highest courts in the judiciary, and the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister. The government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, and the Prime Ministers residence is adjacent at the Sager House. After the Ice Age, around 8,000 BCE, there were already a number of people living in the present-day Stockholm area. Thousands of years later, as the ground thawed, the climate became tolerable, at the intersection of the Baltic Sea and lake Mälaren is an archipelago site where the Old Town of Stockholm was first built from about 1000 CE by Vikings. They had a positive impact on the area because of the trade routes they created. Stockholms location appears in Norse sagas as Agnafit, and in Heimskringla in connection with the legendary king Agne, the earliest written mention of the name Stockholm dates from 1252, by which time the mines in Bergslagen made it an important site in the iron trade. The first part of the name means log in Swedish, although it may also be connected to an old German word meaning fortification, the second part of the name means islet, and is thought to refer to the islet Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm. Stockholms core, the present Old Town was built on the island next to Helgeandsholmen from the mid 13th century onward. The city originally rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League, Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with Lübeck, Hamburg, Gdańsk, Visby, Reval, and Riga during this time
4.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
5.
Sculpture
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Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts, a wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or molded, or cast. However, most ancient sculpture was painted, and this has been lost. Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, the Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith, the revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelos David. Relief is often classified by the degree of projection from the wall into low or bas-relief, high relief, sunk-relief is a technique restricted to ancient Egypt. Relief sculpture may also decorate steles, upright slabs, usually of stone, techniques such as casting, stamping and moulding use an intermediate matrix containing the design to produce the work, many of these allow the production of several copies. The term sculpture is used mainly to describe large works. The very large or colossal statue has had an enduring appeal since antiquity, another grand form of portrait sculpture is the equestrian statue of a rider on horse, which has become rare in recent decades. The smallest forms of life-size portrait sculpture are the head, showing just that, or the bust, small forms of sculpture include the figurine, normally a statue that is no more than 18 inches tall, and for reliefs the plaquette, medal or coin. Sculpture is an important form of public art, a collection of sculpture in a garden setting can be called a sculpture garden. One of the most common purposes of sculpture is in form of association with religion. Cult images are common in cultures, though they are often not the colossal statues of deities which characterized ancient Greek art. The actual cult images in the innermost sanctuaries of Egyptian temples, of which none have survived, were rather small. The same is true in Hinduism, where the very simple. Some undoubtedly advanced cultures, such as the Indus Valley civilization, appear to have had no monumental sculpture at all, though producing very sophisticated figurines, the Mississippian culture seems to have been progressing towards its use, with small stone figures, when it collapsed. Other cultures, such as ancient Egypt and the Easter Island culture, from the 20th century the relatively restricted range of subjects found in large sculpture expanded greatly, with abstract subjects and the use or representation of any type of subject now common. Today much sculpture is made for intermittent display in galleries and museums, small sculpted fittings for furniture and other objects go well back into antiquity, as in the Nimrud ivories, Begram ivories and finds from the tomb of Tutankhamun
6.
Printmaking
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Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints that have an element of originality, except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Each print produced is not considered a copy but rather is considered an original, a print may be known as an impression. Printmaking is not chosen only for its ability to multiple impressions. Prints are created by transferring ink from a matrix or through a screen to a sheet of paper or other material. Screens made of silk or synthetic fabrics are used for the screenprinting process, other types of matrix substrates and related processes are discussed below. Multiple impressions printed from the matrix form an edition. Prints may also be printed in book form, such as illustrated books or artists books, Printmaking techniques are generally divided into the following basic categories, Relief, where ink is applied to the original surface of the matrix. Relief techniques include woodcut or woodblock as the Asian forms are known, wood engraving. Intaglio, where ink is applied beneath the surface of the matrix. Intaglio techniques include engraving, etching, mezzotint, aquatint, planographic, where the matrix retains its original surface, but is specially prepared and/or inked to allow for the transfer of the image. Planographic techniques include lithography, monotyping, and digital techniques, stencil, where ink or paint is pressed through a prepared screen, including screenprinting and pochoir. Other types of printmaking techniques outside these groups include collagraphy and viscosity printing, collagraphy is a printmaking technique in which textured material is adhered to the printing matrix. This texture is transferred to the paper during the printing process, Contemporary printmaking may include digital printing, photographic mediums, or a combination of digital, photographic, and traditional processes. Many of these techniques can also be combined, especially within the same family, for example, Rembrandts prints are usually referred to as etchings for convenience, but very often include work in engraving and drypoint as well, and sometimes have no etching at all. Woodcut, a type of print, is the earliest printmaking technique. It was probably first developed as a means of printing patterns on cloth, woodcuts of images on paper developed around 1400 in Japan, and slightly later in Europe. These are the two areas where woodcut has been most extensively used purely as a process for making images without text, the artist draws a design on a plank of wood, or on paper which is transferred to the wood
7.
Etching
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Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types of material, as a method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains in wide use today. In a number of variants such as microfabrication etching and photochemical milling it is a crucial technique in much modern technology. In traditional pure etching, a plate is covered with a waxy ground which is resistant to acid. The artist then scratches off the ground with an etching needle where he or she wants a line to appear in the finished piece. The échoppe, a tool with an oval section, is also used for swelling lines. The plate is dipped in a bath of acid, technically called the mordant or etchant. The acid bites into the metal where it is exposed, leaving behind lines sunk into the plate, the remaining ground is then cleaned off the plate. The plate is inked all over, and then the ink wiped off the surface, the plate is then put through a high-pressure printing press together with a sheet of paper. The paper picks up the ink from the lines, making a print. The process can be repeated many times, typically several hundred impressions could be printed before the shows much sign of wear. The work on the plate can also be added to by repeating the whole process, Etching has often been combined with other intaglio techniques such as engraving or aquatint. The process as applied to printmaking is believed to have been invented by Daniel Hopfer of Augsburg, Hopfer was a craftsman who decorated armour in this way, and applied the method to printmaking, using iron plates. Apart from his prints, there are two examples of his work on armour, a shield from 1536 now in the Real Armeria of Madrid. The switch to copper plates was made in Italy. On the other hand, the handling of the ground and acid need skill and experience, prior to 1100 AD, the New World Hohokam independently utilized the technique of acid etching in marine shell designs. Jacques Callot from Nancy in Lorraine made important technical advances in etching technique and he developed the échoppe, a type of etching-needle with a slanting oval section at the end, which enabled etchers to create a swelling line, as engravers were able to do. Callot also appears to have responsible for an improved, harder, recipe for the etching ground
8.
Oscar II of Sweden
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Oscar II was King of Sweden from 1872 until his death and King of Norway from 1872 until his dethronement in 1905. He was the third of four sons of King Oscar I, as his eldest brother Charles XV was without heirs and his brother Prince Gustaf died in 1852, it was he who succeeded his brother as king. Oscar II was king during a period when Sweden was undergoing a period of industrialization, the declining Union of Sweden and Norway was finally dissolved in 1905 and Oscar became the last Bernadotte king of Norway. He died in 1907 and was succeed as King of Sweden by his son, at his birth in Stockholm, Oscar Fredrik was created Duke of Östergötland. He entered the navy at the age of eleven, and was appointed lieutenant in July 1845. Later he studied at Uppsala University, where he distinguished himself in mathematics, on 13 December 1848, he was made an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. On 6 June 1857 he married in Wiesbaden-Biebrich, Germany, Princess Sophia Wilhelmina, from 1859, when his father died, he was first in line to the Swedish throne after his oldest brother King Charles, who then had no male heirs. His middle brother Gustaf had died in 1852 and he succeeded his brother Charles XV / IV on 18 September 1872. At the accession he adopted as his motto Brödrafolkens väl / Broderfolkenes Vel, the political events which led up to the peaceful dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905 could hardly have been attained but for the tact and patience of the king himself. He was dethroned on 7 June 1905 by the Norwegian Parliament and he declined, indeed, to permit any prince of his house to become king of Norway, but better relations between the two countries were restored before his death. He died in Stockholm on 8 December 1907 at 9,10 AM and his acute intelligence and his aloofness from the dynastic considerations affecting most European sovereigns gave the king considerable weight as an arbitrator in international questions. At the request of Great Britain, Germany and the United States in 1889 he appointed the justice of Samoa. He was the 1, 027th Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece in Spain, the office of prime minister was instituted in 1876. Louis De Geer became the first head of government in Sweden to use this title, the most known and powerful first minister of the Crown during the reign of Oscar was the conservative estate owner Erik Gustaf Boström. Boström served as Prime Minister in 1891-1900 and 1902-1905 and he was trusted and respected by the king, who had much difficulty approving someone else as prime minister. Over a period of time, the king gave Boström a free hand to select his own ministers without much royal involvement and it was an arrangement that furthered the road to parliamentarism. Himself a distinguished writer and musical amateur, King Oscar proved a friend of learning. In 1858 a collection of his lyrical and narrative poems, Memorials of the Swedish Fleet, published anonymously, obtained the second prize of the Swedish Academy
9.
Grover Cleveland
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Stephen Grover Cleveland was an American politician and lawyer who was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. He was also the first and to date only President in American history to serve two terms in office. Cleveland was the leader of the pro-business Bourbon Democrats who opposed high tariffs, Free Silver, inflation, imperialism and his crusade for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the era. Cleveland won praise for his honesty, self-reliance, integrity, and he fought political corruption, patronage, and bossism. As a reformer Cleveland had such prestige that the wing of the Republican Party, called Mugwumps, largely bolted the GOP presidential ticket. As his second administration began, disaster hit the nation when the Panic of 1893 produced a national depression. It ruined his Democratic Party, opening the way for a Republican landslide in 1894 and for the agrarian, the result was a political realignment that ended the Third Party System and launched the Fourth Party System and the Progressive Era. Cleveland was a formidable policymaker, and he also drew corresponding criticism, critics complained that Cleveland had little imagination and seemed overwhelmed by the nations economic disasters—depressions and strikes—in his second term. Even so, his reputation for probity and good character survived the troubles of his second term, biographer Allan Nevins wrote, n Grover Cleveland, the greatness lies in typical rather than unusual qualities. He had no endowments that thousands of men do not have and he possessed honesty, courage, firmness, independence, and common sense. But he possessed them to a degree other men do not, today, Cleveland is considered by most historians to have been a successful leader, generally ranked among the second tier of American presidents. Stephen Grover Cleveland was born on March 18,1837, in Caldwell, New Jersey to Richard Falley Cleveland, Clevelands father was a Presbyterian minister who was originally from Connecticut. His mother was from Baltimore and was the daughter of a bookseller, on his fathers side, Cleveland was descended from English ancestors, the first of the family having emigrated to Massachusetts from Cleveland, England in 1635. On his mothers side, he was descended from Anglo-Irish Protestants and he was distantly related to General Moses Cleaveland, after whom the city of Cleveland, Ohio, was named. Cleveland, the fifth of nine children, was named Stephen Grover in honor of the first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell and he became known as Grover in his adult life. In 1841, the Cleveland family moved to Fayetteville, New York, neighbors later described him as full of fun and inclined to play pranks, and fond of outdoor sports. In 1850, Clevelands father took a pastorate in Clinton, Oneida County, New York, despite his fathers dedication to his missionary work, the income was insufficient for the large family. Financial conditions forced him to remove Grover from school into a mercantile apprenticeship in Fayetteville
10.
William Howard Taft
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William Howard Taft served as the 27th President of the United States and as the tenth Chief Justice of the United States, the only person to have held both offices. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft to be chief justice, Taft was born in Cincinnati in 1857. His father, Alphonso Taft, was a U. S. Attorney General, William Taft attended Yale and was a member of Skull and Bones secret society like his father, and after becoming a lawyer was appointed a judge while still in his twenties. He continued a rapid rise, being named Solicitor General and as a judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in 1901, President William McKinley appointed Taft civilian governor of the Philippines. In 1904, Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and he became Roosevelts hand-picked successor, despite his personal ambition to become chief justice, Taft declined repeated offers of appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, believing his political work to be more important. With Roosevelts help, Taft had little opposition for the Republican nomination for president in 1908, in the White House, he focused on East Asia more than European affairs, and repeatedly intervened to prop up or remove Latin American governments. Taft sought reductions to trade tariffs, then a source of governmental income. Controversies over conservation and over antitrust cases filed by the Taft administration served to separate the two men. Roosevelt challenged Taft for renomination in 1912, Taft used his control of the party machinery to gain a bare majority of delegates, and Roosevelt bolted the party. The split left Taft with little chance of re-election, he took only Utah, after leaving office, Taft returned to Yale as a professor, continuing his political activity and working against war through the League to Enforce Peace. In 1921, President Harding appointed Taft as chief justice, an office he had long sought, Chief Justice Taft was a conservative on business issues, but under him, there were advances in individual rights. In poor health, he resigned in February 1930, after his death the next month, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, the first president and first Supreme Court justice to be interred there. Taft is generally listed near the middle in historians rankings of U. S. presidents, William Howard Taft was born September 15,1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alphonso Taft and Louise Torrey. The Taft family was not wealthy, living in a modest home in the suburb of Mount Auburn, Alphonso served as a judge, ambassador and in the cabinet, as War Secretary and Attorney General under Ulysses S. Grant. William Taft was not seen as brilliant as a child, but was a worker, Tafts demanding parents pushed him and his four brothers toward success. He attended Woodward High School in Cincinnati, at Yale College, which he entered in 1874, the heavyset, jovial Taft was popular. One classmate described him succeeding through hard work rather than being the smartest, in 1878, Taft graduated, second in his class out of 121. He attended Cincinnati Law School, and graduated with a Bachelor of Laws in 1880, while in law school, he worked on The Cincinnati Commercial newspaper, edited by Murat Halstead
11.
Theodore Roosevelt
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Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was an American statesman, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. As a leader of the Republican Party during this time, he became a force for the Progressive Era in the United States in the early 20th century. Born a sickly child with debilitating asthma, Roosevelt successfully overcame his health problems by embracing a strenuous lifestyle and he integrated his exuberant personality, vast range of interests, and world-famous achievements into a cowboy persona defined by robust masculinity. Home-schooled, he began a lifelong naturalist avocation before attending Harvard College and his first of many books, The Naval War of 1812, established his reputation as both a learned historian and as a popular writer. Upon entering politics, he became the leader of the faction of Republicans in New Yorks state legislature. Returning a war hero, he was elected governor of New York in 1898, the state party leadership distrusted him, so they took the lead in moving him to the prestigious but powerless role of vice presidential candidate as McKinleys running mate in the election of 1900. Roosevelt campaigned vigorously across the country, helping McKinleys re-election in a victory based on a platform of peace, prosperity. Following the assassination of President McKinley in September 1901, Roosevelt succeeded to the office at age 42, making conservation a top priority, he established a myriad of new national parks, forests, and monuments intended to preserve the nations natural resources. In foreign policy, he focused on Central America, where he began construction of the Panama Canal and he greatly expanded the United States Navy and sent the Great White Fleet on a world tour to project the United States naval power around the globe. His successful efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, elected in 1904 to a full term, Roosevelt continued to promote progressive policies, but many of his efforts and much of his legislative agenda were eventually blocked in Congress. Roosevelt successfully groomed his close friend, William Howard Taft, to succeed him in the presidency, after leaving office, Roosevelt went on safari in Africa and toured Europe. Returning to the United States, he became frustrated with Tafts approach, failing to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1912, Roosevelt founded his own party, the Progressive, so-called Bull Moose Party, and called for wide-ranging progressive reforms. The split among Republicans enabled the Democrats to win both the White House and a majority in the Congress in 1912, Republicans aligned with Taft nationally would control the Republican Party for decades. Frustrated at home, Roosevelt led an expedition to the Amazon basin. During World War I, he opposed President Woodrow Wilson for keeping the country out of the war, and offered his military services, although planning to run again for president in 1920, Roosevelt suffered deteriorating health and died in early 1919. Roosevelt has consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest American presidents. Historians admire Roosevelt for rooting out corruption in his administration, but are critical of his 1909 libel lawsuits against the World and his face was carved into Mount Rushmore, alongside those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was born on October 27,1858, at East 20th Street in New York City and he was the second of four children born to socialite Martha Stewart Mittie Bulloch and glass businessman and philanthropist Theodore Roosevelt Sr
12.
Dalarna
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Dalarna, is a historical province or landskap in central Sweden. Another English language form established in literature is the Dales, Dalarna adjoins Härjedalen, Hälsingland, Gästrikland, Västmanland and Värmland. It is also bounded by Norway in the west, borders of the province mostly coincide with the modern administrative Dalarna County. The word Dalarna means the dales, the area is a popular vacation destination for Swedes from the south, who often travel there to relax during summer vacations, drawn by good fishing lakes, beautiful campgrounds, and deep forests. Many such Swedes own or rent a residence in Dalarna. In mid-June, summerfest celebrations and dances are held in many of the villages and, of course. Dalarna is a full of historical associations, possessing strong local characteristics in respect of its products. In the western district Lima, some people in villages speak a dialect, Dalecarlian, while in Älvdalen. Historically, the people of Dalecarlia – called Dalecarlians, or Dalesmen and Daleswomen – are famous for their love of independence, the Old Norse form of the province is Járnberaland, which means the land of the iron carriers. The provinces of Sweden serve no administrative or political purposes, Dalarnas coat of arms dates from 1560, the use of two crossed arrows as a symbol precedes this. A Duchy of Dalecarlia also exists, and the arms include a ducal coronet. Blazon, Azure, two Dalecarlian Arrows Or in saltire point upwards pointed Argent and in chief a Crown of the first, as early as 1525, the arrows appeared in use on a seal. Dalarna County uses the coat of arms, granted for the then Kopparberg County in 1936. The northern part of the lies within the Scandinavian mountain range. The southern part consists of plains, with mines, most notably copper. Highest point is Storvätteshågna,1,204 meters above sea-level, lowest point is at 55 meters, in the south-east part. Lake Siljan features in the part of Dalarna, and the Västerdal River. Dalarnas second lake is Runn, which lies between Falun and Borlänge, with 66.6 square kilometres of water and over fifty islands, the lake is a popular tourist destination
13.
Balkans
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The Balkan Peninsula, or the Balkans, is a peninsula and a cultural area in Eastern and Southeastern Europe with various and disputed borders. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch from the Serbia-Bulgaria border to the Black Sea, the highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala 2,925 metres in the Rila mountain range. In Turkish, Balkan means a chain of wooded mountains, the name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. A less popular hypothesis regarding its etymology is that it derived from the Persian Balā-Khāna, from Antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains had been called by the local Thracian name Haemus. According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment, a reverse name scheme has also been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus is derived from a Thracian word *saimon, a third possibility is that Haemus derives from the Greek word haema meaning blood. The myth relates to a fight between Zeus and the monster/titan Typhon, Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhons blood fell on the mountains, from which they got their name. The earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, the Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, there is also a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion. The word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, and Ungurus-Balkani̊. The concept of the Balkans was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, during the 1820s, Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers. Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term, zeunes goal was to have a geographical parallel term to the Italic and Iberian Peninsula, and seemingly nothing more. The gradually acquired political connotations are newer and, to a large extent, after the dissolution of Yugoslavia beginning in June 1991, the term Balkans again received a negative meaning, especially in Croatia and Slovenia, even in casual usage. A European Union initiative of 1999 is called the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, and its northern boundary is often given as the Danube, Sava and Kupa Rivers. The Balkan Peninsula has an area of about 470,000 km2. It is more or less identical to the known as Southeastern Europe. As of 1920 until World War II, Italy included Istria, the current territory of Italy includes only the small area around Trieste inside the Balkan Peninsula. However, the regions of Trieste and Istria are not usually considered part of the Balkans by Italian geographers, the Western Balkans is a neologism coined to describe the countries of ex-Yugoslavia and Albania
14.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
15.
Knight
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A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a monarch or other political leader for service to the monarch or country, especially in a military capacity. Historically, in Europe, knighthood was conferred upon mounted warriors, during the High Middle Ages, knighthood was considered a class of lower nobility. By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, often, a knight was a vassal who served as a fighter for a lord, with payment in the form of land holdings. The lords trusted the knights, who were skilled in battle on horseback, since the early modern period, the title of knight is purely honorific, usually bestowed by a monarch, as in the British honours system, often for non-military service to the country. The modern female equivalent in the United Kingdom is Dame, furthermore, Geoffroi de Charnys Book of Chivalry expounded upon the importance of Christian faith in every area of a knights life. This novel explored the ideals of knighthood and their incongruity with the reality of Cervantes world, in the late medieval period, new methods of warfare began to render classical knights in armour obsolete, but the titles remained in many nations. Some orders of knighthood, such as the Knights Templar, have become the subject of legend, each of these orders has its own criteria for eligibility, but knighthood is generally granted by a head of state or monarch to selected persons to recognise some meritorious achievement. This linkage is reflected in the etymology of chivalry, cavalier, the special prestige accorded to mounted warriors finds a parallel in the furusiyya in the Muslim world, and the Greek hippeus and Roman eques of classical antiquity. The word knight, from Old English cniht, is a cognate of the German word Knecht and this meaning, of unknown origin, is common among West Germanic languages. Middle High German had the phrase guoter kneht, which also meant knight, the Anglo-Saxon cniht had no connection to horsemanship, the word referred to any servant. A rādcniht, riding-servant, was a servant delivering messages or patrolling coastlines on horseback, a narrowing of the generic meaning servant to military follower of a king or other superior is visible by 1100. The specific military sense of a knight as a warrior in the heavy cavalry emerges only in the Hundred Years War. The verb to knight appears around 1300, and, from the same time, an Equestrian was a member of the second highest social class in the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. This class is often translated as knight, the medieval knight, both Greek ἳππος and Latin equus are derived from the Proto-Indo-European word root ekwo-, horse. In the later Roman Empire, the classical Latin word for horse, equus, was replaced in common parlance by the vulgar Latin caballus, sometimes thought to derive from Gaulish caballos. From caballus arose terms in the various Romance languages cognate with the English cavalier, Italian cavaliere, Spanish caballero, French chevalier, Portuguese cavaleiro, the Germanic languages have terms cognate with the English rider, German Ritter, and Dutch and Scandinavian ridder. These words are derived from Germanic rīdan, to ride, in turn derived from the Proto-Indo-European root reidh-, in ancient Rome there was a knightly class Ordo Equestris from which European knighthood may have been derived. Some portions of the armies of Germanic peoples who occupied Europe from the 3rd century AD onward had been mounted, in the Early Medieval period any well-equipped horseman could be described as a knight, or miles in Latin
16.
Exposition Universelle (1889)
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The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a worlds fair held in Paris, France, from 6 May to 31 October 1889. It was held during the year of the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, an event considered symbolic of the beginning of the French Revolution. The 1889 Exposition covered an area of 0.96 km2, including the Champ de Mars, the Trocadéro, the quai dOrsay, a part of the Seine. Transport around the Exposition was partly provided by a 3 kilometre 600 millimetre gauge railway by Decauville and it was claimed that the railway carried 6,342,446 visitors in just six months of operation. Some of the used on this line later saw service on the Chemins de Fer du Calvados. The main symbol of the Fair was the Eiffel Tower, which served as the arch to the Fair. The 1889 fair was held on the Champ de Mars in Paris, which had been the site of the earlier Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867, since the lifts had not been completed when the Exposition opened, the first visitors had to walk up to the second floor platform. Workers had worked through the night the day before the exhibition opened to complete the construction needed to safely allow patrons to set foot upon the structure. No one other than construction personnel were allowed higher than the second floor platform, an equally significant building constructed for the fair was the Galerie des machines, designed by architect Ferdinand Dutert and engineer Victor Contamin. It was reused at the exposition of 1900 and then destroyed in 1910, at 111 meters, the Galerie spanned the longest interior space in the world at the time, using a system of hinged arches made of steel or iron. Although often described as being constructed of steel, it was made of iron. There is a description, with illustrations, of the Expositions two famous buildings in the British journal Engineering. A follow-up report appears a late issue with this summation, the exhibition will be famous for four distinctive features, the 28 June issue of Engineering also mentions a remarkable Great Model of the Earth created by Theodore Villard and Charles Cotard. There were unseasonal thunderstorms in Paris during that summer of 1889, causing distress to the canopies and decoration of the exposition. The Exhibition included a building by the Paris architect Pierre-Henri Picq and this was an elaborate iron and glass structure decorated with ceramic tiles in a Byzantine-Egyptian-Romanesque style. After the Exposition the building was shipped to Fort de France and reassembled there, known as the Schoelcher Library, initially it contained the 10,000 books that Victor Schoelcher had donated to the island. Today it houses over 250,000 books and an ethnographic museum, a Negro village where 400 people were displayed constituted the major attraction. At the Exposition, the French composer Claude Debussy first heard Javanese gamelan music and this influenced some of his later compositions
17.
Sophia of Nassau
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Sophia of Nassau was Queen consort of Sweden and Norway. Sophia was Queen of Sweden for 35 years, longer any other Swedish queen before her. She was the longest serving queen until 2011 when she was surpassed by Queen Silvia and she is also the latest Queen of Sweden to have held the official title of Dowager Queen of Sweden. Sophia was the youngest daughter of Wilhelm, Duke of Nassau and her father died when she was three, and was succeeded by her half-brother Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. Sophia was given what was considered an education for princesses at the time by private tutors. She was trained in fencing, normally reserved for males, to strengthen her back, Sophia socialized with academics and artists, and the court of Nassau was considered more democratic than what was usual at most German courts. She early learned the English language, and felt sympathy for the British parliamentarian system, the language spoken in her childhood home was not German but English. Sophia was given what has been referred to as a more similar to the middle class Victorian life style. Her brothers used to refer to her as Unsere demokratische Schwester and she was described as serious, intelligent and dutiful, and interested in language and history, she was also genuinely religious. In 1848, she witnessed a rebellion in the Duchy of Nassau, suppressed by her mother and she spent the winter of 1853-54 with her mother at the court of her maternal aunt in St Petersburg in Russia. Her maternal aunt, Princess Charlotte of Württemberg, was married to Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich of Russia, during her stay in Russia, she was a student of the pianist Anton Rubinstein. Sophia and her mother were forced to leave Russia at the outbreak of the Crimean war, after the death of her mother in 1856, Sophia lived with her half sister Princess Mary of Wied. In July 1856, at her sister Marys summer residence Monrepos outside Nassau, she received a visit from Prince Oscar of Sweden and it was therefore politically necessary for Oscar to marry. In 1855-56, Oscar was sent to various royal courts in Europe in order to find a suitable marriage partner in both rank and to his own taste. He visited the British court but did not wish to marry Princess Mary of Cambridge, Sophia and Oscar, however, mutually fell in love with each other. After the visit, Oscar returned to Sweden to ask for his parents consent to marriage and he then returned to Nassau, where the engagement was made in September and announced in October. Sophia and Oscar were married on 6 June 1857 at the Castle in Wiesbaden-Biebrich, there they were greeted with salute, singing and crowds. She was dressed in blue at her arrival, and was therefore nicknamed The Blue Duchess, in 1858, Sophia gave birth to a son, which secured the Bernadotte dynasty and gave her much popularity
18.
Bruno Liljefors
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Bruno Andreas Liljefors was a Swedish artist, the most important and probably the most influential wildlife painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He also drew sequential picture stories, making him one of the early Swedish comic creators. He was brother of the composer and conductor Ruben Liljefors, Liljefors is held in high esteem by painters of wildlife and is acknowledged as an influence, for example, by American wildlife artist Michael Coleman. All his life Liljefors was a hunter, and he often painted predator-prey action, however, he never exaggerated the ferocity of the predator or the pathos of the prey, and his pictures are devoid of sentimentality. Bruno was fascinated by the patterns to be found in nature and he was also influenced by Japanese art, for example in his Goldfinches of the late 1880s. This darker quality in his paintings began to attract interest. He amassed a collection of animals to act as his living models, the greatness of Liljefors lay in his ability to show animals in their environment. He wrote, The hawk model—a young one—I killed myself, everything was painted out of doors as was usually done in those days. However, Liljefors was a pioneer at a time when art was still emerging from its association with scientific depiction. And he set a standard of identification with the landscape which substantially influenced the subsequent development of art in the twentieth century. Works by or about Bruno Liljefors at Internet Archive
19.
Frances Folsom Cleveland Preston
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Frances Clara Folsom Cleveland Preston was married to the President of the United States Grover Cleveland and was the First Lady of the United States from 1886 to 1889 and again from 1893 to 1897. Becoming First Lady at age 21, she remains the youngest wife of a sitting president. Frances Clara Folsom was born in Buffalo, New York, as the daughter of Oscar Folsom, who was a lawyer and descendant of the earliest European settlers of Exeter, New Hampshire, and Emma Harmon. All of Frances Clevelands ancestors were from England and settled in what would become Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire and she was their only child to survive infancy. She originally had the first name Frank, but later decided to adopt the feminine variant Frances, a longtime close friend of Oscar Folsom, Grover Cleveland, at age 27, met his future wife shortly after she was born. He took an avuncular interest in the child, buying her a baby carriage, when her father, Oscar Folsom, died in a carriage accident on July 23,1875, without having written a will, the court appointed Cleveland administrator of his estate. This brought Cleveland into still more contact with Frances, then age 11 and she attended Central High School in Buffalo, and Medina High School in Medina, New York and went on to attend Wells College in Aurora, New York. Sometime while she was in college, Clevelands feelings for her took a romantic turn and he proposed by letter in August 1885, soon after her graduation. They did not announce their engagement, however, until just five days before the wedding, in honor of Frances Cleveland, Cleveland Hall was constructed in 1911 on the Wells College campus. Originally a library, the building currently holds foreign language classes, Frances Folsom, who was 21 years old, married President Grover Cleveland, age 49, on June 2,1886, at the White House. This was the time a president married in the Executive Mansion. Their age difference of 28 years is the second largest of any presidential marriage, the words honor, love, and keep were substituted for honor, love and obey. John Philip Sousa and the Marine Band provided the music, the couple spent a five-day honeymoon at Deer Park in the Cumberland Mountains of Western Maryland. The new First Lady was the object of media interest. She took over the duties of being White House hostess, and she held two receptions a week—one on Saturday afternoons, when women with jobs were free to come. Clevelands sister Rose Cleveland had been her bachelor brothers hostess in the first 15 months of his first term of office, after her brothers marriage, Rose happily gave up the duties of hostess for her own work in education. After Grover Cleveland was defeated in the 1888 presidential election, the Clevelands lived in New York City. Upon leaving the White House at the end of her husbands first term and she proved correct, becoming the only First Lady to preside at two non-consecutive administrations
20.
Homburg (hat)
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A homburg is a formal felt hat characterized by a single dent running down the center of the crown, a stiff brim shaped in a kettle curl and a bound edge trim. The homburg is made from felt and has a grosgrain hatband. Although the homburg is a hat, it is not an alternative to the top hat. The original homburg was of slightly more generous proportions than the modern version and it was popularized by Edward VII after he visited Bad Homburg in Hesse, Germany, and brought back a hat of this style. He was flattered when his hat style was mimicked, and at times he insisted on being copied, anthony Eden made the dark homburg so fashionable in the 1930s that it became known as the Eden on Savile Row. At his 1953 inauguration, Dwight D. Eisenhower broke with tradition by wearing a homburg instead of a top hat. Like other formal Western male headgear, the homburg is not as common as it once was, al Pacino gained some renewed fame for the homburg by wearing one in the film The Godfather, for which reason the hat is sometimes called a Godfather. Some Orthodox Jewish, usually Misnagdish, rabbis wear black homburgs and it is considered somewhat more traditional and distinguished than the black fedora commonly worn by Orthodox Jews. Former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, is pictured wearing a Homburg hat
21.
Potter Palmer
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Potter Palmer was an American businessman who was responsible for much of the development of State Street in Chicago. Born in New York City, Albany County, New York, he was the son of Benjamin. Potter Palmer founded a dry goods store, Potter Palmer and Company, unlike many stores of the time it focused on women and encouraged their patronage. Palmer instituted a no questions asked returns policy and allowed customers to take home to inspect before purchasing. He made the store much larger and more distinctive than other stores of the time, Palmer was the first owner to advertise with large window displays that included price comparisons. When Palmers doctor urged him to get out of the business in 1865 because of ill health, he brought in partners Marshall Field, the trio joined forces and renamed the firm Field, Palmer, Leiter and Company. The store would eventually develop into the prominent Midwestern department store chain Marshall Field, in 1867, Palmer sold his share of the partnership and focused his efforts on his real estate interests, leasing a new building to his former partners in 1868 at State and Washington. He built several buildings along State Street on property he owned, when his buildings were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire, Palmer borrowed $1.7 million to rebuild, the largest amount lent to a private individual up to that time. He reclaimed the swampland north of Chicagos commercial district, developing it into Lake Shore Drive, in 1871, he married Bertha Honoré. In 1874 a son, Honoré, was born, in 1875, both went on to have sons named Potter Palmer III, as well as other children. In 1885 Palmer built the castle-like Palmer Mansion on Lake Shore Drive, prior to that time, Prairie Avenue had been the most desirable address in Chicago. Palmer is buried in Graceland Cemetery, love Under Fire, The Story of Bertha and Potter Palmer,2013 half-hour documentary Ross, Ishbel. Silhouette in Diamonds, The Life of Mrs. Potter Palmer, death of Potter Palmer in The New York Times, May 5,1902, p.9. Potter Palmer at Find a Grave
22.
Nationalmuseum
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Nationalmuseum is the national gallery of Sweden, located on the peninsula Blasieholmen in central Stockholm. The museums benefactors include King Gustav III and Carl Gustaf Tessin, the museum also has an art library, open to the public and academics alike. The current building, built between 1844 and 1866, was inspired by North Italian Renaissance architecture and it is the design of the German architect Friedrich August Stüler, who also designed the Neues Museum in Berlin. The relatively closed exterior, save for the entrance, gives no hint of the spacious interior dominated by the huge flight of stairs leading up to the topmost galleries. The museum was enlarged in 1961 to accommodate the museum workshops, the present restaurant was instated in 1996. The museum building closed for renovation in 2013 and is scheduled to reopen in 2018, the Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis by Rembrandt Midvinterblot by Carl Larsson Vid bäcken by Peter Adolf Persson Hallwyl Palace Swedish Museum of National Antiquities Johan Mårtelius. Stockholm, Arkitektur Förlag AB. p.67
23.
Midsummer
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The exact dates vary between different cultures. The Christian Church designated June 24 as the feast day of the early Christian martyr St John the Baptist, and these are commemorated by many Christian denominations. In Sweden the Midsummer is such an important festivity that there have been discussions to make the Midsummers Eve into the National Day of Sweden. It may also be referred to as St. Hans Day, european midsummer-related holidays, traditions, and celebrations are pre-Christian in origin. The fire festival or Litha – Summer solstice – is a tradition for many neopagans, Solstice celebrations still centered on the day of the astronomical summer solstice. Some choose to hold the rite on June 21, even when this is not the longest day of the year, and some celebrate June 24, in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Quebec, the traditional Midsummer day, June 24, is a public holiday. So it was also in Sweden and Finland, but in these countries it was, in the 1950s. In Wicca, practitioners celebrate on the longest day and shortest night of the year which has not had a set date since the retirement of the 13-month Celtic calendar, the celebration of Midsummers Eve was from ancient times a festival of the summer solstice. Bonfires were lit to protect against evil spirits which were believed to roam freely when the sun was turning southward again, in later years, witches were also thought to be on their way to meetings with other powerful beings. The solstice itself has remained a special moment of the cycle of the year since Neolithic times. In Sweden, Finland, Latvia and Estonia, Midsummers Eve is the greatest festival of the year, comparable only with Walpurgis Night, Christmas Eve, Ancient Romans would hold a festival to honor the god Summanus on June 20. In the 7th century, Saint Eligius warned the recently converted inhabitants of Flanders against the pagan solstice celebrations. According to the Vita by his companion Ouen, hed say, on St. Johns Eve in certain regions the boys collect bones and certain other rubbish, and burn them, and therefrom a smoke is produced on the air. They also make brands and go about the fields with the brands, thirdly, the wheel which they roll. The fires, explained the monk of Winchcombe, were to drive away dragons, on St Johns Day 1333 Petrarch watched women at Cologne rinsing their hands and arms in the Rhine so that the threatening calamities of the coming year might be washed away by bathing in the river. In Austria the midsummer solstice is celebrated each year with a procession of ships down the Danube River as it flows through the wine-growing Wachau Valley just north of Vienna. Up to 30 ships sail down the river in line as fireworks erupt from the banks and hill tops while bonfires blaze, lighted castle ruins also erupt with fireworks during the 90-minute cruise downstream. This nationwide festival, called Festa Junina, or São João, rural life is celebrated through typical clothing, food, and dance
24.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
25.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially the Met, is located in New York City and is the largest art museum in the United States, and is among the most visited art museums in the world. Its permanent collection contains two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the edge of Central Park along Manhattans Museum Mile, is by area one of the worlds largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains a collection of art, architecture. On March 18,2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue in the Upper East Side, it extends the museums modern, the Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, Indian, and Islamic art. The museum is home to collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, as well as antique weapons. Several notable interiors, ranging from first-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day and it opened on February 20,1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, the museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. A number of interiors, ranging from 1st century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Mets galleries. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts traveling shows throughout the year. The director of the museum is Thomas P. Campbell, a long-time curator and it was announced on February 28th,2017 that Campbell will be stepping down as the Mets director and CEO, effective June. On March 1st,2017 the BBC reported that Daniel Weiss shall be the acting CEO until a replacement is found, Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started to acquire ancient art and artifacts from the Near East. From a few tablets and seals, the Mets collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. The highlights of the include a set of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian figures. The Mets Department of Arms and Armor is one of the museums most popular collections. Among the collections 14,000 objects are many pieces made for and used by kings and princes, including armor belonging to Henry VIII of England, Henry II of France, Rockefeller donated his more than 3, 000-piece collection to the museum. The Mets Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, the collection dates back almost to the founding of the museum, many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections
26.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
27.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is the fourth largest museum in the United States. It contains more than 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas, with more than one million visitors a year, it is the 55th most-visited art museum in the world as of 2014. Founded in 1870, the moved to its current location in 1909. The museum is affiliated with the Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1870 and opened in 1876, with most of its initial collection taken from the Boston Athenæum Art Gallery. Francis Davis Millet, a local artist, was instrumental in starting the Art School affiliated with the museum and it was built almost entirely of red brick and terracotta with a small amount of stone in its base. The brick was produced by the Peerless Brick Company of Philadelphia, in 1907, plans were laid to build a new home for the museum on Huntington Avenue in Bostons Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood near the renowned Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Museum trustees decided to hire architect Guy Lowell to create a design for a museum so that could be built in stages as funding was obtained for each phase, two years later, the first section of Lowell’s neoclassical design was completed. It featured a 500-foot façade of granite and a grand rotunda, the museum moved to its new location later that year, the Copley Square Hotel eventually would replace the old building. The second phase of construction built a wing along the The Fens to house paintings galleries and it was funded entirely by Maria Antoinette Evans Hunt, the wife of wealthy business magnate Robert Dawson Evans, and opened in 1915. From 1916 through 1925, the noted artist John Singer Sargent painted the frescoes that adorn the rotunda, numerous additions enlarged the building throughout the years, including the Decorative Arts wing in 1928 and the Norma Jean Calderwood Garden Court and Terrace in 1997. The West Wing, designed by I. M. Pei, opened in 1981 and this wing now houses the museums cafe, restaurant, and gift shop as well as a special exhibition space. In the mid-2000s, the museum launched an effort to renovate. In 2011, Moodys Investors Service calculated that the museum had over $180 million in outstanding debt, however, the agency cited growing attendance, a large endowment, and positive cash flow as reasons to believe that the museums finances would become stable in the near future. The renovation included a new Art of the Americas Wing to feature artwork from North, South, in 2006, the groundbreaking ceremonies took place. The landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol redesigned the Huntington Avenue and Fenway entrances, gardens, access roads, the wing opened on November 20,2010 with free admission to the public. Mayor Thomas Menino declared it Museum of Fine Arts Day, the 12, 000-square-foot glass-enclosed courtyard features a 42. 5-foot high glass sculpture, titled the Lime Green Icicle Tower, by Dale Chihuly. In 2014, the Art of the Americas Wing was recognized for its architectural achievement by being awarded the Harleston Parker Medal. In 2015, the museum renovated its Japanese garden, Tenshin-en, the garden, which originally opened in 1988, was designed by Japanese professor Kinsaku Nakane
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Zorn Collections
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The Zorn Collections, or Zornsamlingarna, is a Swedish state museum, located in Mora, dedicated to preserving the works by painter Anders Zorn. Anders Zorn was one of Swedens internationally best known artists and his fame abroad was founded mainly on his portraiture, with his ability to capture the character and personality of the depicted person. His nude studies are very famous, as are his genre pictures which mostly depict working people and in which his swift. The Zorn Collections administers Anders and Emma Zorns donation to the Swedish State, the Zorn Collections consists of four museums, Zorngården, Zorn Museum, Zorns Gammelgård & Textilkammare and Zorns Gopsmor. Zorngården was the home of Anders and Emma Zorn and it is shown today as it was at the time of Emma Zorns death in 1942. Drawing inspiration from English and Swedish architecture, it is an example of the architecture which characterizes the years around 1900. The Zorn Museum, Ragnar Östbergs last work, is a rectangular brick building in the classical style. The Zorn Museum mainly displays for work by Anders Zorn and examples of his artistic variety - oil paintings, water colors, etchings, Gammelgård is Zorn’s old farm consisting of about 40 old houses, grouped around a farm, a mill, chalets, and boathouses. Gammelgård provides the opportunity to see how the Dalarna farmers lived in the past, Textilkammare, the Textile Room, was added in 1993 to display parts of the Zorn familys collection of country textiles. Gopsmor was a combination of a cottage and a wilderness studio. Zorn arranged for some old log buildings to be moved there and it became something of an escape for him when he became too well known in Mora
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Rembrandt
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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. A prolific and versatile master across three media, he is considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. Having achieved youthful success as a painter, Rembrandts later years were marked by personal tragedy. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, Rembrandts portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and his reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime, and never questioned since. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic whilst he lived, but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called one of the great prophets of civilization. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic and he was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do, his father was a miller, religion is a central theme in Rembrandts paintings and the religiously fraught period in which he lived makes his faith a matter of interest. His mother was Roman Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, unlike many of his contemporaries who traveled to Italy as part of their artistic training, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime. He opened a studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend, in 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou in 1628. In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens, as a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, Saskia came from a good family, her father had been a lawyer and the burgemeester of Leeuwarden. When Saskia, as the youngest daughter, became an orphan, Rembrandt and Saskia were married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandts relatives. In the same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam and he also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck. In 1635 Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable Nieuwe Doelenstraat, in 1639 they moved to a prominent newly built house in the upscale Breestraat, today known as Jodenbreestraat in what was becoming the Jewish quarter, then a young upcoming neighborhood. The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a cause for later financial difficulties. Rembrandt should easily have been able to pay the house off with his income, but it appears his spending always kept pace with his income. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes, in 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month
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Swedish Academy
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The Swedish Academy, founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. It is known for making the decision on who will be the laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy was founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, modelled after the Académie française, it has 18 members. The motto of the Academy is Talent and Taste, the primary purpose of the Academy is to further the purity, strength, and sublimity of the Swedish language. To that end the Academy publishes two dictionaries, the first is a one-volume glossary called Svenska Akademiens ordlista. The second is a dictionary, edited on principles similar to those of the Oxford English Dictionary. The SAOL has reached its 14th edition while the first volume of the SAOB was published in 1898 and, as of 2014, the building now known as the Stockholm Stock Exchange Building was built for the bourgeoisie. The bottom floor was used as an exchange and the upper floor was used for balls, New Years Eve parties. When the academy was founded, the ballroom was the biggest room in Stockholm that could be heated and thus used in the winter, the academy has had its annual meeting there every year since, attended by members of the Swedish royal family. However, it was not until 1914 the academy gained the right to use the floor as their own for all eternity. It is here that the Academy meets and, amongst other business, the latter makes it arguably one of the most influential literary bodies in the world. Dag Hammarskjölds former farm at Backåkra, close to Ystad in southern Sweden, was bought in 1957 as a residence by Hammarskjöld. The south wing of the farm is reserved as a retreat for the 18 members of the Swedish Academy. Since 1901, the Academy has annually decided who will be the laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy annually awards nearly 50 different prizes and scholarships, most of them for domestic Swedish authors. Common to all is that they are awarded without competition and without application, the Dobloug Prize, the largest of these at $40,000, is a literature prize awarded for Swedish and Norwegian fiction. Swedish, Stora Priset, literally the Big Prize, was instituted by King Gustav III, the prize, which consists of a single gold medal, is the most prestigious award that can be awarded by the Swedish Academy. It has been awarded to, among others, Selma Lagerlöf, Herbert Tingsten, Astrid Lindgren, Evert Taube, the Academy awards around 50 prizes each year. A person does not have to apply nor compete for the prizes, full list of awards The current permanent secretary of the Academy is Sara Danius, who was preceded by Peter Englund
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Watercolor
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Watercolor or watercolour, also aquarelle, a diminutive of the Latin for water, is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. Watercolor refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork, the traditional and most common support—material to which the paint is applied—for watercolor paintings is paper. Other supports include papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum, leather, fabric, wood, Watercolor paper is often made entirely or partially with cotton, which gives a good texture and minimizes distortion when wet. Watercolors are usually translucent, and appear luminous because the pigments are laid down in a form with few fillers obscuring the pigment colors. Watercolors can also be made opaque by adding Chinese white, in East Asia, watercolor painting with inks is referred to as brush painting or scroll painting. In Chinese, Korean and Japanese painting it has been the dominant medium, india, Ethiopia and other countries have long watercolor painting traditions as well. Fingerpainting with watercolor paints originated in mainland China, however, its continuous history as an art medium begins with the Renaissance. The German Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, who painted several fine botanical, wildlife, an important school of watercolor painting in Germany was led by Hans Bol as part of the Dürer Renaissance. Despite this early start, watercolors were used by Baroque easel painters only for sketches, copies or cartoons. Notable early practitioners of watercolor painting were Van Dyck, Claude Lorrain, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, however, botanical illustration and wildlife illustration perhaps form the oldest and most important traditions in watercolor painting. Botanical illustrations became popular during the Renaissance, both as hand-tinted woodblock illustrations in books or broadsheets and as tinted ink drawings on vellum or paper. Wildlife illustration reached its peak in the 19th century with such as John James Audubon. Several factors contributed to the spread of watercolor painting during the 18th century, Watercolor artists were commonly brought with the geological or archaeological expeditions, funded by the Society of Dilettanti, to document discoveries in the Mediterranean, Asia, and the New World. This example popularized watercolors as a form of personal tourist journal, the confluence of these cultural, engineering, scientific, tourist, and amateur interests culminated in the celebration and promotion of watercolor as a distinctly English national art. William Blake published several books of hand-tinted engraved poetry, provided illustrations to Dantes Inferno, from the late 18th century through the 19th century, the market for printed books and domestic art contributed substantially to the growth of the medium. Satirical broadsides by Thomas Rowlandson, many published by Rudolph Ackermann, were extremely popular. Among the important and highly talented contemporaries of Turner and Girtin, were John Varley, John Sell Cotman, Anthony Copley Fielding, Samuel Palmer, William Havell, the Swiss painter Louis Ducros was also widely known for his large format, romantic paintings in watercolor. These societies provided annual exhibitions and buyer referrals for many artists, in particular, the graceful, lapidary, and atmospheric watercolors by Richard Parkes Bonington created an international fad for watercolor painting, especially in England and France in the 1820s
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Dalecarlia
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Dalarna, is a historical province or landskap in central Sweden. Another English language form established in literature is the Dales, Dalarna adjoins Härjedalen, Hälsingland, Gästrikland, Västmanland and Värmland. It is also bounded by Norway in the west, borders of the province mostly coincide with the modern administrative Dalarna County. The word Dalarna means the dales, the area is a popular vacation destination for Swedes from the south, who often travel there to relax during summer vacations, drawn by good fishing lakes, beautiful campgrounds, and deep forests. Many such Swedes own or rent a residence in Dalarna. In mid-June, summerfest celebrations and dances are held in many of the villages and, of course. Dalarna is a full of historical associations, possessing strong local characteristics in respect of its products. In the western district Lima, some people in villages speak a dialect, Dalecarlian, while in Älvdalen. Historically, the people of Dalecarlia – called Dalecarlians, or Dalesmen and Daleswomen – are famous for their love of independence, the Old Norse form of the province is Járnberaland, which means the land of the iron carriers. The provinces of Sweden serve no administrative or political purposes, Dalarnas coat of arms dates from 1560, the use of two crossed arrows as a symbol precedes this. A Duchy of Dalecarlia also exists, and the arms include a ducal coronet. Blazon, Azure, two Dalecarlian Arrows Or in saltire point upwards pointed Argent and in chief a Crown of the first, as early as 1525, the arrows appeared in use on a seal. Dalarna County uses the coat of arms, granted for the then Kopparberg County in 1936. The northern part of the lies within the Scandinavian mountain range. The southern part consists of plains, with mines, most notably copper. Highest point is Storvätteshågna,1,204 meters above sea-level, lowest point is at 55 meters, in the south-east part. Lake Siljan features in the part of Dalarna, and the Västerdal River. Dalarnas second lake is Runn, which lies between Falun and Borlänge, with 66.6 square kilometres of water and over fifty islands, the lake is a popular tourist destination
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Dialect
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That happens, for example, across large parts of India or the Maghreb. Historically, it happened in various parts of Europe such as between Portugal, southern Belgium and southern Italy, and between Flanders and Austria. Leonard Bloomfield used the dialect area. It is analogous to a species in evolutionary biology. Dialect continua typically occur in long-settled agrarian populations, as innovations spread from their various points of origin as waves, in this situation, hierarchical classifications of varieties are impractical. Instead, dialectologists map variation of language features across a dialect continuum. The influential Atlas linguistique de la France pioneered the use of a trained fieldworker and these atlases typically consist of display maps, each showing local forms of a particular item at the survey locations. Secondary studies may include maps, showing the areal distribution of various variants. A common tool in these maps is an isogloss, a line separating areas where different variants of a particular feature predominate, in a dialect continuum, isoglosses for different features are typically spread out, reflecting the gradual transition between varieties. A bundle of coinciding isoglosses indicate a stronger dialect boundary, as might occur at geographical obstacles or long-standing political boundaries, in other cases, intersecting isoglosses and more complex patterns are found. Standard varieties may be developed and codified from one or more locations in a continuum, in such cases the local variety is said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, the standard variety. The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, are cited as examples. Conversely, a defined in this way may include local varieties that are mutually unintelligible. The choice of standard is determined by a political boundary. As a results, speakers on either side of the boundary may use almost identical varieties, but treat them as dependent on different standards, the choice may be a matter of national, regional or religious identity, and may be controversial. In the Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, a standard was developed from local varieties within a continuum with Serbia to the north, the standard was deliberately based on varieties from the west of the republic that were most different from standard Bulgarian. Now known as Macedonian, it is the standard of the independent Republic of Macedonia. Europe provides several examples of dialect continua, the largest of which involve the Germanic, Romance and Slavic branches of the Indo-European language family
34.
Freyja
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In Norse mythology, Freyja is a goddess associated with love, sex, beauty, fertility, gold, seiðr, war, and death. Along with her brother Freyr, her father Njörðr, and her mother, stemming from Old Norse Freyja, modern forms of the name include Freya, Freyia, and Freja. Freyja rules over her heavenly afterlife field Fólkvangr and there receives half of those that die in battle, whereas the other half go to the god Odins hall, within Fólkvangr is her hall, Sessrúmnir. Freyjas husband, the god Óðr, is frequently absent and she cries tears of red gold for him, and searches for him under assumed names. Freyja has numerous names, including Gefn, Hörn, Mardöll, Sýr, Valfreyja, Freyjas name appears in numerous place names in Scandinavia, with a high concentration in southern Sweden. Various plants in Scandinavia once bore her name, but it was replaced with the name of the Virgin Mary during the process of Christianization, rural Scandinavians continued to acknowledge Freyja as a supernatural figure into the 19th century, and Freyja has inspired various works of art. The name Freyja is transparently lady and ultimately derives from Proto-Germanic *frawōn, Freyja is cognate with, for example, Old Saxon frūa lady, mistress and Old High German frouwa. The theonym Freyja is thus considered to have been an epithet in origin, in the Poetic Edda, Freyja is mentioned or appears in the poems Völuspá, Grímnismál, Lokasenna, Þrymskviða, Oddrúnargrátr, and Hyndluljóð. Völuspá contains a stanza that mentions Freyja, referring to her as Óðs girl, Freyja being the wife of her husband, the stanza recounts that Freyja was once promised to an unnamed builder, later revealed to be a jötunn and subsequently killed by Thor. In the poem Grímnismál, Odin tells the young Agnar that every day Freyja allots seats to half of those that are slain in her hall Fólkvangr, while Odin owns the other half. In the poem Lokasenna, where Loki accuses nearly every female in attendance of promiscuity and/or unfaithfulness, the introduction to the poem notes that among other gods and goddesses, Freyja attends a celebration held by Ægir. Loki tells her to be silent, and says that he knows all about her—that Freyja is not lacking in blame, for each of the gods and elves in the hall have been her lover. She says that Loki is lying, that he is just looking to blather about misdeeds, and since the gods and goddesses are furious at him, he can expect to go home defeated. Loki tells Freyja to be silent, calls her a malicious witch, Njörðr interjects—he says that a woman having a lover other than her husband is harmless, and he points out that Loki has borne children, and calls Loki a pervert. The poem Þrymskviða features Loki borrowing Freyjas cloak of feathers and Thor dressing up as Freyja to fool the lusty jötunn Þrymr, in the poem, Thor wakes up to find that his powerful hammer, Mjöllnir, is missing. Thor tells Loki of his hammer, and the two go to the beautiful court of Freyja. Thor asks Freyja if she will lend him her cloak of feathers, Freyja agrees, Loki flies away in the whirring feather cloak, arriving in the land of Jötunheimr. He spies Þrymr sitting on top of a mound, Þrymr reveals that he has hidden Thors hammer deep within the earth and that no one will ever know where the hammer is unless Freyja is brought to him as his wife
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Private collection
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A private collection is a privately owned collection of works, usually a collection of art. This source will usually be an art collector, although it could be a school, church organization, bank or other company, collectors of books, even if they collect for aesthetic reasons, are called bibliophiles, and their collections are referred to as libraries. The Royal collections of most countries were originally the grandest of private collections but are now mostly in public ownership, however the British Royal Collection remains under the care of the Crown, though distinguished from the private property of the British Royal Family. The cabinet of curiosities was an important mixed form of collection, including art and these were formed by royalty but smaller ones also by merchants and scholars. The tastes and habits of collectors have played an important part in determining what art was produced. Many types of objects, such as medals, engravings, small plaquettes, modern engraved gems, increasingly collectors tended to specialize in one or two types of work, although some, like George Salting, still had a very wide scope for their collections. The extension of serious collecting to art from all periods and places was an essentially 19th-century development, trecento paintings were little appreciated until about the 1830s, and Chinese ritual bronzes and jades until perhaps the 1920s. Collecting of African art was rare until after World War II, very famous collections that are now dispersed include the Borghese Collection and Farnese collection in Rome, and the Orleans Collection in Paris, mostly sold in London. When this happens, it can be a loss to those interested in art as the initial vision of the collector is lost. The works were displayed in the Liechtenstein Museum after nearly 60 years with most in storage. The important collection of the Thyssen family, mostly kept in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, only an exhibited part, the collection of Carmen Cervera, widow of the late Baron Thyssen, remains private but exhibited separately in the museum. Many collections were left to the public in some form, and are now museums, most museums are formed around one or more formerly private collection acquired as a whole. Other collections remain complete but are merged into larger collections in museums, many other bequests or purchased collections are split up within the museums collection. Sergei Shchukin, was an important Russian art collector, mainly of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art and his collection is now divided between the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The Charles Lang Freer Collection became an important part of The Smithsonian—the Freer Gallery of Art, when the banker Robert Lehman died in 1969, his foundation donated 2,600 works of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Housed in the Robert Lehman Wing, the museum refers to the collection as one of the most extraordinary private art collections ever assembled in the United States. Unlike other departments at the Met, the Robert Lehman collection does not concentrate on a style or period of art, rather. Media related to Private collections at Wikimedia Commons
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listen); 18 February 1860 – 22 August 1920) was one of Sweden's foremost artists. He obtained international success as a painter, sculptor, and etcher.[1][2]
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