The end of the year approached. We had a fine family feast. Jill and Mia completed yet another 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. All this to sporadic bangs and flashes. Swedes do like their pyrotechnics. There seem to be few regulations on sale of fireworks. With sunset around 3pm there was plenty of dark to illuminate with bangs and flashes. Rockets pocked the skies in all directions as soon as it was reasonably dark, and they just kept on going. I headed down into town to see the official New Year Fireworks. The official ones were even bigger (I think there are limits on the size of rockets etc sold in the shops).

Wandering back through town after the fireworks there were large crowds of people, many somewhat inebriated, but not unruly. After the blatant presence of police and paramilitary on show everywhere we went in Rome, it was lovely that in all the New Year’s eve celebrations I only saw 6 police patrolling the streets of Västerås .

The Valby Open Air Museum is only a few km walk, so Jill and I went there to admire the old buildings. The museum is a sort of farm with rare or endangered breeds of Swedish livestock, with a collection of old, traditional buildings of various ages, relocated here from various places in Vastmansland.

On the other side of town is Anund’s Hög. This bronze age site features a large burial mound about 60 m across and 9 m high plus several smaller ones, several sets of standing stones arranged in the form of boat outlines, and some rune stones. Fascinating, and very pretty in the light dusting of snow, with the low angled sunlight (even at mid-day the sun is not far above the horizon at this time of year).

A cold snap brought a fresh load of snow, and we got stuck into a task we don’t usually face in Australia – clearing snow from driveways and footpaths. Everything looks picturesque with a nice blanket of snow. It does make the streets rather slippery, but the snow ploughs get to work quickly, clearing the fresh snow to the sides and spreading a sprinkle of gravel to minimise skidding.

As usual there are lots of photos in a gallery: https://goo.gl/photos/P9DZrWXg4ycLYKUP8 .