We’ve done windmills recently, but here’s another one that Wendy and I visited recently: the ruined Calhau windmill in the Monsanto Forest Park in Lisbon. It dates back to the 18th century when Lisbon was full of windmills. It is, erm, no longer operational.

Pillar Man, which I showed you a few days ago, isn’t Nicolaus Widerberg’s only sculptural contribution to Northumbria University: he has quite a few scattered around the place.

This 2013 piece is called Collar and Wave.

This is Hoop-La (2014), a sculpture by the American sculptor Alice Aycock in the Princess Estelle Sculpture Park in Djurgården, Stockholm. It was, in fact, the first piece acquired for the park.

I found it intriguing: it combined scale with real detail and finesse. The whole form seemed to change as I puzzled my way around it. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it at first, but found it intriguing. And, in the end, perhaps to be intriguing is perhaps the point of the work.

When I walked past this, I imagined that the bank once financed shipping, as I linked the ‘marine’ mention with the big boat. However, as you may know, ‘ultramarino’ means ‘overseas’ in Portuguese rather than anything connected directly to shipping.

Founded in Lisbon in 1864, Banco Nacional Ultramarino was once responsible for the issue of banknotes in Portuguese overseas territories. One of these was Macau. Although now part of China, Macau continues to use the Macanese pataca, still issued by BNU, which is now part of another Portuguese bank based in Lisbon: Caixa Geral de Depósitos.

Opened across the Tagus in Lisbon in 1966, this was originally the Salazar Bridge. During the Carnation Revolution in 1974, the lettering was ripped off the bridge, and it was renamed to commemorate the date—which leads to the curious fact that the 25 April bridge opened on 6 August. The Lisbon half-marathon crosses the bridge each March.

It originally carried four road traffic lanes, later expanding to six lanes. To minimise aerodynamic forces, the cars in the two lanes in the centre of the deck drive on metal grating, which means that the bridge emits a distinctive hum.

The bridge’s original design also called for it to carry trains on a lower deck, but cost constraints meant that this element was dumped. It was subsequently un-dumped in 1999, when the original builders were brought back to re-engineer the bridge with a second deck after all.

In 1983, King Olav V of Norway presented this rock to King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. It symbolises Noway’s thanks for Sweden’s support in the Second World War, because nothing says ‘thank you’ like moving a 15-tonne rock 300 miles. It sits near the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Stockholm.

Not far away, there’s a very different rock: Space Seed by Bigert & Bergström. This bronze sculpture, inspired by a meteor shower, is intended to reflect both the destructive power of meteorites but also their suspected role in the origin of life. While the outside is burned and dark, the inside has a shiny golden finish. I rather liked it.

Apparently, Bigert & Bergström envisages people sitting on and crawling through their rock. I suspect the same behaviour would be frowned upon for the memorial rock. It’s so hard to keep up with rock etiquette these days.

Here’s Stockton Town Hall, which dates back to 1735. That’s the market cross standing tall in the foreground… and, erm, Shoe Zone squatting in the background. I posted more about the history twelve years ago, when it seems that the lower windows had window boxes, and there wasn’t and industrial bin sitting outside.

I’m given to understand that the Council chamber in the Town Hall is still in use; I had previously assumed that it had moved to somewhere in the nearby municipal buildings, which just goes to show that one should never assume…

When I came across this Peter Linde sculpture in Djursgården in Stockholm, I understood it to be called ‘woman of peace’ and assumed it to be an anthropomorphic representation of the idea of peace. I liked it, but I had a sneaking sense of discomfort at the underlying gender politics of representing ‘peace’ as a woman: it felt very vaguely misogynistic for a sculpture created as recently as 2016 in a country as forward-thinking in gender equality as Sweden.

I should have known better.

The English title is, in fact, ‘statue of the lady working for peace in the world’. It was presented by Swedens Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. It is dedicated to the memory of Alva Myrdal and Inga Thorsson, both Swedish women who did notable work in the field of nuclear disarmament. They are pictured on the base. The statue also serves as a tribute to all women—known and unknown—who are working for peace in the world.

Thirty years ago, King Carl XVI Gustaf ordered and funded the construction of these obelisks in a square in central Stockholm. They were later moved to a less conspicuous location on the quayside.

Let’s not pretend that we can’t see why they were moved: they’re ugly. Terrazzo concrete does not sit well with plexiglass covered waves of brightly covered lights. Concrete monuments are explicitly designed to last centuries; electronic gizmos and light bulbs are not. It’s very 1990s.

The symbolism, though, is interesting. The flashy do-dahs are there to show data on the air and water quality in Stockholm, and to remind us of the impact of humanity on nature—and vice versa. King Carl XVI Gustaf is a very similar age to King Charles III, and this is a topic that clearly interests them both. Perhaps expressing environmental concerns are part of the role of a modern European monarch.