The amusement park made from childhood sunlight
Gröna Lund! The funnest and friendliest theme park I’ve ever visited. The fun house was like a dream! We went three times.
- Our first ride with the old rickety wooden roller coaster, Twister. Scared the crap out of me since it was my first coaster in 25 years.
- The Free Fall was my first true true-drop free fall ride. Really quite startling. You go from 0 to 100 km/h in 2.5 seconds.
- The Ikaros ride was insane. It was without a doubt the most scared I’ve ever been on a ride. In my life. By far. Worst fear ever. Every cell, screaming in terror. Here is the official site (with photo).
- The House of Nightmares was just so, so lovely. It was like the late (and very great) Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, with a touch of Campus Life Haunted House. Really sweet and tear-jerking.
- The Coaster 2021 had frightful lateral torque. The sense that the car would derail was very strong. Very nerve-wracking. I actually involuntarily blurted primal primate fear sounds.
- The Eclipse was a very mild looking ride, but absolutely terrifying since you are swinging on very thin chains. What if they broke? Very upsetting.
- Insane had a lot of upside-down time.
- Lustig Huset was a place of dreams. Certian parts I have actually visited in repeating dream. I know that when I die I will be here. It fulfilled all the scary stuff from a Bradbury-world funhouse: the mirrors, the impossible geometry, the gleeful evil clown spirit that belongs to big cartoonish zigzags, shockingly bright checkerboard rooms, spinning spiral floors, the house of mirrors with perfectly clean glass that your really bump into, solid tricky magical space from the vertigo of being lost in the constant and eerie non sequitur space and fractured time of panicked dreaming.
- Vilda Musen was another lateral derailing terror. We purchased the photo at the end.
All of the rides were fun in the way they stopped. There would be intense forward movement and this would end just as intensely. The ending was really just as novel and interesting as all the mediating movements.

From the bridge. Click the photo to see the Google Street View twin.

This is a first world nation. All needs being met, cultural concern has moved into interior design.

The brand name makes it all the more lovely.

This is Europe’s longest escalator. Sadly, I took this photo 3/4 of the way down.

I did all four rides in this photo. The Sun, on the right, was the scariest experience of my life so far.

Part of the 2018 Master Photos series sponsored by the PGA, which accepts as entires “Environs of natural beauty populated with human structures, not exclusively golf courses.”

Stockholm places of interest. Gröna Lund is on the bottom right.

Someone looks excited by that food!

The novel upset provided by this ride are the jerky lateral G-forces. If sates our lust for hardcore sideways push power, the kind we pretend to feel when we race cars in our imagination.

I’m not scared, though I look it. Just focused. Just thinking about the thin metal sleeve that is keeping the car from flying laterally off the track when doing high speed sharp turns six stories up with nothing visible underneath you. Your body thinks: Now is the time? Death is now? Fuck I need make some calls!”

This was the BEST funhouse experience I’ve ever had. It was that scary-carny Night Gallery fish-eye Kolchak dizzy with angry Torrence-father and real Satanic clown forbidden latenight scared of sinister core-chilling clown magick but inside the fun KISS Phantom Ultima IV fun-time feeling.

Playing here tonight: KISS!

A photo from the funhouse aimed at the viewer’s spot used in the previous funhouse photo.