Where moose ride the subway

What do we know about the Swedes? They have a monarchy. They are fairly successful in the music business. They also do quite well whenever someone sets out to measure the efficiency of European educational systems or rates of immigrant integration. But apart from that, many people’s knowledge of Scandinavia’s central country is shockingly limited (And still, could we imagine a world without it, given the fact that an estimated fifty percent of our furniture is of Swedish origin?). It’s high time to bring some light into the darkness! When I traveled to Stockholm in the fall of 2011, I was surprised to find myself in a city that could easily rival London or Paris as a top holiday destination—in a minute, you’ll know why.

 As for me, my pre-travel image of Sweden was a really nostalgic one. Nearly all of my childhood heroes and heroines came from the books of the Swedish authors Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking, Emil of Lönneberga, and the Bullerby Children) and Selma Lagerlöf (Nils Holgersson). Accordingly, I imagined Sweden to be a place of happy childhoods and eternal summers, where people lived in cute red wooden houses, where you spent your days catching crawfish and picking blueberries, and where the only cause for occasional inconvenience could be a moose in the backyard. For me, in short, Sweden was a happy-go-lucky paradise where life was still like it was a hundred years ago.  

To be honest, I found neither blueberries nor moose on my rambles through Stockholm. But in one respect I was right: tradition plays an essential role for the Swedes. While exploring the narrow alleys of Stockholm’s old town, Gamla Stan, you can almost feel the past lurking between its medieval brick walls. In every corner you encounter tiny shops that elsewhere would have long been displaced by the dreary uniformity of chain stores; like a child, you marvel at the range of near-anachronistic products: wooden toys, handbound books, homemade candy. It couldn’t have felt different for the Bullerby Children in their small village shop a century ago.

But the Swedish love for tradition also manifests itself in another way: it’s simply impossible to take one step without being reminded that Sweden is a proud monarchy. Whether on t-shirts, in neat gold frames, or on the front page of local gossip rags, the royals are everywhere. The Swedes just seem to love them, even in times when the image of the Swedish crown has been chipped by some rather unglamorous revelations about King Carl Gustav’s past-time activities. As progressive as the Swedes might be, they obviously wouldn’t want to do without their favorite family.

Another thing that immediately attracts your attention as a visitor to Stockholm is the city’s close ties to seafaring. Not only does the word skepp (Swedish for ‘ship’) crop up in a variety of place names (such as the island Skeppsholmen or the old town’s main street, Skeppsbron), real ships are also ubiquitous: the shore provides anchorage for anything from sleek sailers to quaint old houseboats to luxurious cruise ships, and many tourists explore the city and its canals by canoe or kayak. For those visitors with a taste for the extraordinary and immunity to seasickness, Stockholm even offers two genuinely maritime types of accommodation: both the sail ship Chapman and the steam boat Gustaf af Klint, decommissioned and now safely moored in Stockholm’s harbor, have been turned into youth hostels with appertaining night clubs—full speed ahead for a hilarious night out!

The Chapman anchored at Skeppsholmen

So, with good reason, the locals of Stockholm are proud to call their native city the "Venice of the North". Paradoxically, however, their favorite skepp is one that could probably be seen as the greatest nautical failure ever: designed to be the pride of the king's fleet, the warship Vasa eventually took a maiden voyage that even outstrips that of Titanic. As it set sail in Stockholm's harbor in summer 1628, a light breeze was enough to prove disastrous for the dangerously unstable Vasa, and before you could say smorgasbord, it capsized and sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Bad luck for the king, good luck for today's visitors of Stockholm. The wreck was salvaged in the 1960s, painstakingly renovated, and finally put on display in a specially built museum. Hardly astonishing, the Vasa Museum is today one of Sweden's top tourist attractions: housing the whole ship with its splendid wood-carved hull as well as countless artifacts recovered from the seafloor, it gives a vivid impression of the former grandeur of the unfortunate royal warship.  

However, don’t think that the Swedes are nothing more than wistful nostalgics who desperately cling to the good old times. I can assure you, they are not—and nothing proves that better than their love for contemporary art and design. In fact, Stockholm is a city where you encounter creativity and innovation at every turn: its streets are perfect for spotting the trends of the next season, crowded with hipsters whose daring outfits would definitely be considered avant-garde in Vienna or Paris. Also, the city is a cradle for Scandinavia’s young creatives, whose edgy designs can be purchased in shops such as Design Torget (And, to be honest, doesn’t an artsy vase make a much more impressive souvenir than a tacky Princess Victoria ashtray?).

Even if you go underground, you do so in style. The tunnelbanan, Stockholm’s subway system, has in fact been called the longest art gallery in the world, captivating its passengers with a multitude of murals, mosaics, and installations. Each station is decorated differently, so you can easily spend your whole afternoon traipsing through subterranean Stockholm and never get bored. Now that I think of it, I actually have seen a moose in Stockholm. Ok, it was a stuffed one, but we don’t have to be sticklers for details here. Anyway, if you too want to have a peek at it, all you have to do is catch a subway train and leave at Solna Centrum station.

Moose crossing in Solna Centrum subway station

All that is left to say is that I’ve hopefully whetted your appetite for a trip to this amazing city. You are a child at heart? A history nerd? An art freak? No problem: Stockholm will please you all. With its exciting blend of old and new, the Swedish capital is a destination you definitely shouldn’t miss out. But be warned—you might never want to come back.

Images: picture 1 on http://glanzundgloria.blog.sf.tv; picture 2 by Problemkind on www.flickr.com (Creative Commons); picture 3 by vargklo on www.flickr.com (Creative Commons).