My expectations of Stockholm were distinctly modest. I am quite predictable when it comes to my taste in cities. I have an appalling bias towards medieval architecture as the chief reason to visit a place. I have a habit of looking at satellite views of cities to work out to what extent they sit on a medieval street plan. If they don’t, then they better find some kind of extenuating circumstances, such as being bombed to smithereens in the mid 20th century.
Stockholm does not have a great deal of medieval architecture. This becomes clear from the most cursory of Google Maps searches. Stockholm was not bombed in the Second World War, yet the ‘old town’ of the city consists of a remarkably tiny island called Gamla Stan. This island features mostly 19th century buildings with some earlier 17th and 16th century buildings in the mix, on a narrow and irregular street plan. The latter is an echo of the Middle Ages, but rather like a fossil, it’s telling you what used to be there — an imprint — not what actually is there.
My hope was that the imprint of the Hanseatic League, my absolute favourite medieval trading bloc, would still be present somehow. This hope was dashed, with the exception of one building. That building is Number 20, Stortorget Square, a rather Netherlandophile structure with a shaped gable, brick facade, and slender proportions. This building belonged to a merchant trader, and gives a sense of Stockholm’s historic importance. Without being bombed, the explanation I can come up with for Stockholm’s rather ‘recent’ architecture is wealth. Wealth is a terrible problem for the preservation of historic buildings. Wealth presents opportunities to renovate, to extend, and shockingly, demolish and rebuild buildings. Wealth updates places at the expense of outmoded design which becomes precious only after a few centuries have passed. The absence of wealth is brilliant for preserving architecture, especially if it’s dramatic, catastrophic loss. The privation must happen suddenly, though and just after the period you’re interested in. Lavenham in Suffolk is an excellent example of this perverse phenomenon. This place was flowing with gold in the 15th century, and suddenly became irrelevant as wool trading with continental Europe faded away. Thus the streets of Lavenham are collectively stuck in the early Tudor period, a rarity.
All my medievalist moaning really demonstrates is the idiocy of overspecialisation, which can too easily become prejudice. Stockholm, it turns out, is utterly unique and fascinating. Admittedly, much of Stockholm’s architecture is pretty unremarkable. The fact that the national archives building, a thoroughly joyless piece of postmodernism, is considered one of its architectural highlights, is telling. Yet the whole is far more than the sum of its parts. The stripped-back classicism of much of Gamla Stan is knitted together by very narrow streets. The collection of buildings emerges from its granite island as a huge, robust slab of varying colours. The overall effect is graceful.
Beyond Gamla Stan, there are some real architectural highlights. There are various pieces of Art Nouveau / Jugendstil architecture worth looking at, and some rather elemental expressionist monuments. It is very much worth ascending the mini-mountain hill which the dynamic Engelbrektskyrkan church sits on. Here one can marvel at extra-thick, extra-rusticated granite columns, stylised lightning-bolts and wilful asymmetry. Probably the greatest building of all is the Stadshus, the town hall, which is a nordic arts and crafts tour-de-force and, I’m very sorry to say, even a smorgasbord of historical plundering. There are some medieval dragon slaying sculptures, some Renaissance nude sculptures, some proto-brutalist flat walls, and tasseled bronze ‘curtains’ on the outside of each window (perhaps we can fiddle with Building Regulations to make this mandatory?). In spirit, the building is Venetian. By this, I mean if you had half a pint of Akvavit, you’d think it was Venetian.
Stockholm does eclecticism well. It has to do it well, because the city is an archipelago. Each island is a new attempt at the city, bordered by water on all sides. This needs emphasis. The city really is a collection of islands: proper, individual islands jutting out of a ‘lake’ which is really an extension of the Baltic sea. The solid, reassuring and ever-present granite makes Stockholm utterly un-Venetian. Its foundations are secure. Yet there is something decidedly liminal about Stockholm, because the capital has been scattered across a region which is neither maritime nor inland. Surrealism increases when you get closer to Gröna Lund, a theme park which you perceive as an island of its own. You can see this monument of tall rides and screaming tourists right from the old town, Gamla Stan. This is faintly absurd, and I think it is brilliant.
All well and good, you say, dear reader, but isn’t it really expensive? Not really. Most of my readers who are thinking this are probably British. My many decorated evolutionary biologist friends tell me that Britons are born with a special Retail Price Index of neural connections which pegs the price of goods and services generally to the price of a pint. This is a problematic. Yes, Sweden is a very expensive place if you want to drink alcohol. This is by design: the sin taxes are high, and this is intended to reduce the consumption of alcohol. This social paternalism which is paired with a national alcohol retail monopoly called Systembolaget. You may only purchase alcoholic beverages for the home in Systembolaget, a shop which is inexplicably branded like Hornby, the company that makes model train sets. Norway has a similar thing, but I understand it is much more strict, and thus, the pint price index reaches new heights. However, Stockholm is not prohibitively expensive if you acknowledge that you are already on holiday, you’re doing it in a fairly rich country in Europe, and you just don’t drink very much. I would even venture to say that Stockholm is possibly slightly less expensive than Amsterdam, for example, as long as you discount the drink.
Drink brings me to food. Swedish food is one part of what one could term the pan-Baltic tradition. This entails herring, preserved meats, dark and dangerous breads, and latterly potatoes. All these things are good ideas. You can get some of it for a very reasonable price in the Strömmingsvagen, the ‘herring wagon’ (it’s a food truck) in the central island Gamla Stan. Sweden is better known for its meatballs and lingonberry sauce, which are also, predictably, good. Returning to the Amsterdam comparison, the ‘indigenous’ food of Stockholm is in a better state of repair than it is in the Dutch capital, where the only really Dutch things are stews served to tourists and chocolate sprinkles served to students. However, Stockholm does get lower points on the Baltic cuisine scorecard than the cities of northern Germany, where the food is a little more varied and made with better quality ingredients. I do not have an explanation as to why.
Stockholm’s public transport, though, is unrivalled. There is a metro (impressively given the geography), a fleet of reliable busses, and best of all, a fleet of ferries that hop from island to island. The ferries are a superb way of exploring the city, and yet are priced like all the other public transport: cheaply. What’s better still is the quirk that many of the ferries offer an urn of completely free (albeit bitter) coffee to chivvy the commuters along.
Stockholm, overall, is a highly recommended place to visit. Other than that, the main thing you should take away from this article is not to call it Venice of the North—or any other city for that matter.