Stockholm syndrome

October 2017 

While Rach was back in New Zealand, I decided to go to Stockholm for a long weekend solo trip.

Stockholm is spread across 14 islands, so there is a lot of water and land to see. I started off my weekend with a bike tour - the best way of covering several of those islands in three hours - on Kungsholmen. This is a large island in the west of the city, and home to the impressive City Hall.

South from there is Riddarholmen, one of the small old islands that is home to Stockholm Cathedral, the oldest building in the city and dating from the 1200s.

Across the bridge to the east is Gamla Stan, the old town. The island is still laid out on the medieval street plan, with cobbled streets and few very cars.

Gamla Stan

I spent quite a bit of time on Gamla Stan over the trip, including taking a ghost tour.

The tour was less a tour involving ghosts, and more a tour focusing on bloody and gruesome tales from Stockholm's past. One involved the central square in Gamla Stan, which was home to an event that inspired the term "bloodbath". The Stockholm Bloodbath took place in 1626, following the Danish King's victory and conquest of Sweden. He lined up 80 nobles in the square, and over two days, each was beheaded in the square by a single executioner. Early on, the executioner had enough energy to strike the heads off cleanly, but as he got more tired and more drunk he got clumsy. The blood was a mess, compounded by the heaving rain that soon began falling. The sheer amount of blood and rain was almost like a bath of blood - hence the name.

Several hundred years after that, the square today is a very pleasant spot. On one side of the square is the Nobel institute, where just a few days before I arrived the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature was announced.

On a nearby side of the square are two cafes. I stopped twice for coffee at Kaffekoppen and Chocoladekoppen, two side by side cafes owned by the same people. I also had a cinnamon roll, the Stockholm staple with coffee (nothing to rave about) and second time round a slice of cardamom cake (which was much tastier).




Gamla Stan is also home to the Royal Palace, which our bike tour guide reliably informed us was one room larger than Buckingham Palace - much to the amusement of the British man on the tour.

South of Gamla Stan is Sodermalm, a massive island that today seems to be the trendy, hipster island of Stockholm. I enjoyed walking to the lookout point at Monteliusvagen to enjoy the view over the harbour and Gamla Stan. It was mostly grey and rainy for the first two days in Stockholm, and I was seriously viewing the city as a permanently stark and unwelcoming place. But on the final day the sun came out and it was like being in a different city.

On Sodermalm I spent a fair bit of time in some great pubs. Akkurat was my favourite, with around 30 beers ontap from around the world. The second time I went, on a Monday afternoon, it was quiet and relaxing enough to read my book while drinking a couple of beers at a leisurely pace. Not far away was Oliver Twist, another chilled out pub with a great range that wasn't quite as extensive at Akkurat. I also stopped in at Omnipollos Hatt, after seeing great reviews online but was bitterly (pun not intended) disappointed - it seemed to just be an overpriced hipster style pub.

Beer list at Akkurat

Beer at Akkurat

Beer and book at Akkurat

While on the bike tour on Saturday I learnt that alcohol in Sweden is only sold in one chain of shops, called systembolaget, and that they closed at 3pm that day, not reopening until Monday. I'd planned to have a quiet beer or akvavit or two in my hotel room, so I dashed off afterwards to make sure that could happen. This approach to sale of alcohol stems from the early 20th century, when alcohol caused massive social problems. Sweden only narrowly avoided a vote for full prohibition of alcohol, and ever since sales of alcohol has been extremely limited, and drinks subject to massive alcohol tax. It made quite a difference from being in Southern Europe, where beer is available from corner shops, and good wine available everywhere.

I had some very good food in Stokcholm, but didn't quite manage to tick off all of the tastes. Highlights were:

• Veal patties, with mashed potatoes, peas and lingonberries at Duvel Cafe
• Toast Skagen (shrimp and dill on toast) and Sikaforsrora (reindeer pate) on toast at Tradition
• Pickled herring done three ways at Gastabud (probably THE highlight - it was a very subtle and well-balanced taste of herring), along with Swedish sausage
• Swedish meatballs at Meatballs for the People - while they were good, I don't quite get the obsession and fame of Swedish meatballs and they didn't live up to the hype. 

Tradition

Gastabud 

Meatballs for the People

My only real complaint about food and drink in Stockholm is the price - the food in restaurants is at least London equivalent price (i.e. expensive), and the alcohol more so.

Further east is Djurgarden, home to several museums. I avoided the ABBA museum. I did go to the Vasa Museum, which centred on the ship Vasa - literally, as in, the ship Vasa is in the centre of the museum. The Vasa is the only virtually intact 17th century warship. It was one of the biggest warships built in the 1600s, but it didn't get very far. On its maiden voyage, the Vasa managed to get about 1500m from where it was launched before it was blown over by a gust of wind and sank in the Stockholm harbour. The main cause was that the ship was top-heavy - too tall and narrow, with not enough ballast and poor distribution of the guns. The ship lay there for 333 years until it was raised from the sea floor and restored. The brackish Baltic Sea and cold temprature of the water meant the ship did not distintegrate from shipworm or degrade very much, and after 30 years of restoration (including being sprayed with polyethylene glycol for 17 years then being dried out) the ship now occupies most of the museum and is remarkably intact. As I walked around it, even to my untrained eye it looked impossibly tall and narrow.

Kastellholmen and Skeppsholmen are two small islands between Djurgarden and Gamla Stan. After being rained on for a lot of Saturday and virtually all of Sunday (with a temperature of around 8 degrees during the day) the weather change was welcome on Monday. On the clear Monday I walked around these two islands, and the harbour looked impressively blue and shining in the sun. The rest of the day was largely spent having coffee and beer while reading my book (at the time, the surprisingly good My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante) and enjoying the views of a sunny Stockholm.

Thank you Stockholm!