• Home
• /
• Its My Life

The Stockholm syndrome

ABBA, IKEA, Ingrid Bergman — but the Swedish capital goes way beyond big names, history, culture and ecology and ushers you into a way of life

I am in the city 
that’s been home turf for names I am in awe of — pop band Abba and design store IKEA. Stockholm is also where Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo cut their teeth at its Royal Dramatic Theatre. The spectacular thing about the city is that it’s geographically blessed in its setting: huddled on 14 islands between the blue green waters of the Baltic Sea and Lake Malaren, linked together like a tapestry by more than fifty bridges.

The old Swedish name for the Old Town was Staden Mellan Broarna or the City between Bridges. There are endless waterside vistas looking at the silver gilded sea against a cerulean blue sky, from wherever you are — fishermen casting their nets from the piers and sailboats and ferries weaving their way across the waters. The living on water must be presenting logistical drawbacks to the locals but there is an airy, open feel to the city which more than makes up for any such difficulties. The European Union declared this city as the green capital of the world in 2010 in recognition of its water conservation, public transit and efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

We make our way through this city on a hop-on-hop-off bus with commentary and follow it up with a cruise on the waterways to get another unique view of the city. Gamla Stan, the Old Town of the city, is its medieval heart — a lattice of narrow cobbled streets and squiggly alleys, with mustard and sage green buildings leaning towards each other. The Old Town is chock-a-block with cellar vaults, frescoes on historical buildings, churches and the lavish Royal Palace with more than 600 rooms.

We walk through the main square called Stortorget where public executions and the blood bath of 1,520 took place, when there was a mass murder of Swedish nobles by a Danish king. Today, it has Amsterdam kind of candy-coloured buildings in terracotta and mustard.

There is the atmospheric Stockholm Cathedral, whose interiors have the largest medieval wooden sculpture — a sculpture carved in oak wood representing St George battling the dragon. We walk along the three feet wide Martin Trotsigs Grand where we can touch both sides of the narrow alley as we walk. Old town is full of tacky souvenirs like plastic Viking helmets and touristy tat, but veer off the main alleys, and it’s like a time warp.

Driving through the Strandvagen, a boulevard on Ostermalm Island, we find that it is a prestigious address — Bjorn Bjorg among other Swedish celebrities has a home here. These apartments were first developed for the World Fair in 1897 and still look classy. There are more than 20,000 islands in the archipelago, and they spell freedom and escape to the Stockholmers who make their way to their holiday cabins in the deep pine forests.

Djurgarden is the nature lover’s delight — it used to be the King’s private hunting grounds — today it’s a maze of walking paths, picnic spots, museums and the open air Skansen. For a glimpse into pastoral Sweden, we spend some time at Skansen, a large open-air museum with transplanted buildings ranging from ancient farmsteads to town houses, churches, shops from all over Sweden. There are guides dressed in traditional outfits, craft demonstrations like glass blowing and shoe making, Nordic animals in enclosures and picnic benches. I watch entranced as a cheese maker makes cheese the traditional way in a restored homestead. Djurgarden is part of the larger green oasis called the Ekoparken, the world’s first national urban park with centuries old oak trees, unique bio-diversity and animals like marten, mink and foxes as well as royal palaces, and a fishing lodge dating back to 1690. It’s a great lung of the city of 1.7 million — where denizens can picnic, walk or meet friends and enjoy the tranquillity of nature.

The blonde, good-looking Nordics love their royal family and our guide tells us about the fairy tale wedding which the royal princess had with her personal trainer!

In spite of some eyebrows raised at the astronomical costs of the wedding, the royal family is still revered by the locals.

Every Swede seems to have a pet and a cycle. Their love of the outdoors is evident from the joggers and cyclists that we see all over the city. Everywhere in Stockholm we see the fika culture. Having a coffee with cake or a sandwich. Sitting for hours chatting with friends seems to be a very Swedish institution. Spending in kroners also makes us very careful — it is one of the most expensive countries in the world and even a MacDonald’s value meal doesn’t come that cheap.

The stunning building on the waterfront is the City Hall built with over 8 million bricks, the place where the Nobel Prize Banquet is held every year. Inside is the ornate gold room with 19 million fragments of gold leaf and glass creating Byzantine-inspired mosaics representing events in Swedish history. The Blue Room was supposed to be painted blue but the architect had a last minute change of heart when he saw the bricks and he left it as it was. I imagine the poets, geniuses and other great prize winners feasting on a sumptuous buffet in this magnificent room.

If there is one museum that you must see, let it be Vasamuseet, a unique museum built over a restored 17^th Century ship. The Vasa was the largest warship of her times — which sank on her maiden voyage in the Baltic. The guide says that she was too tall and narrow, was top heavy with a crew of 450 and the lack of ballast made her topple in the first gust of wind. Though many people were rescued, fifty people died and the ship lay at the bottom of the ocean for centuries. The saline brackish waters of the Baltic preserved the ship from being destroyed by wood boring worms. She was re-discovered in 1956 and raised from the bed of the sea in 1961, using huge, inflatable pontoons and painstakingly restored. Today the ornately carved ship is the centerpiece of a dimly lit gargantuan museum, which is startling in the attention to detail. To me Vasa, symbolises the Swedish spirit: take a failure and convert it in to a massive success!

wknd@khaleejtimes.com