Stockholm Part 2 -- Djurgården

wooden spoons in an 18th-century house at Skansen

When I say I love Sweden, I really mean I feel as though I've fallen in love with it, as you might with a person. I want to 'possess' it in as many ways as possible, reading its books (the Moberg Emigrants saga I'm reading at the moment is wonderful), watch its films, listen to its music. If only it would make me a mix-cassette.

window at Skansen

Of all the things we did during our week in Stockholm, the day on Djurgården (once the Royal Game Park, hence its name) was my favourite. Djurgården is one of the islands making up Stockholm and is almost wholly given up to pleasure, in one way or another. It's the most lovely, elegant, safe place to be, with huge summer houses (presumably belonging to very rich families), parks, museums and galleries. Even the theme park, Gröna Lund (the 'Green Grove'), is appealing and was first set up there in 1883.

Gröna Lund would have to wait for another day as I was so keen to go to Skansen. Skansen is the world's oldest open-air museum and was founded in 1893 by Artur Hazelius to bring buildings from all over Sweden in order to preserve architecture and traditions at a time of great change. It's like a mini-Sweden, condensed into a few acres, and manages to feel authentic, rather than constructed -- or, rather, you can take a sense of authenticity from it in spite of its being constructed. Yes, all the people walking round in long skirts and headscarves are just modern Stockholmers dressed up, but there is an apple-cheeked dignity about them that overcomes any Disney aspect. Perhaps they just have fantastic casting.

I absolutely adore this woman, who was making barley-flour crispbreads in the Bakehouse. I stood and watched two complete cycles from the ball of dough to the hot bread coming out of the oven and she was a fantastic baker. AND you got to eat chunks of the fresh bread with wonderful salty butter. It was one of the best things I've ever tasted. It only went in the oven for about two minutes at most.

The magical thing about Skansen seems to be that it has managed to become more than just a museum. It isn't just a dead place where relics of the past have been stored -- all the places there still seem to hum with life and to speak to us from the past. I came over all strange there and could easily imagine myself, if I was ever 'regressed to a former life', discovering I had been a Swedish farmer's wife.

I've decided I must have Viking ancestry. The evidence: I come from the North-East, an area with age-old ties to Scandinavia; my maiden name is a Norse word; my granny used to cook rollmop herrings. Proof, if proof were needed, I think.

So Skansen is more than a museum but embodies the strong attachment that Swedes seem to feel to their traditions. At festivals, such as Midsummer, Skansen is a focal point for traditional celebrations. Watch this video of the Midsummer celebrations there -- I love the slow, kindly voiceover:

 

There are all sorts of different buildings at Skansen from Sami huts to an 18th-century manor house.

 There are farm buildings and industrial buildings, shops and homes. I couldn't get enough of it.

There's also a zoo, knitted in to everything else. So here's a ball of lemurs:

It would be my fantasy to go back to Skansen and hide in one of the buildings (just like in From the Mixed up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler, one of my favourite kids' books) so that I could go round it on my own after it had closed.

painted ceiling in the church

After tearing myself away from Skansen, we got a tram further into the island, to Waldemarsudde, home of rich painter Prins Eugen. I think Eugen's money may have given him 'opportunities' to promote himself beyond his talents -- sorry Prins E. But he had an exquisite house, full of flowers:

I like the picture on the brochure, though

Upstairs at Waldemarsudde was a great exhibition of the fashion designs of Swedish couturier Lars Wallins (no, I hadn't either) so we had a quick look at that too. High, high camp but beautiful too. Lars wasn't there when we were, but here's a pic off the net:

Then we struck out on foot for the Thielska Gallery. I hadn't quite got a sense of the size of the island and it turned out to be much bigger than I'd thought, but we trudged on and on, following the signs, under the shade of the huge trees. Enormous houses kept looming into view. With each one I thought, this must be it, it looks like a gallery, but it would be just another vast summer palace. Eventually, just as we were about to give up and catch the bus home, we came to it. Another lovely gallery, closing shortly, but we still got a quick run round.

Thielska Gallery

Karl Larsson painting, 'Writing Postcards'

I'm only at the end of Wednesday of our week, but will leave it there for now. More soon, if you have an appetite for it...

Sweden at last

'Sweden at last' both because I'd been dying to go for so long, and because it's taken me a whole week to get this post together. It's going to be a long one, I'm afraid -- a splurge of photos and impressions.

We rented an apartment in Vasastan, just to the north of the city centre, with Cocoon Sweden, who were a very friendly company. When we got to the flat we were amazed to find that it was huge, with two front doors (it was two flats knocked into one) and room to run and turn cartwheels just in the hall! Much bigger than we're used to or were expecting. It seemed to have endless doors and mirrors so that I kept turning the wrong way all week. It was a treat in itself, before we even started to explore the city.

As soon as we'd arrived, we just set off and walked south until we got to Gamla Stan, the oldest part of Stockholm. It was very quaint -- I hadn't bargained for it being quite so developed for tourists. It was thronging, but we found a nice square by the Nobel Museum and sat outside a bar having the first ice-cold beer of the holiday. Then a fantastic military band arrived right in front of us and gave a really marvellous concert.

It was getting quite late so we got the underground (the lovely tunnelbana) home, passing Riddarsholmskyrkan on the way to the station:

The next day we set off again. The city was a delight to wander around in, completely safe and really easy to navigate. We got Stockholm Cards which gave us prepaid travel on buses, trains, trams, tubes (through the whole of Stockholm county, not just the city) plus entry to 75 museums. Those cards were pure gold.

We went to the National Museum and I went in the 'Lust and Vice' exhibition, which explored the relationship between art and sex through the ages. I liked the poster:

I went to the exhibiton Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now at the Barbican back in 2008, so it was interesting to compare the English and Swedish approaches to the same subject. There was quite a lot of crossover (cheeky snuffboxes, boundary-pushing boudoir prints, saucy Bible stories -- poor old Susanna leched over by endless Elders) but I think the Swedish version was slightly more explicit, on balance. I'm recovering.

Elsewhere in the museum, I liked these freaky animal-human hybrids by British artist Barnaby Barford, who was inspired by Hieronymus Bosch, according to the notes. Very kitsch.

There were tons of fantastic Swedish-designed objects and furniture. I liked this tapestry -- didn't get many good photos of the other things I liked. This is just about half of it.

Then it was on to the Moderna Museet -- the Museum of Modern Art -- which was given over to photography in most of the rooms. Very good. It was David's birthday -- he always gets his birthday in some swanky foreign location, it seems -- so we went out for a special dinner to Tranan, a nice restaurant on Odenplan, the square near our flat.

Well, I did try to use some of the Swedish phrases I'd so diligently learned -- "Hur mycket kostar det, tack?" -- but EVERYONE really did speak the most brilliant English, truly everyone. The place is virtually bi-lingual.

I'd better move it along a bit otherwise the blogpost will take as long as the holiday itself. On Monday we went by train and bus to Drottningholm Palace on Lake Malaren. A World Heritage site and very beautiful. The gardens were lovely too.

And the Chinese Pavilion in the grounds:

We caught a little, old-fashioned steamer and came home over the lake.

When we got back into Stockholm we went to the Kulturhuset, which is equivalent to the Pompidou Centre in Paris, I guess, and had drinks in the rooftop cafe with great views of Sergels Torg below, looking just like a 1960s postcard.
     Tuesday was an all-day trip out through the islands of the archipelago to Svartsö, which we picked more or less at random on the basis of how long it would take to get there. The journey was just dreamy, floating past endless fantasy houses perched by the water. We also went past the statue 'God, our Father, on the rainbow' by Carl Milles -- incredibly modern for 1946 -- on Nacka Strand:

 When we arrived, we discovered a beautiful island, with two lakes in the centre and, apparently, no cars, just bikes, scooters and superfast forklift trucks (or some strange cousin of the latter).

 We walked through the trees to the nearest of the lakes.

Then we wandered back to the only restaurant, which turned out to be terrific -- the Svartsö Krog.

That's three types of pickled herring AND two sorts of cheese AND boiled potatoes -- and that's just a starter. We loved all the types of herring we tried through the week, even the kids. Dora ate the nasturtium for a dare.

I think I'll have to make this Part 1 or I'll be here all night. Tomorrow I will do Djurgarden, my favourite bit of Stockholm...