Stockholm is one of the world's most perfect cities. So why do thousands of Swedes leave every year?
This article first appeared in The Sunday Telegraph (click here)
Late summer in Stockholm, blue and yellow flags in a washed-blue sky, the harbour busy with white ferries and sailboats against a backdrop of soft-coloured old buildings. Every café, park bench and patch of grass taken up by Swedes making the most of the unexpected sunshine (and sometimes each other). Peace, love and the smell of cinnamon pastries fill the air.
Why would anyone ever leave? Elegant eighteenth-century palaces and churches decorate a picturesque scatter of rocky islands surrounded by pine forests. Vitamin D deficiency among early Nordic farming communities has evolved natives who look like models (or Muppets). The Baltic still teems with herring.
Yet every year thousands of young Swedes leave Stockholm, some never to return. One of them was my wife’s mother who became a student in London, married and had three children then died young. Olivia has always kept Christmas Eve the Swedish way and we occasionally visit relatives in a fairytale summerhouse north of Gothenburg, but she hasn’t been to Stockholm since she was a child.
I booked us into the Grand Hotel – which is as spectacular as it sounds, right on the waterfront opposite the Royal Palace – and asked the charming head concierge Okky Widyanto for advice on how to make the most of the short time we had away from the children. I explained we wanted to see what life might be like in Stockholm, with no rushing. A bit of shopping, some herrings (obviously), maybe a boat trip on Sunday?
Knowing a few Swedes, that contrast in the architecture struck me as a fair reflection of the national character. Volvos and Vikings, herrings and akvavit, sensible and crazy at the same time. Mixing the functional and funky makes for interesting shopping, too – sleek minimalist design rubs shoulders with folksy painted wooden horses and embroidered cushions, from the superb NK store to Drottningsgatan and Ostermalm. We liked a lot more than we bought – the Swedish kronor doesn’t make shopping in Stockholm a bargain.
Lunchtime saw us in the restored Ostermalmshalle food market. Okky had pulled some strings to book us a table at one of Stockholm’s oldest fish restaurants, Lisa Elmqvist. Set in a corner of the hall, it’s been a piscine paradise for four generations. The tables are close, but in a good way – people actually talk to each other, helped by the smilingly efficient waitresses who all seem to know everything there is to know about fish. A basket of sourdough bread, a Nils Oscar God Lager and a shot of ice-cold akvavit came with a minimally perfect first course of delicate bleak roe, perfect gravad lax and possibly the finest herrings in the universe. Enough to keep me in Stockholm for a while.
After lunch Olivia wanted to look at the experimental end of fashion in the new Sodermalm district so I left her to it and headed round the harbour to the Wasa museum. The perfectly-preserved ghost of a ship from almost four hundred years ago was so absorbing I realised I was late for our only fixed appointment, another idea of Okky’s. As I hurried into the hotel lobby Inge Andersson was already waiting for us in a red mountaineering anorak.
She led us through the Old Town to the small island of Riddarsholm, talking of her son who is about to leave Stockholm to play football for Benfica in Portugal. It’s just being Swedish, she says – a need to see the world and avoid the Swedish winter. Through a couple of security doors and we’re inside the old Parliament building which smells of centuries of floor polish. A rattling service lift takes us up to the top floor, then stairs through an attic filled with ancient beams and newish airconditioning ducts and we’re in a makeshift room unsettlingly hung with mountaineering harnesses and crash helmets.
Harnesses jangling, we climb through a hatch onto the roof of the parliament building and clip onto a steel wire before stepping out onto a foot-wide metal walkway. Inge’s timing is perfect – the setting sun silhouettes the cranes and church spires to the west and behind us lights up the gilded turrets and mullioned windows of the Gamla Stan. As we take breathless steps along the vertiginous catwalk we look out over the rooftops and listen to Inge’s stories of Napoleon Bernadotte, terrible fires and Queen Christina’s treasure-seeking armies. Climbing down well after the sun has gone we’re ready for a steadying drink before dinner. Okky has booked us into Matthias Dahlgren, Sweden’s answer to Gordon Ramsay. He’s already got two Michelin stars for his dining room and another for Matbar (it means food bar, in that uncomplicated Swedish way) but couldn’t be further from the usual flamboyant celebrity chef, constantly clearing plates and asking how people like the food. His sommelier Mercedes Bachelet hardly looks old enough to drink but is eloquent on the relative merits of a traditional Priorat and a more lightly-regulated Joven Rioja to go with the spicy sausage course. She insists we have some astonishing dill schnapps and a beer to go with the inevitable (but delicious) herrings first, too – there can’t be too many sommeliers who tell you to mix your drinks so persuasively.
I’d asked Okky what Stockholm dwellers might do on a Sunday, and he said maybe go out to the islands by boat. So next morning we boarded the Vaxo ferry right outside the front steps and bought tickets to Waxholm, the ‘capital of the archipelago’. Just a few minutes away from the dock the city gives way to pine forests and granite rounded by ancient ice sheets, with a sprinkling of yellow and red painted wooden houses among the trees. There’s something pure and refreshing about these islands; a folk dream where pretty people live lives of Social Democratic perfection. Waxholm couldn’t quite live up to the dream when we landed, although it was a delightful place to spend a restful day – a walk through birch and fir woods along the sea, bulrushes whispering in the breeze then back to the old Waxholms Hotel for more delicious herrings in the company of families (mostly three generations together) enjoying Sunday lunch. As the boat carried us back to the city in the sunshine, we imagined ourselves as one of those families. We’d be heading to work or school the next day, part of a society which until fairly recently was an unblemished demonstration of what political neutrality, social democracy and an advanced welfare state could achieve. Why would we ever leave, like Olivia’s mother or Inge’s son? Maybe we’d feel that same Volvos and Vikings tension, the urge to see the world. Perhaps we’d worry, as some Swedes do, that their caring, open society isn’t quite what it was (although it’s still just as expensive). We might be thinking about what the Swedes call hyggelig, snuggling down for the months of darkness and cold just around the corner. And like everyone else, we’d be enjoying the sunshine while we could.
Nowhere’s perfect, of course. But on a day like this, Stockholm gets closer than any other city on Earth.
This article first appeared in The Sunday Telegraph (click here)
ESSENTIALS
Prices at the five-star Grand Hotel InterContinental Stockholm start from SEK5265 (approx £472). This is based on two people sharing a Superior Double Room on a bed and breakfast basis and also includes the hotel’s ‘Insider Experience’ roof-top tour. A three-course meal in Mathias Dahlgren’s Matbaren restaurant would cost approximately SEK580 (approx £52). For more information or to make a reservation at the Grand Hotel InterContinental Stockholm, call 0870 400 9650 or visit the website at www.intercontinental.com
Scandinavian Airlines operates a regular service from London Heathrow and Manchester airports, and a seasonal service from Edinburgh Airport, to the Swedish capital, Stockholm. One-way economy fares from London to Stockholm Arlanda Airport start from £67 including taxes. Return economy fares start from £135 including taxes. Fares include taxes and airport charges. Prices correct at time of printing and subject to availability. For information on SAS destinations and fares worldwide visit www.flysas.co.uk or phone the sales team on +44 (0)871 521 2772
