Today we left the car firmly where it was and set out to explore Stockholm properly, taking the Tunnelbana from Gärdet to Östermalm and beginning at Östermalms Saluhall, the magnificent food hall which has been feeding Stockholm since the 1880s. It is exactly the sort of place in which we can happily spend far too long, with counters piled with fish, meat, cheese, bread and all manner of Swedish delicacies beneath its great iron and glass roof. It also provided some excellent photographs, which is increasingly becoming an important measure of a successful stop on this trip.
From there we walked through Östermalm, one of Stockholm’s smarter neighbourhoods, with broad streets, handsome late nineteenth-century buildings and shops which give a fairly clear indication of the prosperity of the people who live around them. In London terms, it feels somewhere between Chelsea, South Kensington and Mayfair, with Biblioteksgatan doing a reasonable impersonation of Bond Street. One building particularly caught our eye because of the wonderful ship incorporated into its clock. Stockholm is a city in which it pays to look upwards occasionally.
Shopping was part of the plan. We had decided that we would quite like to come home with something Swedish, preferably without I WENT TO SWEDEN emblazoned across it. We started at NK, Nordiska Kompaniet, Stockholm’s grand department store, which is much more Selfridges than John Lewis. We looked, admired some very nice clothes and examined a few price labels.
Then we went to Åhléns. Much more our natural habitat.
There followed an unexpectedly educational exploration of Scandinavian menswear, during which we discovered that quite a few labels which look extremely Swedish are actually Danish. Nevertheless, the mission was accomplished and we both found things we liked, so we should return home looking at least marginally more Scandinavian than when we arrived.
Our wandering also brought an unexpected bonus. We came across the Royal Guard forming up for the Changing of the Guard. During the summer, on certain days, the procession starts here before making its way through the city to the Royal Palace. We had no idea it was happening and had simply arrived at the right moment, which is always rather more satisfying than carefully planning to see something.
Lunch involved a rather different aspect of Swedish culture: MAX. There is a limit to how many good restaurants you can visit before feeling a duty to investigate the local fast-food chain, and MAX is Sweden’s home-grown answer to McDonald’s, founded in northern Sweden in 1968. So burgers it was. We considered this cultural research.
Our afternoon destination was Djurgården and ABBA The Museum, but rather than taking the quickest route we spotted one of Stockholm’s vintage trams and climbed aboard. The conductor carried an old-fashioned mechanical clicker, which he used to count on and off the passengers in analogue fashion, although when it came to checking our tickets he simply scanned them with his smartphone. A rather neat collision of old and new. At each stop he almost sang the name rather than merely announcing it, with a wonderfully theatrical delivery as we rattled along Strandvägen towards Djurgården.
Djurgården turned out to have rather more history than we had realised. This small corner of Stockholm has essentially been entertaining the city for nearly 150 years. Gröna Lund amusement park opened in 1883, Cirkus was built in the early 1890s as an actual circus, and Skansen opened in 1891 as the world’s first open-air museum. Skansen even has its own historic funicular railway.
Gröna Lund also has a splendid family story. In 1924 a rival amusement park called Nöjesfältet opened directly opposite and the two businesses became fierce competitors. Unfortunately for the feud, the son of one family and the daughter of the other fell in love and married. Eventually the rival businesses came together. Romeo and Juliet, but with rollercoasters and presumably a rather happier ending.
Before ABBA we had time for coffee and a little more wandering, during which we noticed Stockholm’s concrete lion bollards. They have a serious purpose. The lions have been used as traffic barriers since the 1990s and, following the terrorist vehicle attack on Drottninggatan in 2017, much larger and heavier versions were introduced to help protect pedestrian areas. They are intended, I gather, to symbolise strength and power. They look, however, like Dougal from The Magic Roundabout.
And then to ABBA The Museum, which was every bit as good as we had hoped. There are costumes, gold discs, photographs, instruments, recreated studios and plenty about the journey from winning Eurovision in Brighton in 1974 to becoming one of the most successful groups in the world. But what makes it particularly good is the interactive stuff, and we were not going to pass up any of that in the interests of dignity.
We sang Waterloo and Dancing Queen, dressed ourselves in flowing white ABBA-style robes and I eventually took to the stage to perform as the fifth member of ABBA. Mark and I approached all of this with considerably more enthusiasm than talent, but I suspect that is exactly what the museum expects.
ABBA is, after all, rather difficult to be cool about. The songs come on and people who have spent the previous half-hour behaving like sensible adults suddenly start singing. By the time we emerged, we had abandoned any pretence that this had been an educational visit to understand the importance of Swedish popular music. We’d been to the ABBA Museum, dressed up and sung Dancing Queen. And thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
The day wasn’t quite over. In the evening we headed out to Johan and Malin Strid’s house, who had been enormously kind in inviting us to join their party. They and a group of friends run a microbrewery as a hobby, with the added virtue that it raises money for the local Scouts. Their back garden had been transformed with marquees, food, a live band and the opportunity to work our way through a range of the very good beers they had brewed over the previous year. It was quite some operation and a wonderful way to spend a summer evening.
It was also an evening of reunions. I found myself catching up with several old friends and was able to introduce them to Mark. Mark already knew Johan, although from a setting about as far removed from a suburban Stockholm microbrewery as it is possible to imagine: a European Scout Foundation event at Speaker’s House in Westminster. That is one of the oddities of Scouting friendships. You can first meet someone under chandeliers in Westminster and next see them serving home-brewed beer in a marquee in their back garden.
It was an enormously generous invitation from Johan and Malin, and one of those evenings that made us feel rather less like visitors to Stockholm and more like guests.
So our first full day in Stockholm gave us a food hall, some very expensive shops, some rather more affordable shops, successful Swedish clothes shopping, an unexpected Royal Guard, a Swedish burger, a vintage tram, Dougal-shaped security bollards, several hours devoted to ABBA and, finally, very good beer, live music and old friends.
Tomorrow is Mark’s birthday. After seeing him in flowing white ABBA robes today, I’m not entirely sure what more I can reasonably give him.
