Alright folks, just one more Capital city to explore before we get back to hiking. Now I know you’re thinking that the Swedes can’t be that exciting, but don’t forget these guys descended from Vikings and actually had a serious empire at one point – remember that war that started in Prague when they threw some Catholics out a window? It’s not our most glamorous stop but it’ll still be fun, so let’s get to it. Hold onto your butts and say a nice “Hej, Hej!” to Scandinavia!
Our first Stockholm day began as soon as we were off the plane from Budapest. Our Airbnb was within (long) walking distance from downtown, so once we were checked in we hit the streets – only problem was the streets were already being hit. The tail end of the Stockholm Gay Pride parade had just rolled through, and we were pleasantly surprised to find gays wandering around all over the place and Stockholm decorated with rainbows. We didn’t immediately party though, we had a lunch date.
We met Jon’s cousin, and his two super cute kids, for drinks on a small square in downtown Stockholm. It was nice to see some friendly faces (who spoke English!), but we had the poor luck of meeting them at the same time as a swarm of street sweepers descended on the square, churning up dust and making a ton of noise cleaning up after the parade. The kids didn’t tolerate that well and it wasn’t long before Jon and I were back on our own, wandering around downtown.
Inexplicably, we found ourselves at an Indian restaurant for dinner, and later went out for a few drinks and gayed it up in Stockholm. The next morning most of the excitement after the parade had unfortunately calmed down, so Jon and I went back to tourism as usual – with a free walking tour, naturally. When we signed up for the tour, we expected stories about vikings around every corner and tales of superpowered Swedish monarchs stomping all over the mainland and Scandinavia alike.
Well, King Gustavus Adolphus (the legendary Lion of the North!) did, in fact, stomp all over Europe, but I’m sad to say that the Vikings built everything out of wood and they didn’t take very good notes. And that’s about it. Once the Vikings gave up raiding for farming, things were comparatively quiet in Stockholm from about 1700 until after WWII. So, with essentially no Viking anything on the tour and Gustavus leaving behind nothing but a golden casket, there’s not much grand to speak of in Stockholm.
It wasn’t totally without interest though – we did stop in the unassuming little square outside Swedish Parliament where Greta Thunberg got her start. Among her other accomplishments, she is (personally!) responsible for trapping us in Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany thanks to her founding the “Fridays for the Future” climate change protest. We also learned that Stockholm is built on 14 distinct islands, and it’s only 57 bridges and extensive infrastructure that make them feel like one big city. So, it’s like some weird, Swedish Venice – only with Protestants and without sinking. If you’re interested, the geography in the whole Stockholm Archipelago is pretty nuts.
After the tour we bought discount lunch special Swedish meatballs from some tourist restaurant thinking we were clever, but the joke was on us because apparently IKEA has the best meatballs in town and our sucked. The Swedes do have good coffee though, probably owing to the fact that it’s completely dark for a couple months straight in Stockholm in the Winter and they drink obscene amounts of coffee to make it through.
Anyways, after lunch we headed over to the second best church in Stockholm, the Storkyrkan (IKEA is, of course, the real church of Sweden). Named the “Great Church of Stockholm” and the official Royal Church, Storkyrkan is still used today by the Swedish Monarchy. Now, the Swedish King is like the Queen of England in that he’s just a figurehead, but even then his royal church is surprisingly modest, even accounting for it being Protestant and being built in the 1500’s. But, whatever it lacks for decoration, it makes up with an absolutely killer sculpture of St George slaying a dragon.
Now, we have seen old St George slaying that damn dragon in paintings and sculptures of every shape, size and description all over Europe but, credit to the Swedes, this one is the best of the best. It was finished in the late 1400’s and is almost totally original – which is doubly impressive since the sculptor was crazy and crafted it with not just stone, but metal, leather, human hair, and a bunch of real moose antlers for the dragon’s horns (there’s all sorts of weird metaphor in there, if you want to learn about it). St George always has a face like he is suffering through a particularly boring lecture on how a dragon is a poor metaphor for the Catholics, but he is too Saintly to pay attention.
After that, we strolled through the Riddarholmen Church. Again, it’s pretty lax on decorations compared to what we’re used to, but it is from the 13th century and is where all the Swedish monarchs are buried. Their golden caskets are actually pretty cool (including Gustavus Adolphus himself!), but they all must have been the size of modern day children. Finally, we called it quits for touristing that day and went to get a beer. At length, we ended up walking around the harbor to a big gay party boat anchored on the far shore.
The next morning we were back at it in Old Town at the Stockholm palace, the Kungliga Slottet. Thanks again to our unmatched planning skills, we missed the morning English tour and had to wait a couple hours for the next one – which is how we found ourselves at every C-list attraction in the Palace complex killing time. There’s the statue galley of King Gustav III, full of stitched together Roman works bought from the Pope himself in Italy in the 1700’s.
There’s also the Royal Chapel, which was quite tall, and the Tre Kronor Museum, which was the name of the Palace that sat there before the current one. The Tre Kronor was only interesting because it told the story of how the previous Palace burnt down in 1697 – the entire thing! – because the Chief Fire Watcher (real title) wasn’t paying attention. Apparently the King thought that was embarrassing, so he made the guy through run a gauntlet of soldiers beating him with sticks until he died – all of which was nicely explained in a gigantic diorama complete with tiny figures wielding tiny sticks. Swedes are strange.
Anyway, this story has a point because the current palace was built right after the old one burnt down around 1700. And who was the most powerful and grand monarchy at the time that everyone wanted to emulate? The Habsburgs, of course! You just can’t get away from the Habsburgs in Europe it feels like, and touring around the Stockholm Royal Palace felt like being back in Vienna, just with a Swedish flair. And by “Swedish flair” I mean that random bits of the palace look like sailboat parts.
Speaking of sailboats, it’s finally time to visit Stockholm’s finest attraction – the Vasa. The poor Vasa’s story is somewhere in between funny and tragic. Built in 1628, it was supposed to be among the most powerful warships ever built and the crown jewel of the Swedish Navy. I imagine that when it sank in Stockholm harbor still in sight of cheering Swedes who launched it and without a single shot fired, everybody was a bit disappointed. Lacking the technology in the 1600’s to raise the ship from the bottom, the Swedes settled for just salvaging most of the cannons and then just left it there.
Apparently a combination of cold and horribly polluted water in the bay prevented anything from breaking down the wood, and the Vasa just sat there, almost entirely intact, until the Swedes finally brought back up in the 50’s. Then they spent 17 years spraying it with polyethylene glycol (also a smashing laxative!) to replace the water in the wood and prevent it from collapsing before putting it on display.
Put more simply, the Vasa is totally unique and is absolutely incredible, and we have never seen it’s equal before or since. We spent hours in there just gaping at the size of it until they finally closed for the day and kicked us out. If it looks interesting you might want to visit soon – the whole thing is slowly collapsing. The hull is designed to sit in water, but instead it’s sitting on stilts and creating unequal pressure on the wood instead of the equal pressure that would be made by water.
After that we just spent the evening drinking beer and getting ready for our next hike, which would start the very next day. Next stop Arctic Circle!