[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent August 2003]
STOCKHOLM
One month ago, Caroline and I got on a bus, then we got on a train, then we got on a plane, and in a few hours we were in Stockholm.
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to being able to do that. This is one of the reasons New Zealanders travel – from New Zealand, it’s a huge effort to get pretty much anywhere except Australia. Over this side of the world, it’s as simple as logging on to the net and seeing where cheap flights are going and just going there.
As it was a cheap flight, ‘Stockholm’ really meant ‘Skavsta, one hour twenty minutes by bus south of Stockholm’. We landed in a small airport in a forest as dusk was coming on. It was not like any other forest I’ve been in. The trees were hulking and sleepy, and swallows looped above us catching insects.
(Okay, I don’t know if they were swallows. I don’t know from birds. But ‘swallow’ plus ‘loop’ makes you think of ‘swoop’ and that’s also what they were doing. Poetic license, y’see.)
We piled on the bus and rolled on out. The scenery was great – forested banks of hillside, sky-catching lakes, clear blue sky deepening into darkness. It was a young and delicate landscape, a teenager blossoming into adulthood compared to the grumpy ancient mariner of Scotland. Not nearly so
young as Aotearoa New Zealand, of course; my home country’s hills and coasts seem only half-made, fresh from the womb.
It was still light, barely, as we came into Stockholm itself. The city is fascinating, spread out over islands and peninsulae linked by bridges, beautiful. Intriguing, also, because the islands and curves of the harbour put a strange shape to the city, preserve it from singularity. Each curving shoreline of each island instead offers its own individual Stockholm, giving way to the others gracefully as you walk along. We walked everywhere. That first night we walked from the new town across the central island Gamla Stan, the old town. It isn’t a large island – a brisk walk from one side to the other would be an easy five minutes – but it was within these shores that Stockholm grew and was bounded for centuries.
We were staying in an old police station, converted to a hotel a few decades back, on Sodermalm, the southern island which is apparently the hotbed of alternative student culture. I didn’t see much of that to speak of, but it was a nice neighbourhood. It’s a great city to wander at night, so peaceful and safe. Close to midnight we wandered through some parks and women were sitting alone under lamps reading novels. It’s that kind of place. The pace never got near to hectic while we were there. Cyclists were the biggest threat and often the fastest thing around, and there were huge numbers of them. Cal noticed the odd sight of ‘bike cemeteries’, corners of public spaces were cycles were left never to be collected. The ones on the outside looked fine – but away in the centre, at the wall, they were little more than rust skeletons.
A wrecked vehicle is also at the centre of Stockholm’s highlight: the Vasa Museum. (“Whoa, nice transition, morgue!” “That’s why you’re the DJ and I’m the rapper. Word is bond.”) In 1628 the warship Vasa sailed from Stockholm. It didn’t make it very far – a few minutes after launch it keeled over and sank. The Vasa was lost under the waves, not too much further away than a particularly good stone’s throw. And, in time, it was forgotten.
Except by obsessive history buffs and salvage experts. One of these found it and funded an ambition campaign to lift it. It emerged from the water in 1961, and stands now in a museum constructed to hold it. And it’s *astonishing*.
It’s a huge 17th century warship in a room. It’s mounted upright and moodily lit and you can do everything short of walk on board. It’s very well-preserved because the low salt content in the water means the worms that devour the wood of other wrecks can’t survive in this harbour. It has been restored where necessary with great sensitivity, clearly indicating which bits of wood are new restoration and which bits are original (answer: the new-looking ones are new, the old-looking ones aren’t). There are full-size reproductions of much of the carvings painted up in the same gaudy colours of the original, right next to the originals in place on the ship, long-since bleached of colour. There are hundreds of explanatory points. There’s so much information you could drown in it. It’s an amazingly successful museum. It does everything a museum should do and does it with great style.
And it just so happens that this excellent museum houses perhaps the most rawly impressive historical artefact that will ever be discovered.
It’s a winning combination. If you’re nautically inclined, it’s worth the trip just for this.
Stockholm is not just a ship in a museum, of course, but that’s all I’m going to tell you about. (Okay, also a brief plug for the city’s comic library, located in a high-profile city-centre building – Bryan Talbot original art exhibition!) It’s a pretty cool place. It’s very much a city, though. If you love visiting cities this will suit you well, if you hate them this won’t convert you. However, it’s a small city, with lots of parks and water, and that suits me just fine.
Also, there were lots of mooses, so myself and Miss Moose felt quite at home. (No real mooses, sadly. But then, neither myself nor Miss Moose are real mooses either.)
Last word: if you end up in an underground pizza joint in the Sodermalm where no-one speaks English, get out while you can. The grumpy staff and dire food just ain’t the kinda dining experience you want.
Peace, love and mooses
~`morgan moose
(Dean: we *tried* to find local food, but failed – I still don’t know what local food *is* in Stockholm.)
(Erik: thanks for your email! If we’d had more prep time I would have warned you that we were coming, even though you probably would have been nowhere near Stockholm at the time. You’re most welcome to come over to Edinburgh any time! And I haven’t forgotten the photo…)
(All: read this blog: http://www.stonesoup.co.nz/chinashop/)