If anyone asked: "why travel", the answer is here. Not to post a number of selfies on instagram, but to find what is essential to the area, what constitutes its beauty, and think how it can be preserved. Then, share an insightful narrative about the place.
I am not a keen traveller, not a perceptive one; and being aware of this, I've stopped travelling almost entirely. Having read this essay, I will perhaps remember more about Gamla Stan then if I took a glimpse of it on some hasty round trip.
Thank you for this comment Jacek, I was struck by a comment by someone before I made this trip that we should be "informed-travellers/tourists" and this is what I endeavoured to be on this trip. Understanding places fascinates me. There is so much to know and it greatly increases one's appreciation and enjoyment of a place - and as you note, it aids one's memory of the trip too.
I'm glad you enjoyed your visit to Stockholm, Hadden, and it's fascinating to see it through your eyes. If you find yourself in Sweden again, come and visit us: we're a local bus ride north of Uppsala, another old city that is worth seeing.
Sweden is a fascinating place to think about modernity. There was a rather good TV series a few years ago, made by a comedian who you could think of as the Swedish equivalent of Stephen Fry, the title of which translates as "The World's Most Modern Country". He was using the phrase only half-seriously, but it reflects an era in the 20th century when both at home and internationally the image of Sweden was of a country that lived closer to the future than anywhere else in the world. It's worth reflecting on the kind of cultural self-confidence that underwrites the Nobel prizes, where (among other things) a committee of Swedes adjudicates over the literature of the whole world.
The entanglement of Sweden with modernity has many threads: it's the country where Descartes came to die, where Linnaeus set about constructing a formal system to name and categorise all living things (including four subspecies of humans), and where a few generations later the world's first State Institute for Race Biology was founded to pursue eugenics research. The passing of the "Great Power Time" of the 17th century and the failure of attempts at establishing colonies further afield meant that Sweden could cultivate a sense of moral purity compared to the more successful colonial powers of Europe, though this rings hollow to the Sami people of the north.
I share your fondness for the earthy colours of the old paints – we're currently repainting the Red House, where I'm typing this, with a version of the classic Falu Rödfärg that you'll see all over rural Sweden. As you say, the colours do feel organic, part of the landscape. There's a darker element to this, too, in as much as the ubiquity of these colours reflects the origin of the paint as a byproduct of the mining of the landscape: industrial extraction began early here and continues on a huge scale. Linnaeus himself made a journey through the Bergslagen, the mining country to the west of where we live, and described the treeless ruin of the landscape, the smoking foundries and the condition of the people as resembling hell. It's one of those moments at which modernity caught sight of its own shadow.
The destructive modernisation of urban Sweden peaked in the 1950s and 60s, when many wooden neighbourhoods and city centres were bulldozed and replaced with modernised concrete. But this also provoked active resistance which led to the saving of some of what might have been destroyed and its protection in ways similar to what you've encountered in Gamla Stan, though the streets and buildings there are particularly special for the reasons you describe. Sigtuna is also worth a visit, as the central part of the town is still laid out on the same pattern as it was a thousand years ago, even if the individual wooden houses have been rebuilt at times along the way.
Finally, if you haven't come across it, I highly recommend Andrew Brown's Fishing in Utopia, a book that helped me find my bearings in my early years here and a fascinating read on the complex histories of this beautiful and strange country.
This is marvellous Dougald! Thank you for taking the time to write this. This line is brilliant: "It's one of those moments at which modernity caught sight of its own shadow." Such an evocative sentence.
I found the part about Bergslagen particularly interesting as I visited this forest on this brief trip (we stayed in Skinnskatteberg) to go on the lookout for Moose (my favourite animal). Sadly, though we found lots of evidence of moose (droppings, prints) we didn't see one, but seeing a Black woodpecker, pearl-bordered fritillary, and beautiful black-throated divers up close made up for it. There must have been some degree of regeneration in the forest since Linnaeus' time as the parts we visited were marvellous, though one could perhaps tell that there was limited "old-growth".
Wikipedia had alerted me to the unfortunate origins of Falu Rödfärg - the iconic red buildings were a sight I had always dreamed of seeing and they were indeed delightful (especially at the open ekomuseam at Malingsbo). I suppose the use of this paint is a means of redeeming the tragedy of the desecration of mining - producing something iconic and beautiful in its own right out of the spoils and wastes of the pillage of the earth. It reminds me that the provenance of beauty is often complex, contested, and morally messy. Which also bears relevance of honeypot sights like Cornwall and the Lake District. Their beauty can be a curse to residents who have been priced out of their community by the explosion in holiday lets. This calls for us to be sensitive and careful in our appreciation of beauty - which I often need reminding of.
And if I am ever in the region again I would love to come to your place. That is a very kind offer.
Thanks, Hadden! And good to hear that you were in Skinnskatteberg. I know that neighbourhood a bit. We have friends who have a crazy theatre in the forest outside Riddarhyttan, a great Bauhaus building built right over an old red wooden schoolhouse at the end of six miles of bumpy dirt track. There’s a pocket of old-growth forest just south of there where they found the oldest site of metalworking in Sweden and it always feels to me like a place which has been familiar with humans for a long time and has lessons for how we live with land. And then there’s an art museum in a tiny village south of Skinnskatteberg which has an extraordinary collection of the work of Ernst Neizvestny, who John Berger once wrote a book about. It’s a fascinating, haunted part of the world, and like you say, these post-industrial landscapes invite a complex relationship with beauty and a recognition of the capacity for regeneration, even on the far side of the kind of hellish extraction that Linnaeus witnessed.
If anyone asked: "why travel", the answer is here. Not to post a number of selfies on instagram, but to find what is essential to the area, what constitutes its beauty, and think how it can be preserved. Then, share an insightful narrative about the place.
I am not a keen traveller, not a perceptive one; and being aware of this, I've stopped travelling almost entirely. Having read this essay, I will perhaps remember more about Gamla Stan then if I took a glimpse of it on some hasty round trip.
Thank you for this comment Jacek, I was struck by a comment by someone before I made this trip that we should be "informed-travellers/tourists" and this is what I endeavoured to be on this trip. Understanding places fascinates me. There is so much to know and it greatly increases one's appreciation and enjoyment of a place - and as you note, it aids one's memory of the trip too.
I'm glad you enjoyed your visit to Stockholm, Hadden, and it's fascinating to see it through your eyes. If you find yourself in Sweden again, come and visit us: we're a local bus ride north of Uppsala, another old city that is worth seeing.
Sweden is a fascinating place to think about modernity. There was a rather good TV series a few years ago, made by a comedian who you could think of as the Swedish equivalent of Stephen Fry, the title of which translates as "The World's Most Modern Country". He was using the phrase only half-seriously, but it reflects an era in the 20th century when both at home and internationally the image of Sweden was of a country that lived closer to the future than anywhere else in the world. It's worth reflecting on the kind of cultural self-confidence that underwrites the Nobel prizes, where (among other things) a committee of Swedes adjudicates over the literature of the whole world.
The entanglement of Sweden with modernity has many threads: it's the country where Descartes came to die, where Linnaeus set about constructing a formal system to name and categorise all living things (including four subspecies of humans), and where a few generations later the world's first State Institute for Race Biology was founded to pursue eugenics research. The passing of the "Great Power Time" of the 17th century and the failure of attempts at establishing colonies further afield meant that Sweden could cultivate a sense of moral purity compared to the more successful colonial powers of Europe, though this rings hollow to the Sami people of the north.
I share your fondness for the earthy colours of the old paints – we're currently repainting the Red House, where I'm typing this, with a version of the classic Falu Rödfärg that you'll see all over rural Sweden. As you say, the colours do feel organic, part of the landscape. There's a darker element to this, too, in as much as the ubiquity of these colours reflects the origin of the paint as a byproduct of the mining of the landscape: industrial extraction began early here and continues on a huge scale. Linnaeus himself made a journey through the Bergslagen, the mining country to the west of where we live, and described the treeless ruin of the landscape, the smoking foundries and the condition of the people as resembling hell. It's one of those moments at which modernity caught sight of its own shadow.
The destructive modernisation of urban Sweden peaked in the 1950s and 60s, when many wooden neighbourhoods and city centres were bulldozed and replaced with modernised concrete. But this also provoked active resistance which led to the saving of some of what might have been destroyed and its protection in ways similar to what you've encountered in Gamla Stan, though the streets and buildings there are particularly special for the reasons you describe. Sigtuna is also worth a visit, as the central part of the town is still laid out on the same pattern as it was a thousand years ago, even if the individual wooden houses have been rebuilt at times along the way.
Finally, if you haven't come across it, I highly recommend Andrew Brown's Fishing in Utopia, a book that helped me find my bearings in my early years here and a fascinating read on the complex histories of this beautiful and strange country.
This is marvellous Dougald! Thank you for taking the time to write this. This line is brilliant: "It's one of those moments at which modernity caught sight of its own shadow." Such an evocative sentence.
I found the part about Bergslagen particularly interesting as I visited this forest on this brief trip (we stayed in Skinnskatteberg) to go on the lookout for Moose (my favourite animal). Sadly, though we found lots of evidence of moose (droppings, prints) we didn't see one, but seeing a Black woodpecker, pearl-bordered fritillary, and beautiful black-throated divers up close made up for it. There must have been some degree of regeneration in the forest since Linnaeus' time as the parts we visited were marvellous, though one could perhaps tell that there was limited "old-growth".
Wikipedia had alerted me to the unfortunate origins of Falu Rödfärg - the iconic red buildings were a sight I had always dreamed of seeing and they were indeed delightful (especially at the open ekomuseam at Malingsbo). I suppose the use of this paint is a means of redeeming the tragedy of the desecration of mining - producing something iconic and beautiful in its own right out of the spoils and wastes of the pillage of the earth. It reminds me that the provenance of beauty is often complex, contested, and morally messy. Which also bears relevance of honeypot sights like Cornwall and the Lake District. Their beauty can be a curse to residents who have been priced out of their community by the explosion in holiday lets. This calls for us to be sensitive and careful in our appreciation of beauty - which I often need reminding of.
And if I am ever in the region again I would love to come to your place. That is a very kind offer.
Thanks, Hadden! And good to hear that you were in Skinnskatteberg. I know that neighbourhood a bit. We have friends who have a crazy theatre in the forest outside Riddarhyttan, a great Bauhaus building built right over an old red wooden schoolhouse at the end of six miles of bumpy dirt track. There’s a pocket of old-growth forest just south of there where they found the oldest site of metalworking in Sweden and it always feels to me like a place which has been familiar with humans for a long time and has lessons for how we live with land. And then there’s an art museum in a tiny village south of Skinnskatteberg which has an extraordinary collection of the work of Ernst Neizvestny, who John Berger once wrote a book about. It’s a fascinating, haunted part of the world, and like you say, these post-industrial landscapes invite a complex relationship with beauty and a recognition of the capacity for regeneration, even on the far side of the kind of hellish extraction that Linnaeus witnessed.