Stockholm Observations, Part 1

Here are some things I am learning about Stockholm.

1. The architecture is glorious, giving me many, many moments of sheer delight. All you have to do is look up. You are sure to see something gorgeous.

2. The setting is stunning. The city of Stockholm occupies a number of islands, and a total of about 30,000 islands, islets, and above-the-water large rocks make up what is called the Stockholm archipelago. Beyond those, to the north and south in the Baltic Sea and in the Gulf of Bothnia (between Sweden and Finland), there are hundreds more, not counting those that lie on the south-western side of the country nor those that belong to other nations. The Baltic Sea is not very salty, and when it enters the Stockholm Archipelago it gets less salty and less sea-like. All of those islands mean that the city is very well-protected from waves, meaning that even the very flat islands don’t have to worry about storm damage (or at least we have been told this. We were told that the land masses of the islands themselves are still rising, as they have been for the last 10,000 years, since the weight of the enormous ice sheet melted at the end of the last Ice Age. At about a meter (about 3 feet) per every century, they are rising faster than the sea levels are, so Sweden seems like a safe place to have ocean-front property). Once you get past a set of locks, on the southern side of the Old Town (Gamla Stan), you are in the large body of water called Lake Malaren, which is only a little bit salty, and Don and I decided it must be fresh water coming from rivers in the center of the country, flowing INTO the Baltic waters through Stockholm, since it is higher than the Baltic. We don’t feel particularly smart for having figured this out, since it is obvious, once we did, but we DID have to figure it out for ourselves! We have not yet gone to any islands in Lake Malaren, but I very much want to go to Birka, which was a Viking trading center in the 700s and has the largest Viking cemetery (with rune stones—Yay!!) in Scandinavia, with about 3000—yes, 3000—graves!

3. The islands that are not central city islands look like Maine (the central city ones look like city; it’s hard to tell what they looked like before that). Some of them look like Maine islands in the ocean, and some of them look like you are on Sebago Lake or Hancock Pond—or Sand Pond—looking at the shore.
Some are rocky and some are really just huge rocks rising out of the sea, with enough soil to have evergreen forests. They all have summer homes on them, many of which have a typical Scandinavian “gingerbread”-style construction. Many are quite small, and look just like Mom and Dad Devey’s lake house in Maine. Others are quite grand, and are either modern, with lots and lots of glass, or are Victorian.
The government encouraged the building of workers’ vacation homes in the early part of the 20th century, as Stockholm had gotten quite polluted and dirty.