Christmas in Stockholm

Article by Marion Hume
Photos by Adam Worling

Stockholm is a divine winter city. Doubtless, it’s a divine summer city too, but in winter (wrap up warm) it is one of those Northern European cities, which really does capture the spirit of Christmas. Go around 13th December and thus enjoy the feast of Santa Lucia. As you arrive by night from the airport, you’ll see Santa Lucia candles in every window along with bright stars. The next morning begins early, because Santa Lucia wakes at dawn and walks through the sleepy city with her attendants singing carols. Of course, like Santa Claus, there are many Santa Lucias and it is a great honour to be chosen. You also have to be able to both sing beautifully and do so while balancing a wreath holding real candles on your head. Apparently the latter gets very heavy and decidedly warm.

Santa Lucia might first visit your hotel - early risers at The Hotel Diplomat, where I stayed were sung to over their morning coffee. Next, Lucia and her attendants visit offices all over the city, bringing good luck to those they sing to. The morning feast is coffee and traditional saffron buns.

What to do in Stockholm in the winter? Walk, but in shoes with thick soles because the steely chill rises. Stockholm is a city of islands and beautiful in the shimmering Northern light. Buildings are majestic and elegant.

Skansen is an outdoor museum with a zoo attached including reindeer, wolves and bears (although the latter hibernate in winter). This might not sound like your thing, but go for the old buildings reclaimed from all over Scandinavia. This might not sound inviting on a chilly December day, but Skansen, which I first visited as a six-year-old child is magical as an adult too.

Lucia comes to sing at Skansen as the sun goes down, but you might decide to go there in the morning and see the farms and manor houses in daylight. The delight of Skansen is that it is peopled with characters in the traditional dress of the time, which might sound unbelievably naff, but is actually enchanting. You sniff the scent of cinnamon in the air and sneak inside an old bakery from the 18th century and there, inside is a baker, with his batch of Lucia gingerbread straight from the oven and piping hot cinnamon rolls on sale. In another bakery, reclaimed from elsewhere in Sweden, a woman tells you her husband learned to bake traditional rye wraps (a little like pita bread) from his great grandfather. She spreads them with warm creamy butter and cheese and sells them to you, fresh from the oven, for a couple of Swedish Kroner.

Everyone is celebrating Christmas, but, while the natty gent in checked britches and a smart waistcoat occupying a redwood manor house has a spread of rich herrings and fresh baked bread and delicious meats on his Christmas table and is enjoying a roaring fire, the poor widow from the 1920s, has hit hard times. Her family have all emigrated to the Americas and she has nothing but a bowl of gruel to eat and just a few twigs of firewood (one hopes the actors get to swap around). FYI, when you’ve done the whole Christmassy thing, don’t miss Skansen’s gift shop for some of the most stylish decorations you’ll find anywhere.

And please don’t miss the nutty Biologiska Museet right next door. The A-framed building, styled after a Nordic church, doesn’t really indicate the treat inside. If you like odd, this is a taxidermic heaven, unchanged since it opened in 1893. My favourite exhibit; the rabbit that thinks it’s a pheasant.

A swift walk back towards the shopping streets leads you Hallwylska Museum, which goes straight into my list of favourite museums of all time. Here’s the deal. A rich Swedish woman, no title, married Swiss Count with title, they build mansion but with only one main bedroom and one guest bedroom. She’s a modernist - the house is among the first with central heating - but is a crazy collector; to the point that she amasses such huge amounts of silver, porcelain, etc. etc., that one by one, the servants living up in the attics get chucked out to live in hostels so that she can commandeer yet another room for her treasures. Unusually for the end of the 19th century, husband and wife shared a room (twin beds) but the chandelier in the room of the countess’s “paid lady companion” down the hall is rather grand. A clue, perhaps? Plus the countess amassed a sizeable collection of crossbows. And the only thing she didn’t collect were clothes (she called her outfits simply 1,2 and 3). One might jump to conclusions about why the Count and Countess’s marriage was so enduring (she outlived him and then died in her eighties, having slipped down the stairs which led to the spartan attic gym where she did a sweaty workout with her female companion every day).

The countess left strict instructions that, on her death, her mansion be left to the state. She decreed guided tours should be no more than 20 minutes (they are now 55 minutes and in English and Swedish) and that everything should be displayed as catalogued. Thus everything – really everything - from clippings from the count’s beard to Christmas decorations, has its own little copper tag and coding attached. Please don’t miss it. But you must go on a tour, so watch for the times. In fact we went on a Swedish tour but as everyone here speaks fluent English, the only other person on it kindly suggested the guide do the English version, which he did.

Of course you’ll want to return to modern times and check out the famous design stores. Svenskt Tenn is an acquired taste but one that, while you are in the divine store, you’ll feel tempted to acquire. (You might come to your senses once you realise hot pink, vivid grass green, turquoise and rose against a bottle green background might not really work on your sofa at home after all). But it’s such a strong design aesthetic, it is wonderfully well done. Maybe you could live with a tea towel, or an oven glove. Don’t miss Carl Malmsten’s store next door. And don’t miss Georg Jensen from Copenhagen, but suitable Scandinavian.

It is said that when a British company is in trouble they hire an accountant and when an Italian company hits the skids they hire a fashion designer. In Sweden, clearly every company has hired product designers, because even the most simple objects exude good clean Scandinavian design. There are so many great fashion and design stores to see, you’ll make your own list (although the Swedish Tourist Board is the only one I’ve come across that actually hands out lists of design shops as tourist attractions). Much of it is affordable and useful. I bought dishcloths (but such fine dish cloths) and a glorious glass spike to top my Christmas tree.

For fashion, Filippa K is a good find for those lamenting the departure of Helmut Lang from his own label. Lang is Austrian of course, not Swedish, but Filippa K shares his pared down Northern aesthetic. She’s not quite in his league, but her muted dark colours and simple shapes will fill the gap for the time being.

The sun goes down at about 3pm, which is odd, because it instantly feels like midnight. Of course you need to get back inside, which means either NK, Stockholm’s justly famous department store or, for some more culture, a trip to see the Vasa and you can walk pretty much anywhere in Stockholm as long as you put your head down into the icy wind. And don’t forget to pack a hat.

The Vasa is, frankly wonderful. It’s a ship by the way, the world’s oldest intact battleship and it sank, ignominiously, on its maiden voyage and lay submerged for 333 years. Commissioned by the king and intended to scare the bejesus out of the Poles with whom Sweden was at war in 1628, it features two rows of canons and life-sized wooden carvings of gods and Swedes, as well as those of to-be-defeated Poles cowering after they have been put to the sword.

But the Vasa never got anywhere close to war. On its maiden voyage, which took place, perhaps thankfully, a year after its designer had died, it suddenly listed starboard, to the shock of all who witnessed it. Then, before getting out of Stockholm’s vast natural harbour, eyewitnesses saw the massive sails swinging to one side and then down she went. An inquest was held but, as the King was most likely the one who commanded that a ship be built so ludicrously top-heavy, no one was ever charged. The Vasa lay deep down, not in the brimy but in brackish waters and it was the fact that the Baltic isn’t very salty that preserved her ancient timbers. There were attempts to raise her after she had sunk but the technology to do so didn’t exist. Then, over time, her whereabouts was forgotten. It was only in the late 1950s that a Vasa enthusiast, armed with a detection device of his own devising, dipped it down into the deep and at last pulled up a tiny plug of black oak - he had found the Vasa.

She was raised in 1961. There’s a great film (complete with 1960s - but now very Jean Paul Gaultier type gay fantasy sailors) about how the Vasa was brought to the surface. The effect of seeing her in the gloom of the museum is strangely eerie and she is marvelous, monstrous piece of history – or indeed thousands of pieces; put back together bit-by-bit, they even found the hole where the plug of oak had come from and replaced it. As my companion commented, “Given the Swedes are this good at jigsaws, no wonder they invented IKEA”.

In the deep dark of the evening, walk to Gamla Stan, the old town and go straight to the Christmas market - no, not for more decorations but for an essential, reviving cup of warm Glogg.

For dinner, check out Nox, known as a summer joint, but intimate and groovy when the outside terrace is closed. The weather is too chilly for Nox’s frozen champagne daiquiris, so opt for a warming slug of martini or a perfect Manhattan. For dinner, the “From the Ocean” and “Land” menus are equally appetizing. I had Ocean complete with herring, pickled salmon, hot smoked char with dill mayonnaise followed by smoked cod and gave not so much as a delicious forkful to my companion, who was equally protective of his Land plate, including slices of reindeer. (No time to get soppy, in Sweden these are merely venison with horns). The frozen Toblerone cheesecake seemed to have both our names on it.

End the evening with an Absolut vodka cocktail in the Ice Bar in the Nordic
Sea Hotel (you may need to book this; www.icebar.se).