Stockholm

Tony Griffiths

Description

Situated on Lake Malaren on one of the world s most beautiful harbours, Stockholm has set the benchmark for civilized city-living since the time of the Vikings. Its medieval regal period saw the Vasa dynasty turn a small town in the shadow of Uppsala into the capital city of a dominant power in Europe and a major trading port. In the Napoleonic era Stockholm readjusted its priorities to establish itself as a centre of innovation, technical and social. While the city has suffered more than its fair share of disasters, Stockholm s cultural and commercial elite transformed it into a community which welcomed innovation and spread the fruits of its achievements far beyond its borders. From its celebrated Old Town, dating from the Middle Ages, to its Art Nouveau and modern quarters, Stockholm is a city rich in museums, theatres and landmarks. Tony Griffiths explores the Swedish capital, old and new, revealing a city of unexpected contradictions. CITY OF POWER, INTRIGUE AND MURDER: Gustav Vasa, Queen Christina and Voltaire; murder at a Masked Ball, Olaf Palme s assassination; Lindh, social democracy and armed neutrality; the rights of women and the impact of immigration CITY OF SCIENTISTS AND INVENTORS: Linnaeus and Nobel; Ericsson and new technology; Laval, Wenner-Gren and Kamprad. SENSUAL CITY: Strindberg, Greta Garbo, Ingrid and Ingmar Bergman; sculptors and painters; home of the smorgasbord; the church, lust and the alcohol monopoly.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Travel writing
• Northern Europe
• Cultural studies
• Scandinavia
• Scandinavie

Informations

• Publié par: Signal Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781904955856
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Title Page

STOCKHOLM

A cultural and literary history


by
Tony Griffiths




Publisher Information

First published in 2009 by
Signal Books Limited
36 Minster Road
Oxford OX4 1LY
www.signalbooks.co.uk

Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

© Tony Griffiths, 2009
The right of Tony Griffiths to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. The whole of this work, including all text and illustrations, is protected by copyright. No parts of this work may be loaded, stored, manipulated, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information, storage and retrieval system without prior written permission from the publisher, on behalf of the copyright owner.

Production: Devdan Sen
Cover design: Baseline Arts
Cover images: istockphoto
Cover images: Sergey Baykov/istockphoto.com; dreamstime.com
Illustrations: dreamstime.com xviii, 57, 120, 136, 156, 164, 174, 190, 192, 206, 214;
istockphoto.com i, viii, xii, 2, 8, 13, 60;
wikipedia 15, 132, 203, 208;
www.ikea-group.ikea.com 71;
www.systembolaget.se 122,126







Preface and Acknowledgements

By the beginning of the twenty-first century Stockholmers were proud enough to boast that they no longer lived in a small remote, isolated country on the fringes of Europe but were entitled to call their city the Capital of Scandinavia. Not everybody was convinced. Ingmar Bergman described Stockholm as not a city at all: “it is ridiculous to think of itself as a city. It is simply a rather large village set in the middle of some forest and some lakes. You wonder what it thinks it’s doing there, looking so important.” Stockholm City remains at variance with Ingmar Bergman and gives away a seventy-page booklet proclaiming “Stockholm - the Capital of Scandinavia”. This publication does not sit well with the natural reticence of Swedes. Its back cover contains a paragraph explaining the perspective:

There are many reasons why Stockholm is the natural capital of Scandinavia. One is that Stockholm is positioned at the heart of the region, and enjoys the benefits of a world-class transport infrastructure. Another is that it is the largest city in the largest country in Scandinavia. It is also where you find the most multi-national companies, the largest stock market and, not least, the most visitors. People come to Stockholm for the food, the design and the music. Stockholm also enjoys the highest densities of galleries and museums in the world, and every year the eyes of the world are on Stockholm when the Nobel Prizes are awarded. Welcome to Stockholm - the Capital of Scandinavia.

To get visitors interested, the City of Stockholm created a bright yellow and green format on the front of the booklet, eighty per cent of which was taken up by three anorexic Swedish girls in funny hats, wearing off the shoulder camisoles trimmed with pink silk rip cords. The girls’ various expressions of shock, amusement and beaming contentment leaves the visitor in no doubt that a good time will be had by all. Linking the girls to the possibilities of shopping, nightlife, museums, galleries, recreation and special events is a white stick-on badge with the slogan “Stockholm. The capital of Scandinavia”, surmounted by the unique and ubiquitous three pointed simple crown of the Swedish sovereign.
The Swedish crown is not a much-loved symbol in Scandinavia, which is after all primarily a geographic term for the peninsula stretching through Denmark to North Cape. The Finns are not Scandinavian by race or inclination, and the citizens of Helsinki are as annoyed as their cousins in Oslo, Copenhagen and Reykjavik at Stockholm using Silvio Berlusconi’s media techniques to promote a questionable image.
This book nevertheless describes progress. Stockholm has grown from a Viking landing stage in the ninth century to be the capital of one of the world’s most civilized nations. The city has nurtured such monarchs as Gustav Vasa, Queen Christina and the Bernadottes. Swedish sovereigns have been European strongmen and have personified successful adaptation to social change. The city has housed outstanding intellectuals, brilliant inventors and philanthropic business geniuses. It was home to the political perfection of a society organized under the umbrella of social democracy, and a pantheon of its citizens are household names everywhere, although not always recognized as Swedish. Modesty as well as achievement is still to be found among the city’s birch groves, granite rocks, lakes, islands and copper domes.

***

I should like to thank my publishers Michael J. Dwyer and James Ferguson for commissioning this book and for keeping an eye on me, even when I was once crossing the causeway from South Uist to visit Eriskay. It was very agreeable to work with Ruth Harris on this book. For encouraging my interest in Swedish culture, I am grateful to a group who would never say mine is bigger than yours: Ulf Beijbom, Amanda Bettesworth, Richard Blandy, Margaret Bowden, Suzanne Champonnois, Brian Chatterton, Lyn Chatterton, Ian Chubb, Robert Dessaix, Vesna Drapac, Karin EhnblomPalmquist, Pam Griffiths, Debra Hackett, Geoff Harcourt, Bo Heinebäck, Kent Johansson, Inge Jonsson, Sune Jungar, Olavi Koivukangas, Baiba Metuzale Kangere, Alexsander Loit, Bosse Lundberg, Lille-Maj Lundberg, Richard Maggs, John Martin, Jane Mitta, Mark Proctor, Chris Rann, Liz Raymond, Åsa Ringbom, Håkan Ringbom, David Seaton, Doris Stockmann and Hugh Stretton, none of whom are in any way endorsing what follows.




Introduction

Touring the Terrain


Riddarholm

I had an apartment in Vasagatan, in the shadow of the systembolaget , premises belonging to the state alcohol monopoly. Vasagatan is named after the most famous royal dynasty in Sweden, and naturally the street is appropriately located at the centre of things. From Vasagatan the Vasa Bridge connects downtown Stockholm with the island on which the city began, Gamla Stan. Completed in 1878, the Vasa Bridge lines up with Stora Nygatan, literally the big new street, but new a very long time ago. Touring Stockholm’s terrain, ignore Gamla Stan for the moment and turn right instead at the end of the Vasa Bridge towards Riddarholm, the Knight’s Harbour.
I can imagine Yinka Shonibare, nominated for the 2004 Turner Prize, doing this, wandering around Stockholm’s landscape, as part of his investigation into the relationship between power and class, colonialism and European technology. As imperialists went, the Swedes were small beer. There was a Swedish East India Company founded by a Gothenburg merchant, Niklas Sahlgren. Its earliest ship, Friedericus Rex Sueciae , sailed for China with a Scot on board, Colin Campbell, who was the King of Sweden’s first de facto ambassador to China. The SEIC was profitable for only a couple of decades, and was put out of business by the English and the Dutch, not lasting long enough to take part in the scramble for Africa.
Shonibare probably walked across the Vasa Bridge and crossed the even smaller bridge to Riddarholm. Riddarholm is a tiny island indeed, but as the headquarters of Sweden’s ruling class for three or four hundred years it is very important. In 1773 the Swedish nobility erected a statue of Gustav Vasa to celebrate the 250 th anniversary of the day that the young noble entered Stockholm after a triumphant war to deliver his country from the Danish yoke.
Riddarholm is a place with mixed messages mirroring the ebb and flow of aristocratic fortunes. The island has one site marking the spot where three other nobles, Count Brahe and Barons Horn and Wrangle, were brought to the scaffold. They were executed on 13 July 1756, charged with conspiring to undermine the constitution. Marshal Axel von Fersen was lynched on more or less the same spot on 10 June 1810, by a mob who believed that he had poisoned and killed the Swedish crown prince.


Modern installation in front of the Riddarhuset

Yinka Shonibare was born in London, grew up in Nigeria, studied art at Goldsmiths College and, in the reverse direction to Karen Blixen, stamped his image on African-Nordic intercourse. While Out of Africa changed the image of Danish-African colonialism, Shonibare opened up Stockholm to an audience which might not have been reached without his fame and insight. Shonibare’s daring interpretations of the decline and fall of the French aristocracy during the French Revolution had shocked visitors to London’s Tate Gallery. He created puzzling mannequins of decapitated aristocrats and headless European pro-consuls re-drawing the map of Africa with subdivisions of their new colonial empires, neatly placed behind artificially contrived borders.
When he moved north for a brief time to take his talent to Stockholm, Shonibare might have called his unforgettable interpretation of Swedish identity in the Vasa and Gustavian era Out of Nigeria . One of tens of thousands of visitors to the Swedish capital, Shonibare was unusually and obsessively interested in European high culture. He had a particular fascination with the doomed ruling class whose self-centred and frivolous existence was to be literally cut off at the neck.
Shonibare describes himself as post-colonial hybrid. He first became famous for his recreation of an eighteenth-century European painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Clothed with Dutch wax-printed cotton textile, a life-size headl