Images of Sweden
Only tens of kilometers outside of Greater Stockholm, verdant fields sown with barley and wheat form a patchwork quilt with tracts of deciduous trees and horse pasture. Long thoroughfares ribbon seamlessly through forests, farmland, and coastal villages, and the area’s numerous islands are sewn together by slender, threadlike bridges. Prim harbors lined with impeccable white yachts stand in contrast to the birches – freshly attired in spring green – and cavernous red barns with their wide, sloping roofs.
Alternative Accommodation Outside the City
Accommodation options, as in many places, vary widely. Instead of staying in a guidebook-reviewed hostel or AAA-starred hotel in the heart of Stockholm, why not snatch the opportunity to try something more memorable?
In Lundby, convenient to Arlanda airport, enjoy a cozy night in a working farmhouse. After waking to a hearty breakfast of muesli with fresh yogurt, juice, whole-grain bread with local cheese and homemade marmalade, and good, strong Swedish coffee, take in some fresh air and sunshine on a pastoral stroll with the sheep, as they pick their way through the rocky fields. Incidentally the massive boulders, which lie thick in the fields here, seem a likely impetus for so many Swedes having left their farms and immigrated to the New World in the middle of the19th century.
For tourists with more of a taste for class and culture, the restored château Kaggeholms Slott, in the hamlet of Ekerö, satisfies. Built in the fashionable18th century, and furnished and landscaped accordingly, Kaggeholms presides over a sprawling estate with gardens and fields, perched on the shores of the icy Baltic.
The warm, personalized hospitality – which includes complimentary teas, coffee, and cocoa, plus cookies from the three clear glass jars on the table at the far end of the gallery-turned-dining room – and comfortable, spacious guestrooms with delightful views, each one unique, make Kaggeholms a top pick.
Sampling the Local Cuisine
Gastronomically speaking, one of the most surprising things about a visit to Stockholm is the diversity of cuisine available. A far cry from the Viking days of reindeer meat and boiled potatoes (though these are, of course, also still available), today a walk down most any street in the downtown area will reveal authentic ethnic restaurants offering sushi, Lebanese kebabs, and the spicy flavors of Southeast Asia.
Other favorite mealtime options, more typically Swedish, include smoked salmon, chilled salad of diced potatoes, snap peas, tomatoes, and red and yellow bell pepper, and – of course – meatballs with brown sauce, accompanied by lingonberry jam and whipped potatoes. Finally, any visit to the dining table in Sweden deserves to be punctuated by long slices of fresh, hearty bread with salted butter or an herbed sour cream spread.
Enjoying the Outdoors
Nature lovers will revel in the long evenings, enjoying (including dawn and dusk) nearly twenty hours of daylight in the late spring, and even as many as a solid twenty-four hours in the summer months. In the springtime, anemones (delicate, white flowers which grow scattered over most any plot of open ground) are a nostalgic sign of the arrival of the new season, and fat yellow dandelions poke their heads up all along the roadsides.
Flowers are plentiful, trees are newly-clothed in bright green foliage, and the clear sky and warm sun make it easy to see where the inspiration came from for the blue and gold of the national flag. The color green, though, abounds in field and forest. And with the national “every man’s right” law, even tourists have permission to pick nearly anything anywhere – including blueberries, blackberries, lingonberries, mushrooms, and dandelion greens.
See? It’s not all about ice-fishing and name brands in Sweden. But with the abundance of beautiful and memorable experiences on offer, any visitor to the land of the midnight sun will have that figured out before the first day is finished.
Audrey Heald - Audrey Heald has been blogging since before it was cool, or perhaps since right about the time that it started to become cool, and has ...
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