Monteliusvagen

This four-hundred-metre walking path runs along the northern cliffs of Sodermalm, and it offers what many Stockholmers quietly consider the finest view in the city. To your left, a sheer drop. Ahead, City Hall rising from the water, Gamla Stan's church spires, Lake Malaren stretching west. On a summer evening with the light going gold, it is genuinely hard to beat. The path is named after Oscar Montelius, a professor who lived from eighteen forty-three to nineteen twenty-one. He was a Swedish archaeologist who pioneered something called the typological method, a way of dating ancient objects by comparing their shapes and styles rather than where they were found. It sounds dry, but it revolutionised how archaeologists work and it is still used today. A man who spent his career studying the past now has his name attached to one of the most romantic sunset walks in northern Europe. There is a catch, though. The city does not maintain this path in winter. Between December and March, the cliffs get extremely slippery with ice, and the drop off the edge is not theoretical. There are no guardrails along much of the route. Stockholmers know this and either avoid it or approach with studded shoes and a healthy respect for gravity. It is one of those places where the beauty and the danger sit right next to each other, which, if you think about it, describes quite a lot of Stockholm. Walk it in summer and you will understand why people who live here never want to leave. Walk it in January and you will understand why Swedish vocabulary has fourteen words for different kinds of ice.