Stockholm: Gamla Stan & City Hall

At the southern end of the garden, facing the water, stands an equestrian bronze statue of King Karl the Thirteenth, who reigned from eighteen oh nine to eighteen eighteen and who signed the constitution that established modern Sweden as a constitutional monarchy. He looks, to be honest, slightly bored. Closer to where you're standing now, at the northern end, is a smaller statue of Karl the Twelfth, a warrior king who died in battle in seventeen eighteen and who is depicted pointing east, toward Russia, Sweden's old enemy.

Here's a thing worth knowing before we walk. Stockholm is built on fourteen islands, connected by fifty-seven bridges. You're currently on Norrmalm, the mainland part of central Stockholm. Across the narrow channel to the south — you can see the water from here — is Stadsholmen, the City Island, better known as Gamla Stan, the Old Town. That's our destination for the next forty-five minutes. Beyond Gamla Stan, further south and connected by more bridges, is Södermalm. Beyond to the west are Kungsholmen and Riddarholmen. The waterways you're looking at are not sea but fresh water — this is Lake Mälaren meeting the Baltic, and Stockholm sits at the dividing line.

When you're ready, walk south through the garden toward the water. When you reach the end of the garden, you'll see a grand Baroque palace directly ahead across a short bridge. That's the Royal Palace, our next stop.

The current palace was designed by the architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger in a restrained Italian Baroque style. Construction began in sixteen ninety-seven, immediately after the fire, and dragged on for sixty-four years. It was finally completed in seventeen fifty-four. The Swedish royal family has lived here ever since.

If you're here between noon and twelve-forty, you're about to see the daily Changing of the Guard, Högvaktsavlösningen. It happens every day, year-round, and in summer it includes a mounted cavalry band in blue and gold uniforms playing military marches as they ride in from the north. It's one of the best free shows in Europe. Even in winter, when the band is absent, the ceremony is quietly dignified — a platoon of soldiers in grey greatcoats marching into the courtyard and formally relieving the previous watch. The whole thing takes about forty minutes and happens in the large inner courtyard of the palace, which is open to visitors.

If you're here at another time, walk through the main gate on the western side of the palace and into the central courtyard anyway. The Royal Apartments, the Treasury, and the Armoury are all visitable for a combined ticket of about two hundred kronor. The Treasury contains the Swedish crown jewels, including the coronation crown of Erik the Fourteenth from fifteen sixty-one, the oldest preserved coronation crown in Europe. It's in a small basement room, under security glass, and it's astonishing.

Now walk south through the palace courtyard and out onto Slottsbacken, the Castle Slope. You'll see a large brick church immediately to your left. That's Stockholm Cathedral, our next stop.

The church has three masterpieces. The first is the Sankt Göran och Draken, Saint George and the Dragon, a carved oak sculpture by the German master Bernt Notke completed in fourteen eighty-nine. It stands about three and a half metres tall — the knight, his horse, the dragon, and at the base, the princess. Every detail is rendered with incredible medieval realism. The dragon has real antlers embedded in its skull. The horse's tail is made of real horsehair, strands still preserved. The princess's dress has actual silver threading. It is one of the finest late-medieval wood sculptures in Europe.

It's not just decorative — it commemorates the Battle of Brunkeberg, fought on Halloween, fourteen seventy-one, just north of here, when the Swedish regent Sten Sture the Elder defeated the Danish king Christian the First and temporarily ended Danish rule over Sweden. Saint George is Sten Sture. The dragon is Christian. The princess is Sweden. It's propaganda, carved in oak, dressed in real horsehair.

The second masterpiece is the painting Vädersolstavlan, the Sundog Painting, on the south wall of the nave. It shows an atmospheric phenomenon — a halo effect with multiple false suns — that appeared over Stockholm on the twentieth of April, fifteen thirty-five, and was considered a divine omen. The original painting has not survived, but the sixteen thirty-six copy that hangs here is the oldest known depiction of the city of Stockholm. Study it. You can see the medieval city walls, the original Tre Kronor palace with its three towers, the wooden windmills on the hills. It's a time machine.

The third masterpiece is the royal pew, a wildly ornate Baroque canopy throne where the king and queen sit during services. Built in the sixteen eighties, it is the most over-the-top piece of church furniture in Sweden, with gilded angels, crowns, and Kegelformig stacked pediments. Look up at it. Kings and queens have been sitting in that pew for three hundred and forty years. The monarchs came. The monarchs went. The pew stayed.

When you're done inside, exit and walk around to the back of the church. You'll find a small cobbled courtyard behind Storkyrkan and the adjacent Finska kyrkan, the Finnish Church. Look for something very, very small. That's our next stop.

The sculpture was made in nineteen sixty-seven by the artist Liss Eriksson. Eriksson was inspired by his own childhood memories — specifically, by the feeling of looking up at the moon as a small boy and feeling both enormous and insignificant. He sculpted the boy, installed him quietly behind the Finnish Church, and didn't particularly draw attention to the piece. For a long time, the Iron Boy was a local secret.

Then, slowly, the tradition developed. People started leaving things for him. Small coins. Wrapped caramels. A miniature scarf around his neck in winter. A hat for his head. During the pandemic, someone left him a miniature protective face mask. The tradition is that rubbing his head brings good luck. The tradition is also that leaving a coin beside him will ensure you come back to Stockholm. If you look closely, his bronze head is worn nearly smooth by the hands of travellers who have been doing this for fifty years.

The scarves, by the way, are put there in winter by caring locals. The parks department takes them away when they get too wet. But another scarf always appears. He's never cold for long.

The sculpture has a companion. About two hundred metres from here, installed in two thousand and eleven, is Järnflickan, the Iron Girl. She's slightly bigger and she's sitting on the stone wall by the ferry terminal watching the water. Very few visitors know about her. If you have time later, she's worth finding — she's at the edge of Kornhamnstorg square.

Pause here a moment. This tiny statue is, in its quiet way, a model of Swedish public sculpture in general. No grand generals on horseback. No imperial emperors. A small iron boy, looking up at the moon, missing someone. Modern Sweden in fifteen centimetres of bronze.

When you're ready, walk back out to Köpmangatan, the street beside the Finnish Church. Turn left, walk past Storkyrkan, and follow the street west. After two blocks you'll emerge into a wide-open square surrounded by tall, colourful gabled buildings. That's Stortorget, the Main Square, and it is probably the most photographed square in Sweden — and the site of one of the worst massacres in Swedish history.

On the eighth and ninth of November, fifteen twenty, this square was the site of the Stockholms blodbad, the Stockholm Bloodbath.

Here's the story. In November fifteen twenty, King Christian the Second of Denmark had just finished conquering Sweden after years of war. Sweden had been trying to break free from the Kalmar Union — the medieval confederation that had united Denmark, Norway, and Sweden under a single Danish crown since thirteen ninety-seven. Christian had finally crushed the Swedish resistance, entered Stockholm, and arranged to be formally crowned king of Sweden on the fourth of November, fifteen twenty. He promised amnesty to his defeated opponents. He threw a lavish three-day celebration in this very square.

Then, on the evening of the seventh of November, he closed the city gates. On the morning of the eighth, he arrested over a hundred Swedish nobles, bishops, merchants, and members of the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament, and charged them as heretics. By the end of the ninth of November, between eighty and one hundred Swedish aristocrats had been beheaded right here on the cobblestones of Stortorget. Some were hanged. The corpses were burned on a massive pyre on Södermalm, the next island to the south. You could see the smoke from everywhere in the city.

Christian had done this because he wanted to eliminate the entire leadership class of Sweden in one day, ensuring that Swedish independence would be permanently impossible. What he had actually done was trigger the revolt that would destroy the Kalmar Union and create modern independent Sweden. A young nobleman named Gustav Eriksson, whose father Erik Johansson Vasa was one of the men beheaded on this square, was travelling in the Dalarna region when news of the massacre reached him. He raised an army of Dalarna peasants. He fought a three-year war. By fifteen twenty-three, he was king of Sweden under the name Gustav Vasa. The Kalmar Union was finished. Sweden was independent. Christian had, by trying to eliminate Sweden, literally created it.

Now, look at the red building on the northwest corner of the square — it's called Grillska Huset today. Look carefully at the façade, about two metres up from the ground. Do you see the small white stones embedded in the brickwork? Local legend says there is one stone for each noble killed in the Bloodbath, placed there afterwards by the family of one of the victims, so that the square would remember what happened. Historians cannot prove this. The stones are very old, but their meaning is uncertain. The legend, however, is beautiful and persistent, and I choose to believe it.

When you're ready, walk south out of the square onto Köpmangatan or Skomakargatan, the small streets leading south. You're looking for a very, very narrow alley on your left. It'll be obvious when you see it — the buildings literally lean in toward each other. That's our next stop.

Here is the quirk. Stockholm as we know it began in the thirteenth century as an essentially German commercial colony. The Hanseatic League — the powerful medieval trading confederation of Low German cities — had a stranglehold on Baltic trade, and Stockholm's entire merchant class spoke German, wrote in German, attended German churches, and took orders from German guilds. The Swedish king Magnus Eriksson, in the thirteen fifties, formally recognised that Stockholm's city council had to be at least half German. The Swedes in Stockholm were peasants, servants, sailors, and soldiers. The Germans were the merchants, the owners, the middle class, and most of the inhabitants of Gamla Stan were German-speaking.

This changed only slowly, over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as Gustav Vasa and his successors systematically broke the Hanseatic monopoly and built a Swedish national commercial class. But for four hundred years, Stockholm was a Swedish-named, German-run city. The narrow alley you're walking through, with its German merchant's name, its alley the Germans built, is the physical memory of that.

Walk down the thirty-six steps. You'll emerge onto Järntorget, Iron Square. It's named for the iron market that operated here from the fifteenth century — Sweden has always been rich in iron, and Stockholm was the largest iron-trading port on the Baltic for several centuries. The square is now a quiet corner of Gamla Stan with a Baroque fountain at the centre.

When you're ready, walk back up Västerlånggatan, the main tourist street of Gamla Stan, heading north. After about two hundred metres, on your right, you'll see a red brick Gothic church spire rising above the buildings. That's our next stop, and it's the most German building in this German city.

Go inside if it's open — it's closed most mornings and opens from noon to four. The interior is a spectacular example of North German Baroque — white walls, gilded organ pipes, dark oak pews, stained glass windows depicting Martin Luther and other figures of the German Reformation. The pulpit, built in the sixteen hundreds by the sculptor Marcus Hebel, is one of the most ornate in Sweden. The royal pew on the south side is surmounted by a crown and angels.

The church was officially owned by the German Evangelical congregation of Stockholm until nineteen seventy-six. Sunday services were held in German until that date. After the Second World War, the German population of Stockholm declined — many German businesses had moved elsewhere, the traditional trade links had broken down, and the generation that had kept the community alive was dying out. In nineteen seventy-six the church was transferred to the Church of Sweden, which now holds services here in Swedish. But one Sunday a month, German services still happen, conducted by a visiting pastor from the German embassy. The congregation is small — usually a few dozen people — but the tradition is unbroken for almost four hundred years.

This is also, quietly, one of the most interesting churches in Scandinavia from a musical standpoint. The organ, built in seventeen seventy-eight and restored in nineteen oh four, is one of the finest Baroque organs in northern Europe. The church holds regular free organ concerts on weekends — check the schedule at the entrance.

When you're done, walk out of the church and continue north on Västerlånggatan for a couple of minutes. When the street opens up to the north, turn left on Mynttorget, the Mint Square, and cross the short stone bridge across Riddarholmskanalen to the next island. That's Riddarholmen, Knight's Island, and it contains the burial place of every Swedish monarch from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century.

The church itself dates to the late thirteenth century and was originally a Franciscan monastery. After the Swedish Reformation in the fifteen hundreds, the Franciscans were expelled and the building was converted to a royal necropolis.

The spire you see now is cast iron. Ironic. It replaced the original wooden spire, which burned to the ground in eighteen thirty-five when lightning struck the church during a thunderstorm. The replacement was made in cast iron specifically to prevent future fires, and the bold spiky Neo-Gothic design was considered radical for the time. It's now one of the beloved silhouettes of Stockholm.

The island itself, Riddarholmen, is also worth noticing. Outside the church stands a statue of Birger Jarl, the thirteenth-century regent traditionally credited with founding Stockholm in twelve fifty-two. He's the city's mythic founder, and the statue shows him in full armour, staring resolutely westward across Lake Mälaren. The island used to be densely built with medieval nobles' palaces — hence the name Knight's Island — and a few of those palaces still stand around the square, most of them now converted into offices of the Swedish government's Supreme Court and other judicial branches.

Walk to the western edge of Riddarholmen and stop. The view from here is one of the best in Stockholm — Lake Mälaren spreading west, City Hall to your right across the water, the wooded hill of Södermalm to the south, and the gold-tipped towers of the Parliament building directly behind you.

When you're ready, walk north across the bridge to the mainland of Norrmalm. Follow the waterfront path west for about five minutes. You'll see a massive red-brick building with a single square tower ahead of you. That's Stockholm City Hall — our final stop.

A few quick notes about what happens inside. The Riksdag has three hundred and forty-nine members, elected every four years by proportional representation. The Swedish government is formed from parliamentary coalitions, usually two or three parties combining to form a majority. Since twenty twenty-two, Sweden has been governed by a centre-right coalition.

The building is open for free guided tours most weekdays when parliament is not in session, and the tours are genuinely interesting — you'll see the chamber of the former upper house, now used for committee meetings, and the chamber of the lower house, where votes actually happen. Public galleries are open during sessions.

Now look west — you're facing away from Gamla Stan now. Across the next bridge, on a small peninsula jutting into Lake Mälaren, is a massive red-brick building with a single tall square tower. That's Stadshuset, Stockholm City Hall, built between nineteen eleven and nineteen twenty-three. It is the most important civic building in Sweden, the site of the annual Nobel Prize banquet, and it is our final stop.

Continue walking west across the next bridge, the Stallbron, onto the mainland. Follow the waterfront path for another four hundred metres. The City Hall is directly ahead of you.

But you almost certainly know this building for one reason. Every year on the tenth of December — the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death in eighteen ninety-six — the Nobel Prize ceremony happens across town at the Stockholm Concert Hall. But the Nobel Banquet happens here, in the Blue Hall of Stockholm City Hall. Thirteen hundred guests — the laureates, the Swedish royal family, international dignitaries, scientists, writers — sit at long banquet tables under the vaulted brick ceilings, surrounded by the eighteen-thousand-volume library arranged on the mezzanine balconies. They eat a five-course meal that has been planned months in advance. After dinner, everyone moves upstairs to the Golden Hall to dance.

Now. Here's a quirk. The Blue Hall is not blue. It's red brick.

The architect, Ragnar Östberg, originally planned to cover the interior walls in deep blue painted plaster — hence the name Blå Hallen, the Blue Hall. But when the raw red brick of the interior walls was revealed during construction, Östberg decided the brick was too beautiful to cover. He changed his mind, left the walls red, and kept the name. The Blue Hall is red. It has always been red. It is still called blue. Stockholmers accept this as perfectly normal.

Upstairs, the Gyllene Salen, the Golden Hall, is the other reason to visit. Its walls are covered in eighteen million gilded mosaic tiles, applied between nineteen twenty and nineteen twenty-three. The largest single image, covering the eastern wall, is the Queen of Lake Mälaren — a massive allegorical Byzantine-style mosaic depicting Stockholm as a crowned woman with the world's cities bowing before her. She looks vaguely Egyptian, vaguely Russian, vaguely Christian, and entirely strange. A million and a half tiles make up that one figure. It took the artist Einar Forseth three years.

The tower of the City Hall is open to the public in summer. It's a ten-minute climb to the top — three hundred and sixty-five steps, one for each day of the year, which I'm told is a coincidence but I'm not sure I believe it. From the top, on a clear day, you can see most of central Stockholm — all fourteen islands, Gamla Stan, the palace, Djurgården to the east, Södermalm's rocky bluff to the south, and Lake Mälaren stretching fifty kilometres to the west.

And this is where your walk ends. Sit at the outdoor café at the base of the tower. Order a kanelbulle, a Swedish cinnamon bun. Watch the boats on the water. You've walked across four of Stockholm's fourteen islands — Norrmalm, Gamla Stan, Riddarholmen, Helgeandsholmen, and now Kungsholmen. You've seen the smallest public statue in Sweden and one of the biggest gold mosaics in Europe. You've walked through the narrowest alley on the continent. You've stood in the square where Christian the Second accidentally created modern Sweden. You've seen the burial place of six hundred years of kings, and the banquet hall where every Nobel laureate since nineteen thirty has come to dinner.

Tack. Thank you for walking with me. Welcome to Stockholm.