Stockholm - The Beautiful Nordic Capital

The capital of Sweden, having been founded around eight centuries ago, spans out over an archipelago of islands. Sitting majestically under the cerulean sky and flanked by the azure water of Lake Mälaren and the cobalt waves of the Baltic Sea, Stockholm exudes the essence of a port city; a theme accentuated by the clarion seagull calls and the scent of the sea.

Walking the medieval streets of Gamla Stan, the old town of the city, admiring the neat and sturdy facades of the buildings and browsing the cafes, book stores and elegant shops, I marvel at how disparate modern Sweden has evolved from the days of the Vikings. Instead of the ferocious raiders of Northern Europe (taking away riches and slaves (thralls) but also bringing across much Nordic influences, including enriching the English language by introducing words such as Wednesday, Thursday, law, berserk, and more importantly, cozy and cake), Sweden has metamorphosed into one of the most civilized countries in the world.

I visited the City Hall, a majestic building perched by the water on the Eastern tip of Kungsholmen Island and looking much older than its 90 odd years. Designed by Ragnar Őstberg in a Romanesque revival style reminiscent of Venetian Gothic such as the Doge’s Palace but softened by the Swedish taste for minimalism, the city hall is an office building for the municipal council of Stockholm. It is also the venue of the Nobel Prize banquet. The guided tour is very informative and the architecture, like all good architecture, provides plenty of amusing stories and insights. The Golden Hall is quite resplendent-the walls being covered by mosaics of gold leaves, and one can actually hire it for a fancy do if one is willing enough to go deep enough into the purse. 

Another highlight is the Vasa museum, where the most complete 17^th century battle ship in the world is on display. The Vasa, named after the Swedish royal family at the time, is quite the magnificent gun ship. Even now its enormity can’t fail to impress. More than that is its intricate carvings and its amusingly ironic if tragic history. The Vasa was commissioned by the king as the spearhead for a new fleet in the battle against his hated Hungarian cousin. The king demanded it to be the most lavish, imposing, testosterone-fuelled ship to date. Towards this, the king, not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination, kept making demands to the ship builders to change this and elongate that, the result being, after its launch, the Vasa, much narrower than it should have been for its record-breaking height, sank when a ‘moderate breeze’ as records say, made it list so much that it capsized, having not made even a single nautical mile.

An institution of Swedish life is the ‘fika’. This etymology of this term is an interesting back formation from reversing the syllables from ‘kaffi’, or coffee in old Swedish. Now a verb as well as a noun, what fika describes is having a break from work and – differing it from mere tea, which can be a solitary affair (and not always worse for that), emphasises the catching up with friends and colleagues over coffee and pastries. Many cafes, in fact, all of a half dozen that I visited in my short stay, have a system of self-serve. After paying for a coffee and a delicious shiny cinnamon bun, say, or a slice of scrumptious Princess cake, one can help oneself to limitless filtered coffee, sitting on communal stations with all the accompaniments. If one is so inclined, one can in theory spend a lovely crisp, bright afternoon alfresco with a good book and endless cups of quality coffee.

In fact, having been raised in a Socialist country, an impression that quickly formed in my mind is how reminiscent of a Socialist society Stockholm seemed in many ways. The famous welfare system, the envy of much of the world, is something often cited as a working model of socialism in action. Bernie Sanders indeed point to Sweden as an example for his vision of a more socialist America. However, he is very mistaken. It is interesting to note that Sweden is in fact historically and indeed even now very much capitalist. Social welfare in the modern sense was actually instilled by anti-Marxist Unionists. Large corporations and industries are always very welcome in Sweden and have always been given great intellectual freedom and rights, leading to innovations and the attraction of talents. What the Swedish do is to apply high taxes (from 50% to up to 70%) and to re-divert the tax money back into society in the form of social welfare. What this means is that the Swedes are very well educated (most Swedes speak English quite faultlessly) and liberated from the limitations of illness and child rearing. A jobless family gets free health care, free day care, free schooling, and around $2000 in welfare payments each month.

You might wonder why Swedes are happy to have so much of their hard-earned money given to others. Indeed, the social safety net has always been a popular political and social institution in Sweden. What marks Sweden and the Swedish out from other European nations is the very deeply-ingrained solidaristic instincts of the inhabitants. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Sweden is one of the few European countries (I think Finland and Norway are the others) that never had feudalism and hence the enormous class-differences such a system entails. This is perhaps why the Nordic nations embraced the Social Democrat model that favours capitalism but also income redistribution and democracy – not at all socialist. With high skill levels achieved by fine education and safety nets in place to make life smooth, up to 85-90% of working age people are employed and pay taxes, thereby making the arrangement viable. In other words, the Swedes are a very hard working, compassionate and decent people. Must be something in the crystalline waters and pellucid air.