Treasures of Scandinavia

By JOHN A. HERBERT

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 6, 2000

Stockholm's islands are the jewels in Sweden's crown, offering royal sightseeing and intriguing looks back at Viking history.

Stockholm is the self-styled "Venice of the North," though Amsterdam, a gridwork of canals, may have something to say about Stockholm's claim. But downtown Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, does sprawl over 14 islands, and there are more than 22,000 islands, big and small, that stretch from the outer harbor to the Baltic Sea.

The central island of Stockholm, where development began almost 850 years ago, is the city's Gamla Stan, the Old Town. Rose and beige stucco buildings, their pilings rotting, lean ominously toward the water. The piers around one of Europe's best-preserved ancient cities are an easy and logical departure point for a day on Stockholm's waters.

Towering over the north side of Old Town is the 600-room Royal Palace, one of the biggest in Europe. All sightseeing boats pass by this site.

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The royal family doesn't live there anymore; the palace is royal office space and gilded entertainment facilities. The crown jewels are under armored glass in a basement museum.

Nearby, in the Old Town's main square, is the Stockholm Stock Exchange. That's worth noting because each October the Swedish Academy, housed in the Exchange, awards the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Traffic hub of the Old Town is Slussen, where cross-harbor ferries chug to and from Djurgarden, the royal hunting ground-turned-museum and embassy row.

Leading museums include outdoor Skansen, with sample houses from each of the nation's provinces, windmills from Swedish Baltic islands, glass-blowing from southern Sweden, nomadic Lapp tents and even a petting zoo.

A modernistic Djurgarden museum houses the Vasa, a 180-foot-long oak warship recovered from Stockholm Harbor 40 years ago. The warship capsized in a squall on its maiden voyage in 1628, en route to European battles.

The now-restored 64-gun Vasa, twice the size of our Mayflower, has since become an icon of European tourism. Rum and butter were among the 30,000 archaeological finds on what has been called a water-logged time capsule.

The Vasa museum is used for a range of exhibitions and meetings -- so wide a range that one recent show was Stockholm's first sex expo.

Ferries from Slussen also head for the Fjaedarholm Islands, about an hour out of the harbor. Fjaedarholm, once a fishing village, features a couple of fashionable restaurants, rows of souvenir shops in restored warehouses and a few miles of lazy hiking trails.

Stortorget Square is the site of the Swedish Stock Exchange, where the Swedish Academy selects the Nobel Prize winners in literature.

Day-trip cruises from Stockholm circle the entire outer harbor with frequent snapshots of Stockholm at play. One 10-hour round trip is to Sandhamn, noted for sailing regattas. Look for a century-old steamer named Storskar. Greta Garbo would get out of town on that one when she was just an unknown Swedish teenager.

Stockholm's lakefront, Venetian-styled City Hall launches steamer excursions to some of Sweden's best-preserved palaces, at Drottningholm and Gripsholm, and to thousand-year-old Viking ruins. All three boat tours are worth full-day excursions.

Diesel and even old coal-fueled steamers ply the waters from City Hall to Drottningholm, the easiest of the excursions. The tiny white boats' dining rooms serve sharp cheese, pickled herring and a main course called steamboat beef, smothered in fried onions.

Three hours downstream from City Hall is the 16th century Gripsholm Castle, the national portrait gallery. The nearby town of Mariefred has a functioning narrow-gauge steam railroad to entertain the young and the nostalgic.

North on the lake, a half-day away, are Birka, with its excavated and reconstructed Viking remains, and Sigtuna, with more Viking ruins and quaint, made-for-TV cottages.

The Baroque palace of Drottningholm, 7 miles from Stockholm on an island, has been called the Versailles of Sweden.

Drottningholm Palace, which Sweden's royal family calls home, is only about 50 feet from where the excursion boats from Stockholm dock.

The 300-year-old palace is patterned on France's Versailles, with an English-style park beside a carefully manicured French garden of hedges and fountains. Park sculptures were seized from the Czechs in the 17th century when Sweden was still a European power.

If you've seen one palace, you have more or less seen them all. All, including Drottningholm, have guided tours of musty libraries, gilded and mirrored great halls, and canopied beds where some king or queen has died. What you won't see is where the king cooks or sneaks a cigarette.

Here, the closed-off royal family's wing is on the right, as seen from the gardens, or to the left, lakeside, where the king moors his cabin cruiser.

A better use of your time would be touring Drottningholm's 18th century Court Theater, just across the palace courtyard. The theater was built by King Gustav III, who was shot in the opera house downtown. Much of this theater's original scenery is still in use. The sound of thunder is still made by rolling stones around in a barrel.

Tickets to a ballet or an opera range from $18 to $65, and the program is only held in the summer; the theater is closed in winter. All performers, stagehands and even ushers are in period costumes, with powdered wigs.

- Spring Hill resident John A. Herbert lived in Drottningholm Palace's old servants' quarters for 12 years.

If you go:

GETTING THERE: There is no direct air service between the Tampa Bay area and Stockholm, but it is served by flights from Newark, and there are so many connecting flights from Euorpean cities that Stockholm's Arlanda airport, 30 miles north of the city, is one of the busiest in Europe. Round-trip airfare from Tampa is about $1,000 in the peak summer season, about $600 off-peak. Charters may be found from Tampa or Orlando for perhaps half those prices. Trains and buses link Stockholm with the airport in 20 or 45 minutes, respectively. Taxis to and from the airport can be prohibitively expensive. The trains accept international rail passes.

GETTING AROUND: A multiday, guided bus tour is the easiest and least expensive way to sightsee in Stockholm. Hotels and meals are cheaper and well-organized. Frequent guide service is included. A true bargain for a four-day tour in and around Stockholm including hotels would be about $800. The country is a relative bargain for Americans. A few years ago, a krona (the basic Swedish currency) cost 20 U.S. cents. Now, it's only about 11 cents.

However, there is a 25 percent valued-added tax, a national sales tax, on just about everything in Sweden. The good news is tips are included in taxi and restaurant bills.

STAYING THERE: Hotels are rather expensive in Stockholm. You can save money and have a different experience by sleeping aboard Af Chapman, a youth hostel that is actually a three-masted windjammer. This is in the harbor near the Old Town and costs about $40-$50 a night.

Or stay in jail -- at the Longholmen youth hostel, just outside the city center. The bad guys have moved out of the former jail, and the cells are now open for bargain-hunting tourists.

EATING THERE: You must try an authentic smoergaasbord, a ritual, 50-course buffet meal. A smoergaasbord includes a dozen variations of pickled herring, smoked, grilled, boiled or pickled salmon, smoked turkey and, of course, Swedish meatballs.

If someone recommends a cloudberry parfait for dessert, do not hesitate. Cloudberries are similar to raspberries in shape and taste. Swedes serve cloudberries warm and syrupy.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: For general Stockholm information, check the Web site http://www.gosweden.org, or call (212) 885-9700. Also, see http://www.goscandinavia.com.

To contact SAS, the national airline, for fares and schedules, see the Web site http://www.flysas.com or http://www.scandinavian.net.

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