The view from the boat, as we sailed into Stockholm on a
sunny morning in June.
At 6:48 A.M. I was dreamily showering when flash of white swooshed by the porthole. Craning my neck, I could just make out a water taxi as it glided to the end of a rustic pier. It picked up a few passengers from a gazebo, then shot back in reverse and zoomed off again, like a deranged water insect.
What a divine way to go to work--especially if you live in the Stockholm Archipelago.
It was the end of June and we were sailing into Sweden’s capital through some of the 24,000 islands, islets and tiny knolls that make up the 60-square mile archipelago, one of the largest in the Baltic Sea. The night before, the boat had climbed one crashing wave after another, rising high, then falling low as we forged across the stormy Gulf of Finland. We retired early, but I never slept. Instead I spent the night in a semi-drugged stupor, dimly aware of every shudder and creak of the boat.
By this morning, though, a pale summer sun was peeking through the clouds and it seemed as if we had crossed into a Nordic wonderland of dark, heavily forested islands. I glimpsed alluring summer houses—a mustard-colored Victorian gingerbread with sheer white curtains fluttering in the breeze; a small red-roofed cottage perched so near the water that you could dive in from the second floor windows; a sprawling brick “castle” with weathered copper turrets and a velvety lawn that could have been the setting for Ingmar Bergman’s romantic farce, Smiles of a Summer Night.
An idyllic summer cottage on one of the 24,000 islands that make
up the Stockholm archipelago.
Mentally I rifled through fantasies of a better life: Bare feet, a linen sundress and a fishing pole? (The cottage.) Or champagne and baroque pearls? (The castle.)
Stockholm covers a cluster of 14 islands, and though the suburbs stretch back into the mainland, it is the water’s edge that defines the historic center. Arriving by boat, passing verdant parks and golden-hued neoclassical facades, is an experience that rivals the entrance by vaporetto down the Grand Canal into Venice. Everywhere barges, ferries, taxis, fishing craft, sailboats and yachts ply the water for commerce or pleasure. Unlike New York, it is a city that has not lost its watery bearings.
We docked in Nybrovisken behind the very, well, grand Grand Hotel (ballroom modeled after Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors) and a few steps away from Wedholm’s Fisk, one of Stockholm’s most stylish fish restaurants. Moments later we were ambling up Nybrogatan to the handsome 1889 brick Ostermalms Saluhall, foodie heaven for the city’s prosperous bourgeoisie. Inside cashmere-clad businessmen and stout, steely-haired matrons shopped for wildflower honey, smoked boar and imported raspberries under a high arched glass roof. From the carved wooden stalls spilled forth the bounty of the North—red and yellow beets, feathery dill, cloudberry jam, freshly baked cardamom buns.
At B. Anderssson, a fresh meat and game purveyor in Ostermalms
Saluhall, an 1889 market in Stockholm, well-heeled shoppers
select fresh duck liver, truffles and ready cooked game dishes.
Naturally, though, the catch from regional waters reigns supreme. Wandering past cases abundantly stocked with glistening fish and shellfish, pristinely arrayed on snow fields of crushed ice, I came upon a gigantic crab claw—about 18 inches long, its enormous pink bony “fingers” tipped in black. I could only imagine the monstrous creature from which it was wrested.
A Chatka king crab claw on display at a Saluhall fishmonger.
In "En Route: Scandinavia; Northern Lights: the New Flavors of Sweden” (The New York Times, October 16, 2002), R. W. Apple described the magnificent display presented by Dieter Berner, a Saluhall fishmonger:
“Every day, for the delectation of his discriminating customers, he arranges…a magnificent piscatorial still-life—trout and cod, perch and pike, sole and lemon sole, hake and brill and artic char, eel and shrimp, crab and langouste and scallops, immense turbot, glacier-white halibut, hideous anglerfish, elegant silver-skinned salmon with underslung jaws, and that great Scandinavian favorite, plaice, with little orange-red spots that look uncannily like measles.”
The quickest way to test the waters, so to speak, is to snare a table, maybe a round communal one, at Lisa Elmqvist, a noisy, crowded fish restaurant that occupies a large wooden gazebo right in the center of the Saluhall. Lisa Elmqvist was an“archipelago girl” whose connections to fishermen in the islands helped her build a reputation for impeccably fresh fish after she opened her market stall in 1926. Today the operation is run by her descendants and the quality of the fish is still superb. Eating there is one way to observe up close the notoriously restrained Swedes: The first time we sat with a trio of architects with pale blue eyes and long faces right out of a Bergman movie (think Max von Sydow in triplicate), the next with a pair of rather more bubbly dowagers cooing over pictures of grandchildren.
At Lisa Elmqvist, a Swedish-style bouillabaisse with mussels, halibut
and baby shrimp, perfumed with saffron and dill.
The specials change daily, but on both visits I ordered lisasklara fisk – och skaldjurssoppa med aioli och vitlosksbrod-- a.k.a, the most delicious fish soup with aioli and garlic bread. The briny saffron-scented broth, perfumed with dill and studded with tomato and onions, was replete with fish so fresh it could have been hauled from the deep hours before. Chunks of redfish, salmon and halibut, tiny shrimp and mussels made a divine Swedish bouillabaisse.
Alexandra adored her grillad piggvarfile med friterad halloumi ljummen tomatvinegrette och gron sparris: a delicate fillet of grilled turbot with deep-fried halloumi, creamy tomato vinaigrette and green asparagus. And B was able to indulge in a deep yen for herring. His hefty plate of pickled and creamed herring came with lots of red onion, leeks, dill, watercress, red and black caviar and hard boiled eggs. But the real piece de resistance was a bowl of the tiny new potatoes with dill, earthy and sweet, with a touch of sour cream.
Another good thing about sharing a table is that you get to peek at your neighbor’s plate: the dowagers tucked into fried fillets of plaice with bowls of pommes frites , while the architects unapologetically demolished a huge platter of shellfish on ice: smoked and boiled shrimp, oysters on the half shell, boiled lobster, salt water crayfish, and enormous Chatka king crab claws.
After all that, who could think about dessert? But we did. Swedish strawberries over homemade vanilla ice cream with sprigs of lemon balm—a perfect dessert for a summer day in the archipelago.