You have to be crazy about the
outdoors to live in Stockholm, a
watery city made up of 14 different
islands and 57 bridges. In summer
it hardly gets dark at all – allowing
plenty of time to enjoy the city’s many
parks, boats and beaches. Swedes
love their green environment – they
even recycle their household rubbish
to fuel city buses and taxis.
DARE TO BELIEVE?
If you go on the Stockholm
metro never get into a plain,
silver carriage. The Silver
Arrow, as it's known, is
said to be a real-life ghost
train! Urban legend says
that the spooky train drops
passengers at Kymlinge, the
Station of the Dead. Luckily,
the truth is not quite so scary.
Eight silver cars did indeed once
roam the metro, but they were all
decommissioned during the mid 1990s.
As for Kymlinge, there is a real station there,
but it has never been open for public use.
VIKING BLING
The Vikings were a fierce
bunch with a taste for decadence and
bling. Women in the ancient city of Birka,
reached by boat from Stockholm’s City Hall,
wore huge gold and silver neck rings. It was
also the done thing for ladies to tie a box
to their chest with a knife hanging
from it. The knife was used to
scoop out earwax!
MAGICAL
MIDSUMMER
On Midsummer Eve,
the sun’s light shines
long into the night.
Stockholmers flock
to the countryside
for a magical ‘white
night’ of dancing and
merrymaking. Girls
pick seven different
types of flower and
slip them under
their pillow. An old
Midsummer tale
claims that when they
drift off to sleep, their
dreams will reveal
the man that they’re
destined to marry!
THE DEVIL’S BIBLE
One of the strangest books in the world is kept in
Stockholm’s National Library. Codex Gigas
(Latin for ‘Giant
Book’) was made during the 13th century from more than
160 animal skins. The tome is as tall as a baby elephant! If
a person sat down today to write out its contents, it would
take them five years working continuously day and night –
and that doesn’t include all the pictures inside.
CRAZY
CRAYFISH PARTY
August in Stockholm sees the annual
kräftskiva
(crayfish party). Children make
lamps decorated with smiling moon
faces and everyone feasts on crayfish,
boiled alive fresh from the Baltic Sea.
Even the grown-ups wear bibs!
INVISIBLE BIKE HELMETS
Riding a bike is the coolest way to get around
Stockholm. As not everyone loves wearing a
helmet, a cunning Swedish company invented
an invisible version that sits around the rider’s
neck like a scarf. If the wearer crashes or
falls, a fat inflatable hood puffs up around
their head in less than a second – just like the
airbag in a car.
SWEDEN
SOLAR SYSTEM
Only in Stockholm can you ride a glass
gondola on the Sun and go shopping on Mars. Spread
across the city, the Sweden Solar System is the largest
permanent scale model of the Solar System in the world. Different
buildings represent the planets and the Ericsson Globe – a wacky,
white ball-shaped building – is the Sun.