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Travelogues of the 2020s: Sweden Readin'
Sep. 18th, 2023 09:33 amI'm a huge fan of Nordic crime novels, many of them Swedish: Henning Mankell, Camilla Lackberg, Liza Marklund, Helene Tursten, Tove Alsterdal, M.T. Edvardsson, Åsa Larsson - and, of course, Stieg Larsson. So at the top of my must-see/must-do list on my recent trip to Sweden was the Stieg Larsson Millennium tour, a 2-hour guided walking tour in the Södermalm neighbourhood of Stockholm.
Although the tour itself was not until 6PM, I decided to make a day of exploring the Södermalm/SOFO part of town. I took the metro to Slussen station and then had a leisurely walk along Götgatan and Folkungagatan, grabbing a coffee along the way and stopping in at various little shops that caught my eye. I looked for (and found) the English Bookshop on Södermannagatan ... and of course that led me down a whole new rabbit hole. I wanted to buy everything but managed to limit myself to books that were of a relatively compact size and that I didn't think would be that quick or easy to obtain at home. Surprisingly, perhaps, most of them were not in the mystery or crime fiction genre; they were more in the line of memoirs and books by prominent Swedish writers like August Strindberg, Astrid Lindgren and Karin Boye. I think I'll have to devote a separate entry to discussing the books I got there. Anyway, when I was paying for it all, they gave me a slew of their bookmarks and I learned that they also had a shop in Göteborg, a city that was also on my itinerary. Yet another must-visit shop for my list! You can find out more about English Bookshop locations in Sweden at: www.bookshop.se
Then it was off to the Stockholm City Museum (Stadsmuseet), where I enjoyed an outdoor lunch followed by a pleasant afternoon exploring the museum and strolling along the waterfront.
After all that walking and still with time to kill before 6PM and another two hours' worth of walking (much of it uphill over cobbled streets and lanes), I decided I'd better start orienting myself and locate the place where the tour was to start. Have I mentioned before that I have a terrible sense of direction and can easily get myself turned around and heading in completely the wrong direction? Anyway, I followed my map and found 1 Bellmansgatan (the site of Mikael Blomkvist's apartment) quite easily. And in that area were quite a number of pubs and cafés with outdoor patios. So I went to one that appealed to me, just a few doors away from no. 1 Bellmansgatan and ordered myself a glass of local beer so I could people-watch and browse through some of my purchases.
By around 5:50PM, I saw a woman standing next to a wall just by no.1, holding a clipboard and a stack of leaflets and other papers. It was indeed Eva, my tour guide. We chatted a bit about our favourite books and authors as we waited but by about 6:10, it was apparent that no one else was going to show up. So that was a surprise but a very pleasant one, as I had the luxury of my own private tour! She had lots of stories to tell about Stieg Larsson, his life and upbringing and family, his editorial work and political activism and efforts to understand the motivations behind some of the extreme right-wing factions that were gaining an alarming foothold in Sweden at the time. And that of course made for some serious threats to his life and his security.
She talked about Pippi Longstocking, the main inspiration behind Lisbeth Salander. I read the Pippi books as a child myself, as did my daughter and now my grandchildren. I reread them as an adult, in addition to several other Astrid Lindgren books for kids like the Kalle Blomkvist series (in the second-hand American editions I ordered through Abebooks, he was called Bill Bergson) and Mio, My Son. While in Sweden, I bought a couple more of the Astrid Lindgren books in English translation: Master Detective (published in the U.K. and in which Kalle Blomkvist was actually called that) and Karlsson on the Roof. Interestingly enough, my edition of Karlsson was translated by Sarah Death, who also translated Karin Smirnoff's The Girl in the Eagle's Talons, the latest book in the Millennium series.
There was ample time for the questions I had and Eva even took me to some spots that weren't part of the official tour. For example, the final stop before we parted at the metro station was rather a sad one: the grave of Michael Nyqvist, the actor who played Mikael Blomqvist in the movies, and who died in 2015.
As an aside, I had pretty much given up on reading the Millennium series after the first David Lagercrantz book, which I found somewhat disappointing. I was curious, however, about the new one by Karin Smirnoff and Eva said she thought that I would probably still enjoy it and be able to follow the characters and action, even without having read the rest of the Lagercrantz books. So I'll probably get a copy through one of my favourite independent bookstores and read it in the next few months.
Although the tour itself was not until 6PM, I decided to make a day of exploring the Södermalm/SOFO part of town. I took the metro to Slussen station and then had a leisurely walk along Götgatan and Folkungagatan, grabbing a coffee along the way and stopping in at various little shops that caught my eye. I looked for (and found) the English Bookshop on Södermannagatan ... and of course that led me down a whole new rabbit hole. I wanted to buy everything but managed to limit myself to books that were of a relatively compact size and that I didn't think would be that quick or easy to obtain at home. Surprisingly, perhaps, most of them were not in the mystery or crime fiction genre; they were more in the line of memoirs and books by prominent Swedish writers like August Strindberg, Astrid Lindgren and Karin Boye. I think I'll have to devote a separate entry to discussing the books I got there. Anyway, when I was paying for it all, they gave me a slew of their bookmarks and I learned that they also had a shop in Göteborg, a city that was also on my itinerary. Yet another must-visit shop for my list! You can find out more about English Bookshop locations in Sweden at: www.bookshop.se
Then it was off to the Stockholm City Museum (Stadsmuseet), where I enjoyed an outdoor lunch followed by a pleasant afternoon exploring the museum and strolling along the waterfront.
After all that walking and still with time to kill before 6PM and another two hours' worth of walking (much of it uphill over cobbled streets and lanes), I decided I'd better start orienting myself and locate the place where the tour was to start. Have I mentioned before that I have a terrible sense of direction and can easily get myself turned around and heading in completely the wrong direction? Anyway, I followed my map and found 1 Bellmansgatan (the site of Mikael Blomkvist's apartment) quite easily. And in that area were quite a number of pubs and cafés with outdoor patios. So I went to one that appealed to me, just a few doors away from no. 1 Bellmansgatan and ordered myself a glass of local beer so I could people-watch and browse through some of my purchases.
By around 5:50PM, I saw a woman standing next to a wall just by no.1, holding a clipboard and a stack of leaflets and other papers. It was indeed Eva, my tour guide. We chatted a bit about our favourite books and authors as we waited but by about 6:10, it was apparent that no one else was going to show up. So that was a surprise but a very pleasant one, as I had the luxury of my own private tour! She had lots of stories to tell about Stieg Larsson, his life and upbringing and family, his editorial work and political activism and efforts to understand the motivations behind some of the extreme right-wing factions that were gaining an alarming foothold in Sweden at the time. And that of course made for some serious threats to his life and his security.
She talked about Pippi Longstocking, the main inspiration behind Lisbeth Salander. I read the Pippi books as a child myself, as did my daughter and now my grandchildren. I reread them as an adult, in addition to several other Astrid Lindgren books for kids like the Kalle Blomkvist series (in the second-hand American editions I ordered through Abebooks, he was called Bill Bergson) and Mio, My Son. While in Sweden, I bought a couple more of the Astrid Lindgren books in English translation: Master Detective (published in the U.K. and in which Kalle Blomkvist was actually called that) and Karlsson on the Roof. Interestingly enough, my edition of Karlsson was translated by Sarah Death, who also translated Karin Smirnoff's The Girl in the Eagle's Talons, the latest book in the Millennium series.
There was ample time for the questions I had and Eva even took me to some spots that weren't part of the official tour. For example, the final stop before we parted at the metro station was rather a sad one: the grave of Michael Nyqvist, the actor who played Mikael Blomqvist in the movies, and who died in 2015.
As an aside, I had pretty much given up on reading the Millennium series after the first David Lagercrantz book, which I found somewhat disappointing. I was curious, however, about the new one by Karin Smirnoff and Eva said she thought that I would probably still enjoy it and be able to follow the characters and action, even without having read the rest of the Lagercrantz books. So I'll probably get a copy through one of my favourite independent bookstores and read it in the next few months.
