Stockholm

I'm back home briefly from a short but splendid trip to Stockholm to enjoy a bit of quality time with my favourite journalist, Catherine Edwards and her charming boyfriend. It's my fourth trip to Sweden, and my third to the capital, and it continues to grow on me. In summer, it's quite delightful, and the fact that Stockholm is really a collection of islands gives it a great deal of character and interest. It's also a city with a fascinating history.

A boat trip was high on my list of travel priorities - I've managed at least one trip on the water on each of my previous visits to Sweden, and this time there was the opportunity to do an extensive tour of the waterways, including the vast lake, which is associated with a fascinating legend. While listening to the guide's commentary about this, I had the idea for a story - something I've striven for in vain on my earlier visits. This story is provisionally titled 'Thin Ice'. Mind you, given that I've got a number of major projects on the go at present, I'm not entirely sure when I'll get round to writing it up.

Among other highlights was a visit to the vast wooded cemetery where Greta Garbo is buried. The scale of the place reminded me of my visit to England's National Memorial Arboretum. There are plenty of great walks around the centre, both in Gamla Stan, the old town, and along various waterfronts. If you haven't visited Stockholm, you've a treat in store.

On the flights to and from Stockholm, I read a couple of entertaining books. Only one of them will be reviewed, though. This is because, to my amazement, I discovered after I'd finished the other book that I'd not only read it before, but I'd reviewed it on this blog - albeit quite a few years ago. The amazing thing was that it is a fairly enjoyable (if slightly trashy) story, even though none of it had stuck. The only consolation I have is that my feelings about the book haven't changed from those expressed in the review!

In the Footsteps of Lisbeth Salander

If you asked me to pick the most memorable character in the crime fiction of the 21st century, then I don't think I'd look any further than Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander. She is wholly distinctive and yet somehow very much in the tradition of the maverick detective. So during a brief trip to Stockholm from which I've just returned, I enjoyed making a pilgrimage to one of her favourite hang-outs, the old beer hall Kvarnen, which features in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And the food was excellent - they did a very good special meatballs dish, one of the local favourites.

Scandinavian noir fiction has been all the rage for more than a decade now, and yet Stockholm is a thriving and (at least from the perspective of a tourist) highly civilised city, not perhaps the most obvious setting for murder and mayhem. We were lucky to have a well informed guide, one Catherine Edwards, whose first job since graduating is as a journalist for The Local, based in Sweden.

This was my second trip to Stockholm, the first having been a one day stop during a Baltic capitals cruise, and the visit reinforced my enthusiasm for the city. There's plenty to see, far more than a few days' worth of sights. The Moderna Museet, tucked away on one of the city's many islands, is impressive, and so is the charming old town, Gamla Stan. Skansen, the world's first open air museum, is also packed with interesting things to see.

Stockholm is sometimes called "the Venice of the North", and although it's a misleading comparison, because the two cities are utterly different, with so much water, there is the chance to take some fascinating boat trips. Our voyage to the fabulous Drottningholm Palace on a sunny day was especially memorable. And so was a Father's Day dinner cooked in her flat by Catherine.

Helsinki and Stockholm

The last two ports of call on my recent cruise were the capitals of Finland and Sweden respectively. I hadn’t done any research in advance, so I didn’t know what to expect of Helsinki. I thought it might be rather an anti-climax after St Petersburg. But in fact, I liked it very much. As always, a sunny day helped a good deal, and my only regret was not managing to fit in a boat tour round the city’s waterfront – always a good way to see a place.

Such a tour was a real highlight of the final stop, at Stockholm. A full day’s excursion took in the Old Town (very appealing, if not quite as magical as Tallinn) and the Vasa Museum, featuring a rescued and restored ship, before a long journey around the waterways which provided a spectacular perspective on a very green and attractive-looking city.

I’ve not read any Finnish crime stories, but of course Sweden has become a key location for some of the best and most popular books in the genre, something nobody would have foreseen a generation ago. I’ve had the impression of a rather melancholy place, a view perhaps inspired by Martin Beck’s ulcer and Wallander’s gloomy ruminations, and no doubt in winter, when the weather is cold and wet and the nights are long, it can be rather bleak. But last week, sunlit Stockholm seemed to me to be quite magnificent.