By: David Yawn
Sweden has garnered much attention very recently ranging from Tiger Woods’ nuptials to Swedish model Elin Nordegren to Swedish golfer Annika Sorenstam to all of the American Nobel Prize laureate candidates named this year.
However, this Nordic nation that is also home to Volvo, ABBA, Ericsson, Greta Garbo, Bjorn Borg, Ingrid Bergman, and Pippi Longstocking has curiously not been a customary stop on many Americans’ European travel itineraries or grand tour destinations. That’s an oversight, judging from the vast treasure house of what this nation offers in terms of scenic fishing villages, ancient rock carvings, gourmet restaurant gems and royal castles, among other sights.
The Chef of the Year Awards, the Nobel Dinner and the Swedish National Cooking Team certainly have contributed to the increased interest in Swedish food.
But Swedish style encompasses more than that and, in architectural terms, nicely blends the cities’ green-brown copper roofs and spires with other more country stylings born of the outdoors – red painted country houses with birch tree paneled interiors.
A week’s tour might logically start on the Western coastal city of Gothenburg (Goteborg) to locals. This city, the second largest in the nation, was founded in 1620 – the same year as our first settlements in Virginia – and began as a shipping port. It remains so to this day, on a much larger scale. However, it also has now turned into a city of universities, museums, conventions, sports events and gastronomy. Its close proximity to a vast countryside of forests and lakes also means that it’s not unusual at all to find moose wandering through town once in a while.
This cultural and entertainment city has many attractions including its opera house, Museum of Art and special exhibition centers. It is also home to Nya Ullevi, Sweden’s largest sport arena and to the Swedish Exhibition Center. One of the more palatial museums is the Nordic Museum built in high Flemish style from 1907 until it was finished around the outbreak of WWI. It has themed galleries housing tens of thousands of objects.
The main artery of this city is a lively boulevard called the Kungsportsavenyn. Branching off from it are a myriad of narrow pedestrian retail streets and alleys. The cultural center of town is called Gotaplatsen and the historic neighborhood, Haga. Gothenburg’s Art Museum is considered to have the finest collection of Nordic art from around 1900 including masterpieces from Carl Larsson, Anders Zorn and Edward Munch.
Gothenburg is home to many fine restaurants such as Restaurant 28+ (a deluxe eatery with one of the city’s best-stocked wine cellars); Herr Dahls, a new contemporary one, and others. Along the culinary line, don’t miss the Fish Church, shaped like an ecclesiastical building on the outside. Inside this 1874-vintage building on the harbor canal is a vast seafood market on the ground floor and a fine, but small restaurant called Gabriel Fish and Seafood Bar on the mezzanine loft. Popular fares there are the cold seafood buffet with crayfish, crab, herring and other delicacies and on the menu, fish soup with dill, mushrooms, white wine and seafood; chilled shrimp with a sweet taste that only comes from growing slowly in cold Baltic waters, and other dishes.
Some of the primary types of food in this country are seafood in the form of lobster, crab, herring, crayfish and oysters; deer, the smorgasbord (now mainly served during special holidays), Jansson’s Temptation (a casserole of potatoes, onions and cream); lamb, Swedish meatballs, and breads of every conceivable assortment. Today, though, Swedish chefs draw their inspiration from Greece, Italy and France, mainly while using the types of food traditionally found nearby in their native country. The better chefs travel far and wide to hone their craft and make new combinations. Fresh food is de rigueur for them and keyed on both the region and the season, says Chef Carl Malmstem of Restaurant 28+. “We try to work as much as possible procuring produce and food from our region.”
During a recent visit to Restaurant 28+, a one-star Guide Michelin restaurant, the meal began with carpaccio from crayfish with caviar crème followed with crayfish soup with peas and flower dill oil, pain-fried monkfish with chantarelles and crayfish butter sauce. Specialty cheeses served were Pont L’Eveque with deep-fried spinach and celery and Tomme de Savoie with walnuts and Thompson grapes. For dessert was a warm chocolate pastry with mango sorbet.
Thornstroms Kok is another choice: a contemporary restaurant that features modern Swedish cuisine with European influences under the direction of Hakan Thornstrom. He recently judged a World Cup cuisine competition in Switzerland.
The Elite Plaza Hotel would serve as an example of premier lodging in this diverse city. Its restaurant is an exemplary eating destination in its own right and far beyond dining facilities found inside most hotels. For instance, a multi-course appetizer one evening contained these items: a tuna fish tatake with Asian spices, mushroom soup, a patinee of parmesan cheese, ham, dill and apple, homemade bread soaked with Swedish caviar, fried scallops with garlic dip, beef carpaccio and fois de gras.
An historic restaurant that brings together country charm with sophistication is the Rada Sateri on Lake Rada, only 10 minutes outside the city center. Here is first-class cuisine in an 18th Century manor house. On one particular day, there was an appetizer of potato soup with truffle oil followed by a choice of salmon with a balsamic vinegar sauce that also contained dill, cucumber water and shallots or a Swedish grilled steak in a red wine sauce with roasted potatoes.
Altogether, there are three chef institutes now in Gothenberg where would-be chefs get experience for apprenticeships.
Just two hours outside Gothenburg along the coastline to the north is the quaint fishing village of Fjallbacka near the Norwegian border in the Bohuslan region. There, veteran sailors now often serve as tour guides. The hospitality nexus of this area is the Stora Hotellet, an old inn featuring 23 rooms decorated in motifs of cities and harbors from around the world. Each is distinct and some feature explorers such as Marco Polo. From the end of September, Stora Hotellet arranges lobster weekends which includes “lobster safaris” with local fishermen, followed by a lobster feast at the hotel. Such participatory fishing tours along the coastline are geared toward lobster, crab, mackerel, crayfish, and oyster seasons. Often the boats venture near actress Ingrid Bergman’s summer cottage on a rocky island at Fjallbacka.
A typical meal at the Stora Hotellet might start with Parma ham with garlic, Swedish cheese, a seafood soup containing salmon, cod, shrimp, zucchini and peppers, followed by a lobster dinner. Often in Sweden, the lobster is served cold, which is said to better retain its flavor.
While visiting Fjallbacka, travelers might as well venture about 30 minutes onward to the UNESCO-listed Bronze Age rock carvings and museum in nearby Vitlycke, really just a tiny village. There, they have reconstructed Bronze Age houses and a farm near the actual 8,000-year-old rock carvings.
Stockholm, too is now one of Europe’s leading gastronomic destinations and home to a lively dining scene. It also is a center for Swedish Modern design and interiors, one of the chief of which is Svenskt Tenn. The capital city is accessible to Gothenburg via an Intercity train that can bridge the distance in about 4 hours.
Beautifully situated on 14 islands that are separate by very broad canals and bays, this city has scenic vistas from almost every direction. The Swedish capital is nestled on Lake Malaren at the point where the fresh water flows into the salt water of the Baltic Sea. Just outside the city is an archipelago with thousands of islands, large and small.
Stockholm itself is home to the Royal Palace and its guard, the Vasa ship museum, scores of other museums, design centers, the Gamla Stan old city (17th and 18th century vintage) district, botanic gardens, ceramics centers and more. The palace has some 600 rooms and was started in 1697 and completed in 1754. It is larger than Buckingham Palace. There, one may view the crown jewels of Sweden including: crowns, scepters, orbs and a vast collection of enamels of decoration given the monarchs by other heads of state, in addition to the throne room. Outside on the courtyard of the palace are patrol sentries who even speak to passersby when not conducting a change-of-the-guard.
A gem next to it is the Great Church which features a giant painted carving of St. George slaying the dragon, crafted four years before Columbus’ voyages.
The Vasa Museum is Scandinavia’s most popular with more than 8 million visitors per year. Vasa was a proud warship that sank in the harbor in 1628 and salvaged around 1960. It is magnificently restored in a giant museum building. The Baltic Sea, not being very salty, helped preserve the ship for centuries.
This city isn’t only history – it has transformed itself from a small domestic urban center into a modern, trendy and creative cosmopolitan culture. Its coolest bar is the Icebar at the Nordic Sea Hotel, The world’s first permanent icebar has a year-round temperature inside of 23 degrees and everything from the furnishings to the glasses is made of pure ice from the Tornealven River in northern Sweden. Guests don silver capes and warm boots during their visits there. The city additionally is home to the Stockholm (Tennis) Open and the Stockholm International Horse Show. Other key stops might be the NK Department Store where they make their own chocolate and pastries and the Wine & Spirit Museum.
Edsbacka Krog, the only restaurant in Sweden with two stars in the Michelin Guide rouge, is situated a taxi drive from the city en route to either the airport or the historic university city of Uppsala. It dates to 1626 and specializes in Swedish-French cuisine in this city of some 15 culinary institutes. Reservations are often made here weeks in advance for its various dishes ranging from mousse of salmon to wild duck to seafood. Its filet of sole, for instance, is prepared with dill, puree of potato, lemon and crayfish sauce. Edsbacka Korog’s classical saddle of roe deer is prepared with a blackcurrants sauce.
As to lodging, the Grand Hotel and the Radisson SAS are easily the equivalents of the Elite in Stockholm. As in other Swedish hotels, the dining rooms are not an afterthought. The SAS on a given night might serve deer with honey-roasted parsnips, mushroom soup and a raspberry mousse, complemented by a cabernet sauvignon from Antigua, Spain and a sauvignon blanc from Chile, for instance.
The Grand early in its days for 30 years served as the first venue of the Nobel Prize banquet and award ceremonies in fact, until it outgrew the gold-leafed Mirror Room. Giant boats moor only yards away from its entrance, sometimes accompanied by swans. A thin blue mist in the autumn tends to crawl on the water some mornings and lifts around mid-day.
On the other side of the spectrum is a great youth hostel just blocks down from the Grand that is situated on a converted old square-rigger sailing ship. It features a reception area in a landside building, complete with internet terminals and other facilities. The Berns Hotel is yet another choice in the city center, particularly as a boutique hotel. It has served as a traditional meeting place for 141 years.
The Nobel Prize ceremony is the pinnacle event, perhaps for Sweden each year where 1,200 guests are served three courses by 200 waiters for three hours amid laureate pageantry each December 10th at Stockholm City Hall. Tourists can elect to dine on Nobel banquet fare of the past any time of the year at the adjoining Stadshuskallaren restaurant.
From rising timberland and lakes for the outdoor-types to lively urban centers for the urban sophisticates, Sweden has abundant sights to satisfy a diversity of tastes and interests — modern and historic, visual and culinary.
David McDonald Yawn is a professional independent writer. He may be reached through editorwriter@hotmail.com
For more information visit:
Sweden´s official website for tourism and travel information