Day 13: Royal Seaport, Nacka & Gamla Stan
From the suburbs to the Royal Palace
June 28, 2022
I was able to get up a bit later since we had a scheduled tour at 12 pm (a little too early to venture out to another museum or shop), so I ended up heading to breakfast around 9:30 am. Sitting by one of the windows in the breakfast area, I was surprised to see a lot of cars on the E20 (European Route E20) that passed through Stockholm and tunneled virtually under Södermalm with one of the tunnel entrances being under our hotel and watched as rush-hour came and went. In the distance, I could also see the Avicii Arena, an indoor arena shaped like a spherical dome. From our tour guide the day before, we learned that Sweden is home to the world’s largest model of the solar system, with different buildings and sculptures throughout the country spaced out. The Avicii Arena, or Globen, is meant to symbolize the sun and is the largest installation in the model.
Take to the Water
For the day’s agenda, we had a tour of Royal Seaport (Norra Djurgårdsstaden), a brownfield redevelopment community that afternoon. While it was only a 40-minute ride on public transportation (around the same location as the Tramway Museum we had gone to on our first full day in Stockholm), we decided over breakfast to take a more scenic ferry route from Nybroplan to Stockholm Frihamnen (a little over an hour ride).
After breakfast, we made our way from the hotel to the metro, making our way to the Hötorget stop in Norrmalm, close to where we would pick up the ferry. Walking along Kungsgatan, a busy shopping street, we stopped briefly in Fjällräven, a popular Swedish store that specializes in outdoor equipment before we finally reached Nybroplan around 10:45 am. Seeing the city and surrounding suburbs from the water was amazing and made me love the Stockholm archipelago for its natural landscape even more with sailboats and pine tree-covered islands dotting the water.
The ferry we were on briefly stopped at Nacka/Nacka Strand, a waterfront suburb, where Carl Milles’ sculpture and fountain “God our father on the rainbow” sits overlooking the archipelago. Arriving at Royal Seaport a bit before 12 pm, we found our way to the Project Office that was overseeing the development of the area, where we met our tour guide who was a city planner. Since it was a relatively warm day, she suggested we start inside, since there wasn’t any air conditioning and it would only get hotter as the day went on. Inside the planning office, our guide showed us (another!) diorama of the community with all the new developments they were planning, which eventually would create a 5-minute city, where anything community members needed, such as grocery stores, daycares, or access to a transit hub - would be within a 5-minute walking or cycling distance (in the States, the most idealized version of this is a 15-minute city!).
After learning a basic introduction to the area, we started walking around, giving us the opportunity to see how the multi-modal community was being built, with carpool (Rideshare) stations, roads to promote biking (by smoothing cobblestone streets on the edges for a smoother ride for bikes and a bumpier ride for cars), and connected greenways and walkways to promote walkability throughout the community.
One surprising topic that caught our group’s interest was the waste disposal system set in place. Rather than the traditional waste removal process we were so familiar with in the States, Stockholm Royal Seaport set up a way that garbage was sucked underground to a central location for pick-up. The benefits of this? Reduced smell since garbage doesn’t sit in the community, less of a need for bin maintenance, reduced plastic use since garbage bags weren’t needed, and less vehicular traffic since each bin didn’t need to be individually picked up! While the trash containers in public areas were rather simple and resembled ones similar to what we were familiar with, the facilities attached to apartments were a little fancier with different areas for different materials as well as a green rain catchment area on the top.
We passed through a local park, where we noticed some public art and our tour guide informed us that Stockholm implements a “One Percent Rule”, meaning future developments must allocate 1% of the budget to commission public art. Compared to urban planning developments in the States, where perhaps 1% goes into biking infrastructure, nonetheless art. There were also special tree wells created to help protect the mature trees that were already in the area since they served as an important insect corridor, as well as a protected frog tunnel, so the amphibians who already lived there wouldn’t have their habitat too poorly disrupted.
Concluding our tour, we found our way back to Norrmalm since we had a 3 pm meeting to learn about DriveSweden, a company aimed at designing a sustainable, multi-modal transit future for users. Since we had a bit of free time,
we found ourselves on Drottninggatan (Queen Street), a major pedestrian street that hosts a wide range of shops and restaurants, where I stopped in a local cafe for a latte.
Meeting at Drive Sweden, we spoke to the company’s chairman, Jan Hellåker, about how the company wants to create a future with reduced private car ownership rates. Likening it to Spotify - another Swedish company - you have options for how you consume your music, so why not approach transportation the same way?
Gamla Stan (Pt 2)
With our meeting done a little before 4:30 pm, our group activities for the day were done, so I returned to Gamla Stan to get some “daytime” photos of the Royal Palace before returning to the hotel to drop off some of my things.
A bit later, I ventured out again to meet up with a few others, who were grabbing dinner at Strömmingsvagnen (a fried herring food stand), where I got knäckis (cucumber, red onion, dill, crispbread, and herring). When we were done, it was still light enough to do some exploring, so seeing how we were near Gamla Stan, I thought to return to Riddarholmskyrkan and the City Hall lookout to get better photos.
Lazily meandering about Gamla Stan, I took a few photos of some of the buildings over on Mariaberget framed between the narrow alleyways as well as Tyska kyrkan (the German Church) which soared over the slim cobblestone streets. Walking back over to the Riddarholmen islet to get pictures of the church before continuing on to the lookout of City Hall, however, the sun was behind the building at that point (~ 6:30 pm), meaning it was hard to photograph, so I thought to myself I’d come back on another or cloudier day (once again) for better photos.
I found my way back to Stortorget at that point, to get photos of the colorful buildings in the daylight and decided to do some light souvenir shopping. Ultimately, however, I found myself a bit tired from being in the sun most of the day, so coupled with the fact we had an early appointment the next morning, I returned to the hotel much earlier than I had before on the trip (7:30 pm), and decided to stay in to work on my program assignments.
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