We woke to find ourselves already cruising through the Stockholm archipelago, the series of over 20000 islands formed by glacial regression that protect the Swedish capital city. I had been looking forward to this part of the cruise as I’d heard it was stunningly beautiful but the weather was not particularly good and because of the angle we were approaching along with our aft position on the ship light was an issue too. Things would be much more pleasant during our departure but for now I satisfied myself with only a few photographs of the landscape around Stockholm and some of the outlying structures we could occasionally see.

It was very easy to tell when we were closer to the city of Stockholm itself as the number of buildings along the shorelines increased significantly. There wasn’t a lot of traditional architecture on display but we knew we’d be hitting the old part of the city during our day there so that wasn’t an issue either. What architecture we did see was generally fairly modern and not particularly appealing, although there were plenty of bold colours on show, something very typical of Nordic countries in general.

The Crown Princess cruise ship eventually docked opposite the Gröna Lund amusement park which looked interesting, if compact. We’d not be visiting that on our day in Sweden but as we’d love to go back to the city at some point I wouldn’t rule it out on some future occasion.

The Blue Hall

We weren’t the only people wanting to look around the building and so initially had to gather together inside the Blue Hall (or Blå Hallen). As you can probably tell from the photographs there isn’t a lot of what you might consider blue in the hall. The architect, Ragnar Östberg, had initially planned to decorate the hall in blue but changed his mind after seeing the bricks; the name, however, stuck. The Blue Hall serves as the location for the Nobel Prize banquet every year.

Tour groups were permitted to start their tours at staggered intervals for obvious reasons and we only had to wait a few minutes before proceeding from the Blue Hall and up the stairs to the next level of Stockholm’s City Hall.

Council Chambers

The City Hall was originally designed to be used by the city’s politicians and it still serves that function today. The Council Chambers are where the Stockholm Municipal Council meet to discuss business. The meetings are open to the public and to journalists, both of whom have allocated seating to permit proceedings to be viewed.

The chamber gallery ceiling was designed to resemble a Viking building because, well, it’s Sweden.

From the Council Chambers we proceeded through a number of rooms including the Oval Room and the Prince’s Gallery on our way towards the Golden Hall.

Golden Hall

Clearly the most impressive of the large spaces in City Hall was the Golden Hall. Following the Nobel Prize banquet each year a ball is hosted in this huge room. Mosaic design covers every surface, made from over 18 million pieces of gold and glass.

The mosaic images depict elements from Swedish history, the largest piece of work being reserved for the far wall from the entrance where a large personification of Stockholm as a woman (The Queen of Lake Mälaren) gazes down on the rest of the world.

Outside City Hall

We then exited City Hall through the gift shop and inner courtyard. With about ten minutes to kill as we waited for members of our tour group to use the toilet facilities or peruse the gift shop in more detail than we had I wandered out towards Lake Mälaren to take some photos of Stockholm and City Hall from that vantage point.

While the City Hall hadn’t been the focus point for our day in Stockholm it was still a very interesting place from a functional and architectural perspective and it’s well worth a visit if you’re in Sweden’s capital. More information about the building can be found here: The City Hall.

The museum itself was built in 1988 following the drying and treating of the raised vessel over the previous twenty seven years.

Inside the museum the impressive ship can be seen in all its glory on four levels of walkways around the vessel. What is incredible is just how intact the Vasa is. With the exception of the masts the main decomposition that took place on the ship underwater was the rusting away of smaller metal pieces such as bolts for the timbers. The timber itself didn’t suffer anywhere near as much damage as the water in which the ship sank could not support the microscopic life that would otherwise have thrived on it.

The highly-decorated aft of the vessel and bowsprit were particularly nice to see and brought to mind any of the main ships in the Pirates of the Caribbean series of movies.

On each of the levels away from the Vasa were recovered items from the ship along with information about it. The ship had been over-designed on the wishes of the king, Gustavus Adolphus. Intended to be the flagship of a squadron of ship based in the Swedish Archipelago the ship was fitted with 64 guns but was dangerously top heavy. With nobody apparently willing to tell the king that the design was not a smart one the ship set sail before a watching crowd only to catch a light breeze and tip over enough to allow water to flood in through its lower gun ports beyond the ship’s capacity to compensate.

Taking photographs in the Vasa Museum is not the easiest thing in the world. There’s nothing stopping you from taking photos of the ship – as you can tell – but there’s a challenge because of the lighting. I’m never particularly happy taking photos at high ISO because of the noise this generates but there’s no other option in this case. High ISO and wide open lens allowed me to get shots at a high enough speed to not be too blurred from hand held pictures but some of the images are as slow as 1/6th of a second which is worryingly long; that’s even with deliberate underexposing to try to get a little more speed in the shutter. That long exposure coupled with the high ISO and the lighting in the museum then gave everything a very warm feel so in post processing I’ve sharpened a bit and kept noise reduction low because I prefer the noise and sharpness to something too soft. To counter the colour I reduced the temperature by a couple of hundred kelvins universally and dropped overall saturation by about 10%. On top of that I also pulled the orange down by anywhere from 5-20% more depending on how far away from natural daylight the picture was taken. Yellows were reduced by about 5% when lights were present in the pictures and highlights were reduced on a picture-by-picture basis.

Regardless of the difficulties with getting decent photos the Vasa Museum was still a great place to visit. If you like history or Disney movies about pirates then it’s a fabulous thing to see on a day in Stockholm. For more information about the museum as well as its opening times and ticket prices take a look at the official website: Vasa Museum.

Stockholm Cathedral

We started our guided, walking tour of Gamla Stan just outside Storkyrkan, the area’s oldest church, known as Stockholm Cathedral commonly but not officially. The interior of the church contains a famous statue of St George and the Dragon where the dragon is supposed to represent the Danish king, Christian I. We had to imagine it, though, as we didn’t have time to venture inside the historic building.

Stockholm Palace

Adjacent to the cathedral was the palace, Kungliga slottet, which we didn’t enter, although it is open to the public. We stepped into the parade square to the building’s west where we heard a little of some of the history and important events that had taken place in the palace with particular emphasis on the various architectural changes that had occurred over the centuries.

Stortorget

We then proceeded on a fairly circular walk through some of Gamla Stan’s roads and alleys to take us towards Stortorget.

Stortorget (or Big Square) is one of the most visited areas of Gamla Stan and the most recognisable from photographs of the place. It is the oldest public square in Stockholm and apparently has a very impressive Chistmas market but as we were visiting in the middle of June we couldn’t really have been any further from seeing that. A nicely-decorated well in the square provided one focal point of interest but the square’s most famous sights are the buildings that surround it; colourful and with a fair bit of history behind many of them.

Stortorget itself has a famous past, being the location of the Stockholm Bloodbath in 1520:

In November 1520 […] the Danish-Swedish king Christian II beheaded and hanged 90 people. This deed was accomplished notwithstanding the reprieve proclaimed by Queen Christina Gyllenstierna following four months of Danish siege. […] The executioners beheaded archbishops, councillors, noblemen, and city magistrates indiscriminately, including Erik Johansson Vasa, father of the succeeding king Gustav Vasa who escaped the fate of his father by hiding. All bodies were burned on Södermalm together with the body of the dead regent Sten Sture. The Danish king, satisfied with having pacified Sweden, returned to Denmark in December, drowning a few monks during the trip, while ignoring the dawning insurrection in Dalarna.

They did a good job with mopping up the blood and you wouldn’t have known it had been the scene of such terror if I hadn’t just mentioned it.

We finished off our visit to this old part of Sweden’s capital city by walking back to our coach outside the palace once more. As we boarded we saw a group of cadets (I’m guessing) lining up for some reason. I’d like to think they were seeing us off. Terribly polite people, the Swedes.

Gamla Stan was a very pleasant place but I think I would have enjoyed it more just knowing the history in advance then taking some time to explore on my own with a map. The guided walking tour was informative but restrictive and with some more time we’d have had a chance to explore the cathedral and palace as well as take in some shopping or dining options in the attractive area. Still, definitely worth a visit, and more official tourist information can be found here: Visit Stockholm: Gamla Stan.

Back on board the ship I took a few more photos from our aft cabin balcony – more-or-less the same sights but from a slightly lower angle – as we waited for departure and what would turn out to be a pleasant cruise through the Swedish Archipelago.

The speed of the cruise ship was necessarily low and with little wind to cope with this made for a wonderfully tranquil transit through the thousands of islands protecting Stockholm.

One interesting thing to keep an eye on from our aft cabin balcony viewpoint was the Tallink cruise ferry that was following us and would continue to do so through the night as our next stop would be the Estonian capital to which it was also heading.

At one point we slowly overtook a yacht enjoying the pleasant summer sunshine of the evening in the Swedish waters.

It had been almost uniformly dull weather-wise during our day exploring Stockholm but we’d had a wonderful time there and seen enough to know that it would be a place we’d love to return to at some point. Having really nice weather to finish off our flying visit to Sweden and help us appreciate the spectacle of the archipelago was the icing on the cake.