Die beste Bildung

Since I will be making extensive use of the Tunnelbana and visiting plenty of museums during my stay in Stockholm, the first thing I did on Tuesday morning was to get a Stockholm Card, which would allow unlimited usage of the city’s transportation network and free admission to all museums within 72 hours. My hostel’s reception desk did not sell the card, so I had to go out to the main tourist office at the city centre. It should have been an easy walk from the Central Station to the office, but because I still haven’t made any improvement in map-reading skills after more than two weeks of independent travel, I got very lost and wandered in the area for half an hour. Very luckily, once I got my hands on the card, the day got a lot better.

After a brisk walk through the Dansmuseet (Dance Museum), which was obviously not my cup of tea, I headed to the nearby Kungliga Operan, Sweden’s royal opera house. Earlier on when I was still on the Princeton campus, I planned this trip with the goal of watching a show in the opera house of every city I visited. This did not happen – while I did get to see some great performances while I was in Munich, Nuremberg and Berlin, I chose not to go in Bremen because the only show available was Verdi’s Aida, which I had already seen at the Bayerische Staatsoper. As for Copenhagen and Stockholm, by this leg of my trip the 2008-09 performance seasons of both the Royal Danish and Swedish Operas were over. But anyhow, I decided that taking part in a guided tour of the opera house would be better than not going there at all, so that was what I did.

While the Kungliga Operan has none of the innovative architecture that defines Copenhagen’s Operaen and is dwarfed by the Bayersiche Staatsoper in terms of physical size and prominence, there was still a lot to see. This opera house was built at the turn of the 20th century and deliberately designed in the continental style so as to emphasize Sweden’s emerging status as an European power. Despite its somewhat restricted size, the interior is nothing short of opulent, with extremely ornate decorations garnering almost every vertical surface. The good thing about visiting on a guided tour as opposed to watching a show is that you get to use seats for which people typically pay more than 1000 SEK. The view from there was of course fantastic, though this opera house was designed so that the seats in the uppermost balcony actually enjoyed better acoustics. The best sound, however, is found in a place where seats cannot be placed – right inside the chandelier. This is where microphones are located, for live broadcasts on Swedish radio as well as CD/DVD recordings.

And the golden hall, in which opera patrons relaxed and socialized during intermissions, was just as extravagant. Built to imitate the luxurious style of Versailles, this hall boasted a row of impressive chandeliers, detailed ceiling murals depicting the development of Swedish music, plenty of golden rococo decorations, elegant furniture and full-length windows to create a greater sense of space.

The Kungliga Operan, Sweden’s royal opera house

The tour also brought me to three places into which normal opera patrons may not set foot – the royal chambers, the backstage, and the stage itself. The former was a slightly smaller version of the golden hall, still used exclusively by the Swedish royal family and visiting heads of state. As for the backstage, it was unexpectedly enormous. Though not a particularly grand building from the outside, the opera house actually has 12 floors and almost 1000 rooms, making it quite easy to get lost. We saw the trap doors, as well as the large sunken area in which whole sets were kept, and the small chair on which the first prompter typically sat. The stage, however, was most odd, for instead of being a horizontal surface, it had a 4° incline so as to provide the audience with a better view. The downside was that small props would have to be fastened onto the stage by nails so that they would not roll off in the middle of a scene, and more disastrously, ballet performers could easily injure themselves on such a surface. In order to remedy this problem the performers actually have rehearsal rooms with similarly slanted floors. In spite of that, I imagine that would still be exceedingly disorienting to have to dance on a slope!

The Nationalmuseum was just a 5-minute walk along the coast away. While the collection of this museum was far inferior to that of the Statens Museum for Kunst, it’s Danish equivalent, I was interested by its experiments on new ways to display sculpture. Instead of putting each piece on its own fancy marble pedestal, the museum placed marble statues either on fruit crates or wooden platforms and arranged them irregularly, whereas busts were cluttered together on a makeshift case made out of scaffolding material. One work was even displayed in the packaging with which it had come to the museum. It was not the most elegant way of doing things, but it definitely helps the visitor to reassess the ability of art to transform the environment in which it is placed.

Left: Exterior of the Nationalmuseum; Right: An innovative way of displaying sculpture

One good exhibit was Design 19002000, which featured many very sleek and creative household items which I would love to be able to afford. It’s renaissance counterpart, Design 15001600, also had a broad collection of objects from different cultures – there were Chinese porcelain, Turkish tapestries and carpets, Indian chairs and German metalware. The top floor, on the other hand, was pleasantly decorated but the 19th century paintings on display were decidedly much less attractive than those I had seen in equivalent museums in Germany.

Left: An exhibit in Design 19002000; The top floor of the National Museum

The rainy weather of the morning had cleared up by the time I exited the Nationalmuseum. So instead of going to another museum right away, I decided that I would explore the cobblestone streets of Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s old town. I absolutely loved the alternating yellow, ochre and orange buildings, traditional lampposts and canopies as well as irresistibly adorable shops, which included the kitsch souvenir shops typical of a tourist area, but also high-end chocolate stores, art galleries, antique dealerships, cafes, ice cream parlours. There I managed to pick up some small souvenirs for my family. I would have loved to buy more, but my very limited baggage allowance for the flight from Stockholm to Hong Kong would probably not allow it.

The picturesque cobblestone streets and charming boutique stores of Gamla Stan

But Gamla Stan was more than just a bunch of charming streets. There were also some very important and impressive buildings in the area, including the Riddarholmskyrkan with its soaring spire, and the Tyska Kyrkan which has German instead of Swedish text at its entrance gate. Unfortunately both churches had closed by the time I got there.

Left: Riddarholmskyrkan; Right: On the street right outside the Tyska Kyrkan

The one church in the area that was open was the Stockrykan, which means “Stockholm Cathedral”, where royal coronations and weddings were once held. The cathedral was built more than 700 years ago, back in the day when Sweden was a poor nation at the periphery of Europe instead of an affluent industrial power, so it really cannot be compared to its much more established equivalents in continental Europe. In terms of size, it could seat less than 1000 people, which made it smaller than the Princeton University Chapel (in case you are curious, yes I do miss Princeton in spite of having a wonderful time in Europe). The columns and arches were generally plain and the stained glass window somewhat ordinary, but the two relatively newer royal pews at the front of the cathedral were very eye-catching. Designed by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, architect of the Stockholm palace, each pew consisted of gracefully attired angels carrying a resplendent crown more than a metre in diameter above the area where the sovereign or his consort would be seated. The entire pews were covered in gold, which gave them a particularly distinctive appearance in the nave, which was otherwise constructed out of humble red brick. And in one of the transcepts was St. George and the Dragon, a gothic sculpture by the German artist Berdnt Notke commissioned by the Swedish royal court to commemorate a decisive victory over Denmark in 1471. The detail was incredibly elaborate, the postures and expressions were so lively that despite the sculpture’s more than 500 years of age, it still fills the viewer in awe and wonder of the admirable chivalry of the military saint.

The Stockyrkan, Sweden’s oldest parish church and former venue for royal weddings and coronations

Finally I went to the Swedish Academy next door, which housed the Nobelmuseet, with exhibitions on the Nobel Foundation as well as the achievements of Nobel laureates over the years. The permanent offerings were pleasant, but it was the temporary exhibit which was truly remarkable. Titled “Freedom of Expression: How Free is Free?”, it discussed the human right to free expression of opinion, its protections and boundaries, as well as examples of pertinent controversies. In a set of three red lighting-shaped drawers, one could read the stories of and quotes from people who were persecuted or censored in the past because they dared to say what those in power were not eager to hear: from Socrates and Martin Luther to Lech Wałęsa and Nelson Mandela. A set of display boards nearby addressed more recent controversies, such as Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, which prompted a fatwa from the Iranian Ayatollah demanding his execution, and the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who authored the groundbreaking bestseller Putin’s Russia. Another one called into question the permissibilty of video games that glorify explicit violence, offensive content by the likes of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and extreme anti-Islamic claims by public figures like Italian writer Oriana Fallaci. Often the information was presented matter-of-factly and the viewer was left to reach his own decisions, which was a challening but deeply interesting task. I also liked the media station playing forbidden music throughout the ages, with works ranging from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen to Paul McCartney’s Give Ireland back to the Irish.

Left: Foyer of the Nobelmuseet; Right: Temporary exhibition on freedom of expression

There was finally a small role-play quiz involving a hypothetical scandal involving a nuclear tests that were poisoning the lives of thousands of people (The scandal was set in Norway instead of Sweden. I guess that says something about how the Swedes view their neighbours…). One could decide on whether or not to leak the scandal to the press, whether or not to maintain anonymity, how to handle the subsequent publicity and deal with death threats and the like. In the end the results would be analysed to tell the player whether he was conservative, moderate or liberal in terms of allowing freedom of expression, whether one would protect secrets against conscience or unravel them and put other’s lives in danger. It was anything but easy because of the ethical dilemmas it presented, but it definitely prompted me to reconsider how human rights were defined and when it is appropriate to take risks.

Though it wasn’t a very large exhibit, I spent an hour and a half inside, reading every single English word and watching most of the videos. This was definitely one of the most memorable non-art museums I have seen on this trip, and if other museums in Stockholm are of similar quality, I would be extremely delighted. Anyway, after browsing titles by Nobel laureates at the museum bookstore and trying extremely hard not to purchase anything that was available on Amazon.com, I had dinner at Vapiano (Sara had insisted that I should try something else, but other restaurants in the area were much more expensive), and then returned to my hostel. It was a great first day in this exciting city!