Stockholm |
For professional reason I have been several times in Stockholm. During one of these opportunities, I added in 1996 some days to visit the city. It were some days in June with some sort of useful weather (1996 was an "baltic summer", as the Stockholm people say: cool and wet, spring ended more or less in automn without an intermediate summer - reason was the complete freeze of the baltic sea in Winter 1995/96, which had influence on the temperatures during the whole summer).
Stockholm is situated at the Strömen, which diverts the city into two parts with an island in the middle. This island is the original Stockholm, now on it lies Gamla Stan, the old town.
Noth rim of the Strömen. Here are many large houses of whelthy Stockholm traders have been buildt during the 18th and 19th century. |
On the north of the Strömen, Stockholm has spread since the 18th century. The south of the river was then reserved to boat builders and workers.
Another island in the Strömen, a little bit downward, is the museum island. On it the baltic museum and the wasa museum are situated. The last one is build around a war ship from the 16th century, which sank on its virgin sail in the harbour of Stockholm, only some 200 m away from the coast. Because of the faible salt content of the baltic sea, the ship was mostly intact. The only thing to take care was the humidity of the wood, which had to be prevented from evapourating. During a process of more than 10 years, the water in the wood was replaced by resins to stabilize the wood (the Wasa was build mainly of oak wood).
Stockholm has never been destroyed in a war, nor has it been damaged by battles in the city. Therefor, lots of old buildings have survided the past centenials.
In the north of Stockholm, the university, libraries and other public buildings are situated, which have been founded in the 18th century. Here are also public gardens. By this you nowadays call this the central city.
One reason why Stockholm was never occupied by enemies is the coast: up to 50 km away from the solid land are ten thousands of small islands, which make it mostly impossible to reach the final coast by a sailing ship. And the Strömen, which links Stockholm with the baltic sea, can only be passed by graceful winds and good knowledge of the coastal situation. This made a planned intrusion of a larger fleet nearly impossible.
Another reason was the castelet Vaxholm: This castle, situated on an island some 20 km at a narrow of the Strömen, was build some 500 years ago.