Located where the Baltic Sea meets Lake Mälaren, Sweden's waterfront capital has as little as six hours of daylight in the winters and as much as eighteen hours of sun in the summers. Stockholm’s 73 square miles stretch over islands and hills, encompassing modern Scandinavian designs and cobblestone streets that look straight out of a fairytale. It is also known as Scandinavia’s undisputed capital of cool. The coffee culture, award-winning design, beautiful buildings, outstanding restaurants and effortless natural beauty make this city an obvious travel choice!
Currency
Sweden rejected the Euro and continues to use the Swedish Crown, known as Kronor, as the national currency. 1 Swedish Krona equals 0.14 Canadian Dollars. To learn more about currency conversions, click here.
Language
Swedes are well-known for their English skills; you’ll hear and see English all around you in Stockholm. Still, if you want to try out some Swedish, you can do so with minimal effort. You can say hello or goodbye with just ‘hej’ or ‘hej hej’ (where the ‘j’ is pronounced like an English ‘y’) and ‘tack’ means both thank you and please, so it’s extra easy to be polite.
Weather
Fall weather tends to be rather neutral, around 8 to 12 Celsius with chances of cloud and rain showers.
However, due to its seaside location, Stockholm’s weather changes unbelievably fast. When visiting Stockholm you should be prepared to put on and take off your clothes continuously. Dressing in layers is the best idea.
Shopping
Stockholm aims to become a cash-free city in the coming years, and in fact, many cafes, restaurants and hotels already enforce this policy, meaning they will not accept any cash. So on your trip, it is best to bring your bank card and only use cash if you have to. One of Stockholm’s most popular shopping area is SoFo (South of Folkungagatan), bursting with hip swedish boutiques and trendy independent cafes.
Food and Drinks
Seafood is extremely popular in Sweden and there is an abundance of seafood on offer. However, Sweden is also very much vegan and vegetarian friendly and most places will have options for non-meat eaters too. What’s more, it’s perfectly safe to drink the tap water and it’s actually really delicious crisp fresh water.
Tipping
Tipping in Sweden isn't as established as in many other countries. It is always welcome but not expected. When eating out in Sweden it is common to round up to the nearest big number. For example, if your bill comes to 380 SEK, you may round up to 400 SEK.
Emergency and Safety
Should you run into trouble, the emergency number is 112. Even if you have no money on your phone the number will work. Swedish police generally all speak English and are very helpful.
Electricity and Power
The plugs in Sweden use Type C and F. The standard voltage is 230 V, and the standard frequency is 50Hz.
Local Tips
If a local invites you to join him or her for fika, they're really just asking you if you'd like to take a coffee break. Fika, aka the Swedish art of the coffee break, is something you must embrace. It’s probably more important than korv and Stockholmers 'take a fika' nearly every day. What it consists of is this: you turn to someone and say ‘would you like to take a fika?’. They will say yes and next thing you know you’re sitting in a cosy café sipping strong Swedish coffee while nibbling at some fabulous pastry.
Craving some art? Head down into Stockholm’s metro stations. Dubbed the World’s Longest Art Gallery, more than 90 of the 100 stations along the 68 miles of track have been decorated with mosaics, paintings, sculptures, and carvings by artists since the 1950s.
If beer and sauna culture don’t cut it, you can spend your Tuesday afternoon at a museum instead, without spending anything. The Nordic Museum has free entry on Tuesdays from 1-5pm, and the Nobel Prize Museum from 5-8pm also on Tuesdays. The Modern Art museum on Skeppsholmen, meanwhile, has free admission the whole week round.
Stockholmers are big beer lovers, and there are many great micro-breweries and craft beer establishments across the city to prove it. That’s not to say that your pint has to be anything fancy or expensive, however; at any bar, you can order their cheapest pint of beer simply by asking for a ‘Stor Stark.’
When in Sweden, indulge in the Swedish meatballs. At Stockholm’s Meatballs for the People, you can sample 14 kinds of meatballs, including ones made from turkey, reindeer, salmon, pork, boar, ox, moose, and rooster—all of which are “ecologically bred.”
Mammma Mia! Stockholm has an entire museum dedicated to ABBA. While visitors can get a glimpse at some of the 1970s band’s gold records, wardrobe pieces, and gadgets, the true goal of the museum is to let you “experience the feeling of being the fifth member of ABBA,” by trying on clothes, singing in the Polar studios, and even channeling your inner dancing queen by getting on stage with holograms of the band.
Fun Facts
Stockholm was built on fourteen islands, connected by fifty seven bridges, earning the Swedish capital the nickname "Beauty on the Water."
Stockholm’s Old Town, or Gamla Stan, remains one of the best preserved historic districts in Europe—partially due to the fact that its cobblestone streets are reserved for pedestrians only.
The narrowest street in Old Town is Mårten Trotzigs alley, which has 36 steps and is a mere 35 inches wide at its slimmest point.
In 1628, the great Vasa warship, which took three years to build, sunk in the Stockholm harbor after sailing barely 4200 feet. It took a whopping 333 years to salvage the remains. Today the iconic ship stands in its own equally striking 134,979-square-foot museum, which features 55 outer wall corners.
Built in 1891, Stockholm’s Djurgården island is home to Skansen, the world’s first open-air museum. The 150 buildings are a journey through 500 years of Sweden’s history, including Skåne farmsteads and Sami camps.
Sweden’s national treasure, the global furniture chain IKEA, boasts a 594,167-square-foot location in Stockholm’s Kugens Kurva municipality. Opened in 1965, it remained the world’s largest for 49 years, until the2014construction of a 635,070-square-foot store in South Korea’s Gwangmyeong.
Sweden’s literacy rate is 99 percent, so it’s no surprise more than 4 million books are borrowed from Stockholm’s libraries annually.
Swedish commuters love their bikes: approximately 70,000 cyclists cross Stockholm’s city borders daily.
To encourage people to take the stairs, in 2009, Volkswagen turned a staircase in the Odenplan metro station into a Big-like giant piano keyboard, so that Swedes could literally dance over musical notes as they exited. They found 66 percent more people opted for the stairs over the the escalator next to it.
Stockholmers are among the biggest ice cream consumers in the world and the city is crawling with both gourmet ice cream shops as well as old-school favourites. Go into any shop and there will be an ice cream freezer that is continually being refilled, because Stockholmers eat ice cream any time of the day, any time of the year.
Kungliga Operan—the Royal Swedish Opera—was founded by King Gustav III in 1773. Nineteen years later, he was shot at a masked ball at the venue and died. The building stood for another century, then was torn down in 1892. A new opera house was built in 1898 and inaugurated by King Oscar II. Today, the theater still stands in the same spot across the Norrbro bridge from the Royal Palace.
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