⌈ «STOCKHOLM» The Royal City of Stockholm, the capital and largest city of the country. It has the most important political, economic and cultural functions. It is situated on 14 islands, which are connected to each other by 53 bridges and land over the Saltsjön Bay (Baltic Sea) and Lake Mälaren with the Norrström Strait connecting them.
⸜ Sztokholm, SZWECJA-ok.pl, accessed: 30.07.2024. ⌋

I DON'T KNOW IF EVERYONE IS LIKE ME and my friends, who knew I was going to Stockholm, because all of us were curious about ‘our’ artifacts on display in Swedish museums. When I say ‘ours’, I mean all sorts of material possessions, including beautiful zischagges, royal armors, pennants and other pieces of weaponry, looted during the Swedish Deluge (1655-1660). As all sources agree, this was the biggest, most destructive disaster that ever happened to our country, next to the Second World War.

⸜ View of Fotografiska (Museum of Photography) from the deck of one of the many ships cruising Strömmen, part of Saltsjön Bay; on the left, more or less where you can see the ferry, the ship named Vasa sank

The army of King Carl X Gustav took everything that could be moved from Poland, and often even that which was permanently attached to the ground. Not only military equipment, not only the property of kings, bishops and magnates, but even the stone frames of doorways and ponds. Small remnants of these riches are uncovered from time to time by in the Vistula river during droughts. The first find of great value dates from 1906, when several marble sculptures were excavated, including a beautiful Mannerist dolphin. The Culture website adds:

These accounts were topped off by the information that during an attempt to pull out a large stone eagle, the ropes broke and the only thing that could be extracted was a broken wing. Soon afterwards, the tsarist authorities banned the search for any treasures in the river.

One of the leading varsavianists of the time linked these finds to the Swedish invasion of Poland in 1655, in particular to a testimony mentioning barges loaded with treasures looted from the royal residences in Warsaw. Sources say that one of the barges sank soon after it departed from the river’s bank.

⸜ MIKOŁAJ GLIŃSKI, XVII-wieczne skarby wydobyte z Wisły, → CULTURE.pl, accessed: 30.07.2024.

Another large group of artifacts was excavated in 2015 during another record-breaking drought. And these are just a splintering of the loot that the Swedes took out of Poland at the time. The consensus is that these goods helped turn the, then still quite provincial, Kingdom of Sweden into a local power. I can't help it - for me, the issue is still unresolved. Which is eloquently symbolized by the two lions guarding the Kungliga Slottet, or Royal Castle, taken from Warsaw Castle in the 17th century.

On the other hand, that's not really what I associate Sweden with. The things I think about when Sweden is mentioned are clean air and water, the achievements of the welfare state, the Nobel Prize, great Swedish jazz, an excellent black metal music scene, and ABBA. And peace and quiet. Visiting Stockholm in July, I got all that. I will say more - the things I saw and experienced made me see the country from a completely different perspective. All the more so because I was interested in the musical themes.

▌ Only Compact Disc

I DON'T KNOW IF YOU REMEMBER, but from my every holiday trip I try to bring back some music with me. In my case, it's music on Compact Disc. I am particularly fond of churches, opera houses and concert halls. It's not even about the events taking place there, but about the music recorded at the venue or only available there.

⸜ An album with Lars-Erik Larsson music Förklädd gud

This is how my collection has been enriched with albums from, among other places, the Berliner Dom (full name: Oberpfarr- und Domkirche zu Berlin), the Sacré-Cœur Basilica and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan, and discs from a small record shop in Copenhagen, right next to the Assistens Kirkegård cemetery where, among others, Ben Webster is buried. From Prague, on the other hand, I bring back a lot of classical music recordings, including from the Bedřich Smetana Museum. This time these were goodies spotted in Stockholm.

With these types of finds, apart from - of course - record shops and antique shops, the matter is not simple. And this is because the vast majority of churches do not sell music records. Not only in Sweden, but all over Europe. Even if it is recorded on their premises. In church shops, you can get crosses, rosaries, books and other souvenirs, even magnets, in the larger ones augmented with gadgets related to the place; thanks to this, for a year now I have been drinking coffee in a cup shaped like one of the columns supporting the vault of the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, (Temple of the Holy Family of Penance [in Barcelona]), known simply as the Sagrada Família. But the music is available not there.

By the way, they have great coffee in Sweden. They drink it strong, black, preferably without sugar. I think part of its secret is the water. Incredibly clean, but also very good, it places the country's capital among the top in the world, along with Singapore, Copenhagen, some water intakes in Finland and Canada. For the Swedish capital, it is drawn from the nearby Lake Mälaren, and its quality is supervised by SIWI (Stockholm International Water Institute). I think I fell in love with Swedish cider (sw. äppelcider) for the same reason, especially from two producers: Rekordelik and the niche Golden Cider Company.

But to the point - museums, churches, opera houses and concert halls offer an incredibly sparse selection of music in their shops. That is why, when, after seeing the collection of the Crown Treasury Kungliga slottet (Royal Palace), located on the island of Stadsholmen, in the Gamla stan district, after looking at the wonders, including some with links to the Polish court (the historical links between Sweden and Poland are strongly visible everywhere in this country), I stood in front of a tiny shop, just for the sake of peace of mind, I scanned the goodies on display.

How big was my surprise when, between pencils with the royal crown on them, magnets with a view of the castle and notebooks with the museum's logo on them, I saw a CD. I could not believe what I was seeing. On the indistinguishable cover was the title of the work, in Swedish and English, and on the side, in small letters, the author and performers. These told me nothing, I ask the Swedes' forgiveness, it was entirely my fault. What caught my eye, however, was the small, gilded, embossed logo in the top right corner. In a word - I had to have it.

Before the disc disappeared into the bag I was holding on my shoulder from the Krakow-based publishing house Karakter, a funny situation occurred which reflects well the situation of physical music carriers in the 21st century. The CD in question was sitting nicely on a stand right in front of one of the two young people sitting behind a counter. When I handed it to him, he was unbelievably surprised, his eyebrows raised and for a moment he did not know what to do with it.

⸜ Hall of State in Kungliga slottet (Royal Palace), where the Förklädd gud was recorded

When he realized what he was holding in his hand, he threw me an apologetic look: ‘Sorry, I didn't know we had something like that’ and started looking up the item on the computer. He did not find it. Only a surprise consultation with a colleague and a resulting phone call somewhere ‘upstairs’, literally and figuratively, cleared things up, and the disc became my property. By the way, people in Stockholm are incredibly friendly and just plain nice. And without affectation or pretense. And also - this was my impression - everyone speaks perfect English and several other languages. On the other hand, you won't find guides or materials in Polish in museums; the exception was Vasamuseet (Vasa Museum).

Let’s go back to the aforementioned logo. As I later read, it was the logo of Kunglig Hovstaterna (Royal Court). This is the official name of the organizations (of royal households) that support the monarch and the royal house. The Court is headed by the incumbent monarch, currently King Carl XVI Gustav. Not surprisingly, I saw the same plaque again later, in the Riddarholmskyrkan church on Riddarholmen, where Sweden's rulers are buried and where special plaques are also placed to commemorate the cavaliers of the Kungliga Serafimerorden (Royal Order of the Seraphim).

This extremely honourable royal order, awarded since 1748, has been awarded to five Poles throughout its history, although only three are listed in the database available to tourists. Among the Order's Chevaliers are Aleksander Colonna-Walewski (1854) and Agenor Gołuchowski (1904), who are absent from the database, as well as Ignacy Mościcki (1936), Lech Wałęsa (1993) and Bronisław Komorowski (2011), whom we know.

And now: the Kunglig Hovstatern logo is found on the eighth, and so far last, edition of Förklädd gud, a cantata for narrator, soprano, baritone, mixed choir and orchestra, written in 1940 by Swedish composer Lars-Erik Larsson. According to Wikipedia, atmospheric and pastoral in style, the neo-romantic God in Disguise is a setting of a 1933 narrative poem by Swedish poet Hjalmar Gullberg.

⸜ One of the most important places to visit in Stockholm is the Nobel Prize Museum located in the heart of the capital, at Stortorget, or Market Square. You can buy souvenir postcards there; pictured: Ernest Hemingway, Bob Dylan, Kazuo Ishiguro (石黒 一雄), and Maria Skłodowska-Curie below.

The cantata, which premiered on Sveriges Radio AB (Swedish Radio) on 1st April 1940 conducted by the composer, was an instant success and remains not only one of Larsson's most famous compositions, but also one of the most frequently performed pieces of Swedish classical music. The version in question was recorded by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Gustaf Sjökvist Chamber Choir, conducted by Ludvig Norman, in 2008 at the palace's Hall of State, a central venue for events associated with the royal family, where Queen Kristina's throne, made of silver, is on display. The venue is open to the public, so I had to visit it. That was the end of the musical adventure at the castle.

As you will read in any guidebook to this city, as well as on websites and blogs dedicated to it, the most important thoroughfare of the old town is Västerlånggatan, a long, narrow pedestrian street encircling much of the old town, once running along the city walls. And it is true. At the same time, it is a major attraction for tourists, thus resembling - by all proportions - Krupówki in Zakopane or Floriańska Street in Krakow. This is probably why the locals spend their time on the street that is an extension of Västerlånggatan, i.e. Drottninggatan.

Starting not far from the Swedish Parliament buildings, the 1.7 km long Queen Street ends at the Observatory (Observatorielunden) on a hill, next to the Stockholm Universitet buildings. It is worth going there as there are plenty of bars, pubs and cafés, not to mention wine bars. Driven by curiosity, I walked it all. But already at the beginning of the road, at number 20, I found the Bengans Skivbutik shop, by the way the only record shop on this incredibly expensive street.

⸜ View of the Riksdag, or Parliament, from Drottninggatan Street

I couldn't help but enter, it was obvious. I thought I'd ask about some Swedish black metal and jazz from that country, that had links to the Polish jazz scene since the 1960s, and known internationally mainly through the Proprius label. I was referring, of course, to CDs. That's why the sight I saw when I crossed the shop's threshold threw me off guard - vinyl everywhere I looked, whole walls and containers of vinyl. It took me a while to find the first CDs, but it turned out that the two large stands of compact discs and boxes were devoted solely to K-Pop music. I like it, I'm a geek for that country’s TV series, but, it is definitely not black metal.

▌ Only jazz

FORTUNATELY, I FOUND SOME CDs there as well, admittedly pushed into the furthest corner, poorly displayed and rather on the side, but they were there. Yet, there was nothing there that interested me. Of course, there was Garbarek and some ECM records, some other stuff I've had for a long time, some popular Proprius titles, but overall - a very poor choice. And zero metal. Resigned, I approached the salesman, who took a moment to think over the question of metal music and after a moment, with an apologetic look in his eyes, asked: ‘how about Ghost?’ As I am up to date with their albums, I said thank you.

Nota bene, when I returned to Krakow I took advantage of an invitation from Zbyszek Bielak, who was finishing an opening of his works at Pieskowa Skała Castle and invited me to his place to listen to some heavy albums and where I saw a few things from the set design he had just designed for the band's latest tour. We talked for a while about what we could do together. If all goes well, we will meet you at this year's Audio Video Show. Black metal at the AVS? - That could be something!

⸜ An inside of the Bengans Skivbutik

Anyway, when I asked the aforementioned salesman at Bengans Skivbutik about jazz, without hesitation he reached for Jan Johansson's album Jazz På Svenska standing on the counter. Originally released in 1964 on the Megafon label, and recorded between 1962 and 1964, the disc features jazz interpretations of Swedish folk songs. And it is excellent. Recorded as a duet with double bass, with the leader on piano, it offers an excellent sound, very sensitively captured by Olof Svembel.

This Swedish sound engineer was, it seems, an important figure, as he recorded Stan Getz during his visit to Sweden. Interestingly, the double bass there is played by Georg Riedel, born in Karlovy Vary in what was then Czechoslovakia, who not only has a name familiar to us from the band Dżem, but is one of Sweden's most important jazz instrumentalists and played on the top audiophile album Jazz at the Pawnshop (Proprius Records, 1974). An article dedicated to him in Jazz Forum reads:

The turning point in his career was undoubtedly his collaboration with pianist Jan Johansson. In 1964, they released an album of jazz interpretations of Swedish folk music Jazz på svenska, recorded as a duo. The songs on it (Visa från Utanmyra, Emigrandvisa, Visa från Rattvik) became Swedish standards of sorts, and Jazz på svenska still ranks first in the category of best-selling Swedish jazz albums. The collaboration between the two outstanding artists ended in dramatic circumstances when Jan Johansson died in a car accident in 1968.

⸜ MAREK PIECHNAT, Georg Riedel, „Jazz Forum” 3/2024, → JAZZFORUM.com.pl, accessed: 2.08.2024.

The album has sold 250,000 copies and on Spotify it has been listened to 50 million times! Jan was the father of two musicians, Anders and Jens Johansson, who remastered the version I hold in my hand, released in 2005 by Heptagon Records. This release belongs to them and is a kind of ‘living museum’ through which the sons make their father's legacy accessible. It's a really interesting case, because musically they are far from what Jan was doing. And that's because Anders was the drummer for the band HammerFall and now plays in the post-metal band Tungsten. Jens, on the other hand, is the keyboardist of Finnish post-metal band Stratovarius and a member of Rainbow, Ritchie Blackmore's rock project.

And even if you have not heard of any of the above mentioned bands, except perhaps the latter, I am sure you have the sound of Riedel's double bass imprinted in your subconscious. The album Jazz at the Pawnshop, fronted by saxophonist Sven Arne Domnérus, was recorded at a club based in Stockholm. I had read about it many times and seen many photos. When it came down to it, however, I experienced amnesia. For it turns out that while loitering around Gamla stan, I entered a small club called Jazzpuben Stampen. The concert was about to start, I listened to the last minutes of the rehearsal for a while, looked around the interior, checked out the instruments and left. Admittedly, I had other plans, but what the hell - the important thing is that I left.

⸜ Jan Johansson’s Jazz På Svenska

It wasn't until I was home collecting material for this column that I discovered that Stampen is THE club. My God! - It's a sacred place, and I looked at it as a curiosity. I didn't even have a beer. Luckily I had a good look around, because it's an interesting place, and there are lots of autographed photos of top jazz players from all over the world hanging on the walls. And yet, I didn’t figure it out...

Now knowing where I was, I can't believe that the musicians immortalized on the Domnérus album could fit on this microscopic stage, squeezed into the corner of the main hall. The pub is wood-lined and has a lot of nooks and crannies, which is perhaps why what I heard, which was Rhodes' drums and piano, sounded excellent. But, to reiterate, how they fit in there, where the sound engineer, Gert Palmcrantz, sat, and it is otherwise known that he kept one Nagra IV-S tape recorder (with small reels) on his lap and the other lying on a beer truss - is beyond my imagination.

Anyway, at Bengans Skivbutik I grabbed the Jazz På Svenska CD, not yet knowing how much pleasure it would give me and that it would give me heart palpitations. Just one more beer on the way back, reviewing the photos I'd taken of the charming park surrounding the observatory - and back to the hotel. For the next day was to be ABBA day. To say this is a national treasure is to say nothing.

▌ Only ABBA

THIS MUSEUM is located a few minutes from where you can admire the gargantuan ship Vasa, which sank in August 1628 on its maiden voyage a few hundred metres from the harbour, and which was recovered on 24th April 1961 and is today one of Stockholm's most important attractions, something like Wawel Castle for Poles. On the other side of it is the large amusement park Tivoli. Tickets for ABBA have to be bought in advance and they are for a specific time. At the time we were there, all the seats were bought out several days in advance.

On 1 June this year, the rmf24.pl portal wrote:

'The members of the famous band ABBA have been awarded the prestigious Order of the Vasa by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden for “outstanding contributions to Swedish and international music”. This is the first award of this honour to a Swede in 50 years.

⸜ MALWINA ZABOROWSKA, Członkowie zespołu ABBA odznaczeni przez króla Szwecji, → www.RMF24.pl, 1stJune 2024, accessed: 9.08.2024.

This is a unique honour, but it was bestowed on a band that has done more for Sweden than the vast majority of politicians and made the country internationally recognizable. And no wonder. This quartet, formed in 1972 by Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Agneth Fältskog, has sold 400 million albums and singles worldwide , and its members were the first Swedes to win the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 with the hit Waterloo. And although it ended its career in 1982, shortly after the release of Visitors, its popularity rose again with the 2008 musical Mamma Mia! which used the band's hits from throughout its career.

⸜ Wax figures of the ABBA’s members in a museum dedicated to them

The ABBA Museum - I write its name in capital letters because it has become accepted as an acronym derived from the first letters of the members' first names - is on the one hand pompous and on the other incredibly intimate, sprinkled with glitter but also often down-to-earth. Which is to say, exactly what the band itself was like. They started their career playing at folk festivals and this homeliness remained in their music almost to the end. But it is also a very Swedish museum. In the sense that sensible and not overwhelming.

You see, on the same day we were at Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art), which is one of the best stocked institutions of its kind in Europe. Among the more than 6,000 top-notch objects they stock we found absolute pearls of contemporary painting and sculpture, including - arousing great controversy in Poland, but no negative emotions there - Maurizio Cattelan's La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), depicting the figure of Pope John Paul II crushed by a meteor. More stirring was the installation Him right next door, by the same author, depicting a Hitler the size of a teenager, kneeling in a completely red room and staring at Roy Lichtenstein's painting Uncle Sam.

But to the point - Swedish museums, at least the ones we've been to, even the Armémuseum, are characterised by wonderful moderation (by the way - this is another place with a lot of Polish artifacts). After all, Moderna Museet could exhibit in a hundred rooms and still not show all the treasures, such as Pablo Picasso's canvases, Ai WeiWei's sculptures and installations, Andy Warhol's serigraphs and photographs, Henri Matiss's ‘cut-outs’ or Jackson Pollock's paintings, not to mention hundreds of Nordic painters.

Instead of „killing” us with excess, the curators have adopted the principle of rotation. The permanent exhibition is small, while a large number of works are shown in rotation. It is thanks to this solution that I was able to see a Pollock painting hung here next to a painting by Tadeusz Kantor, remarkably similar and at the same time - note - artistically equivalent. Thanks to this, when visiting this place from time to time we will see a slightly different exposition each time. For example, in a few dozen days the exhibition of German Expressionism will be launched there.

⸜ One of the temporary exhibitions at Moderna Museet and paintings by Pollock and Kantor - can you recognize which is which? (hint: on the left it’s Kantor)

The same is true of the ABBA Museum. Visitors are guided through its history, starting with the Eurovision victory, to which a separate room is dedicated, with a display of the performance and the outfits from it, as well as the medal for winning first place, through the room where the two couples met, their dressing room, the Polaris (!) recording studio, the record company's office, to the room where dozens of gold and platinum records are displayed. Along the way, you could also sing a song of your choice with avatars of the band members, while it looked as if you were actually standing next to them, get a glimpse of the wax sculptures, mix a song of your choice yourself, and even sing karaoke in specially prepared booths.

Separate rooms were prepared for an adventure with Mamma Mia, with the famous blue door at the forefront of everyone's minds, which everyone wanted to take photos with, and the car in which the main characters travelled around the island, which you could get into and take even more photos. And then there were the rooms, with the solo activities of the musicians. And there was also a room where they talked about the ABBA Voyage project, a series of concerts from 2023-24 in which their avatars ‘performed’ instead of the musicians. While this may seem bizarre, in the museum you can see them up close and, let me say this, they look incredibly realistic. And above it all, the band's music is constantly with you there.

On the way out we find ourselves, as we do in modern museums, in a shop. Here it's a whole shop, not so small at all, with hundreds of gadgets, clothes, shoes, books, photo albums, and music albums. To tell you the truth, I was prepared for a little shopping spree, the money was secured for it, and it turned out to be a bit of a ‘blowout’. There was nothing - I'm still talking about music albums - that would offer a value of being purchased there, nor anything unique. However, not to quit my habit I reached for the Waterloo (1974) and Visitors (1981) CDs, the first and last in their catalogue (not counting Voyage), both in 2001 remastered versions.

▌ The return

There are direct flights from KRAKOW to STOCKHOLM, as there are from other Polish cities, so it's easy to get there. The flight from my city takes less than two hours, and the Arlanda Airport (ARN), where they land, is so close that the Arlanda Express, the train that takes us to the heart of the city, leaving every fifteen minutes or so, only takes eighteen minutes. So there is no excuse for you.

⸜ One of the highlights for any visitor to Stockholm - a sculpture by Bernt Notke entitled Saint George with the Dragon from 1489 commemorating Sten Sture the Elder's victory over the Danes made of oak wood and moose horns. The work can be found in St Nicholas Church in Stockholm's Old Town

Whether it is museums related to art, the Nobel Prize, and there is also the City Museum, the Viking Museum, the Viking Settlement, the Museum of Photography and many others, or - for me, the number one and the place I would like to return to - the Stampen Club, everyone will find there something for themselves. It's not frighteningly hot, like in southern Europe, but it's warm and crisp at the same time. It's just a good place for a holiday or even a short weekend getaway. And it is, despite appearances, full of music. ●