Swingin' in Sweden
The Carlow Nationalist December 18 2009
There’s nothing guaranteed to turn heads like a procession of classic American cars; each one gussied up with gleaming chrome bumpers, mirror-shine paint jobs, menacingly long shark fins and pop-eyed orange tail-lights. It really is the kind of thing that's guaranteed to turn heads wherever they might appear. Or so you'd think. So, why was I the only rooted to the kerb, staring open-mouthed at this procession of vintage Americana on a crisp Swedish afternoon?
For me it was like a fourth of July parade in Littlesville, Idaho, but Stockholm is a long way from Idaho. And yet, only feet from where I stood, twenty immaculately restored vehicles revved their engines with a throaty growl and prowled like hunting panthers down the centre of the wide tree-lined street. The driver of the leading car, a fire-engine-red Chevy, didn’t even get a second glance from the shoppers on Sveavägen as they carried on about their business. Not his carefully quiffed, Elvis-style black hair, not his wrap-around sunglasses, not his gleaming white tee-shirt – a pack of Marlboro rolled into the sleeve. Not even the girl by his side; who wore a cutesy-pie blonde hair-do, a fluttering red neck-scarf and a red and white polka-dot dress. I couldn’t see her feet but I guessed they were adorned with teeny white ankle socks and bowling shoes, nobody gave her a second glance either. I looked down the street towards the end of the line of cars expecting to see them emerge from a rip in the space-time continuum, but there was no rip, just Stockholm and then the open sea.
I checked my guide book but here was no mention of vintage cars or unscheduled fourth of July parades. Nothing. But what my guide book did have was page after page of museums, sixty-eight in fact. Number one; the Aquaria Water Museum, number sixty-eight; the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. Between these were the Dance Museum, the Butterfly House, the Living History Forum, the Jewish Museum, the Royal Coin Cabinet, the Moderna Museet, the Tobacco and Match Museum and to quench your thirst, there’s the Beer Museum. (I’m still puzzled why I didn’t visit that one – or did I?)
If by any bizarre chance your interest is antique postal horns, you’re in the right city. Teddy bears? The Toy Museum can oblige. The evolution of the police baton or the police whistle through the ages? They’ve even got that covered at the Museum of Police Technology.
I decided on the Vasa Museum, the city's most famous. Located on the bridged island of Djurgarden, the museum houses the salvaged remains of the Vasa, the King’s elaborate flagship which sank in the middle of Stockholm bay on her maiden voyage in 1628. In fact, it sank ten minutes after being launched, which kind of ruined everyone’s day.
The six floor Vasa Museum recounts the story of the ship and the people involved in her planning, construction, painting, outfitting, sinking and eventual salvage. One poignant display shows the clothing of a deck-hand who was found trapped under the bulk of a ship’s cannon. Now that’s what you call a bad first day on the job.
The island of Djurgärden where the museum is located, was once used by Sweden's kings to contain animals for a hunting game in which the odds greatly favoured his Majesty. Today, Djurgärden is dedicated to the pleasures of the common man, with museums, art galleries, fun-fairs, a circus, a zoo of Nordic animals and 'Skansen' an open-air museum which is a recreation of the Sweden of yesteryear. Skansen houses more than 150 buildings from throughout Sweden and date back to the seventeenth century. Village life is recreated in minute detail; including bakeries, printers, soap-makers, farms and a hardware store. In the hardware store a man in a brown shop-coat counted shiny nails into paper cones. In the kitchen at the rear of the store his wife was busy washing the clothes. I felt like an intruder strolling through their house, looking in cupboards and under sofas, testing the springiness of the bed and checking behind the fridge for any loose change, but there wasn't any, so I left.
In Gamla Stan, the Old Town, I wandered it’s quiet streets. The distant sound of Be-Bop jazz lead me down darkening, narrow streets until they coughed me up in a small square on Stora Nygatan outside of a jazz club called ‘Stampen’. Through the giant front windows I could see crowds of smiling people dancing happily to the sounds of a five piece swing band.
As I entered the room the band were counting in a tune called, ‘if I can’t swing, I can’t do a thing.’ Well, they could swing. Within seconds the dance floor was full of jiving couples. I hadn’t seen this many people jiving since my brother’s wedding back in nineteen sixty nine.
After several frenzied and sweaty tunes the band slowed things down. The singer crooned a lazy fifties ballad about somebody’s baby who should be 'dusted with sugar and hung on a Christmas Tree'. Then they appeared. Four girls and four boys straight out of a scene from West Side Story – or more probably from the inside of the American cars I’d seen earlier. It was a moment I wished I could have watched in black and white. Their hair styles were authentic late-nineteen-fifties, their clothes were perfectly suited to a time when kids gathered at ‘Soda Fountains’ or ‘hung’ at the 'Juke-Joint'. Names like Connie-Ray and Becky sprung to mind. The girls chewed gum and checked their white face powder in small vanity mirrors as the boys clicked their fingers in time.
With the first beat of a new, more swingin’ tune two of them hit the dance-floor. Every move was perfect, the twirls, the spins, the side steps and the kicks, all perfect. They were joined by the others, never missing a step even when the tiny dance-floor filled. And just like the parade of cars on Sveavägen nobody gave them a second glance. That is, nobody except me.
Brendan Harding flew with SAS to Sweden.
Contact: www.flysas.com/en/ie/