Philistine

 

Let's summarise where I'm up to in the Stockholm journey, shall we?  After three days of travelling, I'd visited seventy three out of the one hundred Tunnelbana stations: nearly three quarters done.  The whole of the Blue Line was complete, plus the northern branch of the Green Line and the southern branches of the Red Line.  

For the fourth day, I returned to the Green Line, and headed for metro's southernmost station, Farsta Strand.  This was once open to the elements, but they later made a mint on those sweet air rights and built over it.  I do wonder if this is something we should embrace more in the UK; there are hundreds of stations around the country sitting in cuttings and under road bridges that could be decked over and used as valuable building sites.  I wonder if the collapse of the Gerrards Cross Tunnel during the construction of a Tesco put everyone off the idea.

I went up to the surface and took a turn around the public square at the top.  I'd worked out that the most efficient way to collect the Green Line meant starting to walk from Farsta station, the next one down the line, so really I was loitering, completing the patented Merseytart Rules™️ by passing through the ticket barrier.  (No, stepping onto the platform doesn't count.)  I didn't really want to go back out on the train I'd come in on, but to be honest, there wasn't much at Farsta Strand to keep me busy.  Certainly not at eight in the morning, anyway.

One interesting feature - I say interesting feature; once you read what it is, you'll probably disagree - was the large concrete lions blocking vehicles from entering the pedestrian area.  I'd noticed these all over the city, and found them extremely pleasing.  You could have a large lump of concrete in the road, stopping traffic, or you could have something that was actually attractive.  I felt like sending a picture of them to Liverpool City Council to encourage them to replace those awful lumps that block up Castle Street outside the Town Hall.  They were a temporary solution during the pandemic, you can do it properly now!

Having exhausted all the possible charms of a shopping centre where the shops weren't open, I headed back down the escalators to the platform.  The Art at Farsta Strand consists of this tiled floor and some posters; don't go expecting any Kungsträdgården magnificence from now on.  Most of the Green Line is overground and so The Art is usually a bit of tile work or some statuary.

Farsta's a little more ambitious, with Gunnar Larson putting some aluminium shapes on string and dangling them from the ceiling of the ticket hall.  

It's, dare I say it, a little basic?  It looks like the art they'd have in a sitcom where the main character visits a pretentious gallery.  The hero would, of course, get caught up in the shapes and panic, to much irate shouting from the probably East European artist.  Still, I guess it's a splash of colour where there wouldn't normally be some.

Now, finally, I could do some proper walking to my next stop.  I passed a few high tower blocks and then a small industrial plant.  A banner outside one of the factories promised a Glasscafe and Outlet; it turns out glass is Swedish for ice cream, and they weren't promising to serve you a nice bowl of shards.  I tried to be smart, and follow a footpath I'd seen on the map.  However, when I got to the end of the cul-de-sac that accessed it, I found it closed off for building work - they were constructing a whole new series of flats right next to it.  I trudged back to the main road and followed it uphill, past joggers and dog walkers.

There were more industrial units and offices, including the headquarters of an instrument company called Swema AB.  Their logo features a red circle with a blue bar across the centre and the firm's name written on it in white.  I'm not sure where they got the idea for this logo from but I'm imagining their graphic designer dropping in an expense account that included a flight to Heathrow and a visit to the London Transport Museum.  

Hökarängen was one of those districts where I could picture myself living.  There was something about the way it huddled around its central square that appealed to me.  It was one of the earliest of Stockholm's new suburbs, built after the war, and it had a real bobbysoxer and greaser air to it.  I half expected to find a soda stop and a petrol station where they'd fill your Buick for you.  Maybe it was the presence of a children's book store that swung it for me.  How could you not love that?

The morning sun was bursting over the town square and a part of me wanted to take a seat on the bench and watch the water cascade down the fountain.  Then I spotted the unhoused gentleman fiddling with his genitals in the doorway of the MatDax supermarket and I decided I'd head to the trains.

I'm once again going to critique The Art in a negative way.  I want you to remember that I have no qualifications to do so; I am not an artist, I have no certificates, and I am very much not Brian Sewell.  He's dead, anyway.  All I am is someone who casts an eye over the works presented me then writes about it on his very under-read blog.  My opinion, in other words, is useless.

Having said all that... what the hell, Hökarängen?

Designed by Hannes Karlewski, it consists of coloured pieces of aluminium whose colour changes slightly as you walk down the platform.  The ones facing south are warm coloured; the ones facing north are colder.  

According to my book about the art on the Tunnelbana, they were originally in glass, but had to be replaced with something more sturdy after vandalism.  I can only assume a furious rate payer scrawled my council tax is paying for THIS?!?! on the surface.

To be fair there is also this statue.  Money well spent, I'm sure you'll agree.

Mind you, at least The Art at Hökarängen is easy to spot.  I walked the length of the platform at Gubbängen, and even up to the ticket office, looking for theirs, and I couldn't find any sign.  In the end I went back down again and there it was, facing me.

It's called Väktare and is by Ragnhild Alexandersson.  To me, it looks like a nice bit of sculpture your auntie would have on her G-Plan sideboard, just beneath the starburst clock and the painting of the blue Chinese Girl.  

Sports fever is dying down as I type this; we're in the fallow period between the end of the Paris Olympics and the beginning of the Paralympics.  The Olympics are the only time I ever pay any attention to sports (unless you count snooker).  I think it's because the medal table provides an exciting, updated by the hour, race in itself; one that doesn't involve any athleticism but is instead a kind of posh spreadsheet.  Also, let's be honest, there's worse ways to spend your morning than watching extremely fit men in varying degrees of tight attire hurling themselves around for your entertainment.

The reason I bring this up is not because I simply wanted to go on about Adam Peaty in a pair of speedos, but because I was entering the Olympic district.  Laid out in the 1930s, this part of Tallkrogen was laid out as a running track, with streets named in tribute to Olympians and sports.

I walked along Linvägen, named after a prominent Swedish gymnastics teacher, admiring the small coloured houses and their neat front gardens.  As is often the case when a town planner tries something different, the whole area is now a very desirable place to live.

I walked past the pastel homes on Maratonvägen, the only time in my life I will ever go near a marathon.  Twenty six miles of running?  Are you insane?  I consider jogging to be a hobby somewhere below dog molestation, which does, of course, explain my extremely svelte form.  
 

The main cross avenue that took me to the T-bana station is called Viktor Balcks väg, after Viktor Balck, who was the Swedish representative on the very first International Olympic Committee.  There's also a Lemmings Väg, named after Eric Lemming, the first Swedish gold medallist (for the javelin), plus roads named after discus and "training", which is a bit lazy.  I know Graeco-Roman Wrestling Street would need rather a long sign but at least it's an actual sport.  (No, I have no idea why that sport, of all the ones at the Olympics, was the first to come to mind.  No idea at all).  

I wandered up the stairs to the platform.  The track rises and falls on the Green Line, sometimes on viaducts, sometimes dipping beneath the streets.  One curiosity of the Swedish network is the trains drive on the left, a hangover from when the roads also drove on the left.  That shifted on Dagen H, when literally overnight, everyone drove into the right hand lane and stayed there.  Doing the same for the railways would've been a major engineering challenge, so they didn't bother, which causes a few problems at international borders; there's a tunnel north of Malmö which carries the southbound tracks over the northbound ones so that it can swap sides for the Øresund Bridge and on to the Continent.  (This does, by the way, mean that Malmö's trains all run on the opposite track to the rest of the country).  

I was quite glad they did run the same way as the trains at home, because one thing that constantly irritated me when I was in Amsterdam was getting off a train and having my bearings scrambled.  I frequently walked one way, thinking it was the exit I wanted, when I actually needed to be going in the opposite direction.

The art at Skogskyrkogården offers a full Pagan fantasy.  There's a sculpted wooden armchair set, complete with a table and newspaper.  It's like something from The Lord of the Rings, or perhaps that disappointing Doctor Who Christmas special where the power of a mother's love saves the day from giant wood creatures and Bill Bailey and Arabella Weir are totally wasted as guest stars.

Of course I had to give the chair a try.  It was surprisingly comfortable considering it's a big lump of wood.  I'm guessing forty years worth of buttocks have sanded it down nicely.

I had to sit with my legs like that because of the position of the table, alright?

I was larking about with my camera, trying to take the sign pic, and dimly aware that there were an unusual amount of people hanging around outside the station.  Obviously there are often passengers and passers by but these people all seemed to be gathered as if they were waiting for something.  Then I spotted they were all wearing black, and I realised my station-collecting guff was happening right in the middle of a funeral party.  I skulked away quickly.

The Skogskyrkogården, or Forest Cemetery, was inaugurated in 1920 and was an innovation in the design of graveyards.  Nature was fully integrated into the design, with trees and woodland scattered throughout, and the buildings were designed to match.  It's now Sweden's largest cemetery and was designated a World Heritage Site in the nineties.

My route took me through the Sandsborgskyrkogården, however, the older and more traditional cemetery to the north.  This was laid out earlier and is similar to a British graveyard.  Like all burial grounds, it was an incredibly relaxing place to wander, cool and silent.  My normal power walk slowed to a saunter as I let it wash over me.  I had a look to see if there was anyone with a particularly amusing name on their gravestone but that was as exciting as it got.

I wandered into Sandsborg station.  It's one of the few on the Tunnelbana that doesn't have a specific artwork so instead of a picture of some incomprehensible piece of perspex, I present to you the line diagrams on the platform.

Now that I'd put on my living room wall.