57 Fun Facts About Stockholm

Central Stockholm is spread across how many islands?

Fourteen. They sit where a great inland lake meets the Baltic, and by about 1200 ships had to unload there, one reason a trading town grew up at the spot.

Which Swedish ruler, whose 1252 letters first mention Stockholm, is traditionally called its founder?

Birger Jarl. German merchants were invited to settle and trade there free of customs duties, and by the end of the 13th century the new town had become the largest in Sweden.

In the world's largest scale model of the Solar System, Stockholm's giant spherical Globe arena plays which body?

The Sun. With the arena as the Sun, the scale puts the inner planets around Stockholm but Pluto about 300 km to the north, a road trip that shows how empty the Solar System really is.

Which freshwater lake, Sweden's third largest, flows out into the Baltic at Stockholm?

Mälaren. In Viking times it was a bay of the Baltic that ships could sail far inland; the land, still rising since the Ice Age, made its mouth too shallow by about 1200 and turned it into a lake.

Which Viking Age trading centre near Stockholm is a World Heritage Site?

Its restored remains sit on a lake island; the site of Stockholm itself appears in the sagas as Agnafit.

The Stockholm Bloodbath of November 1520 followed the coronation of which union king?

Christian II had promised his Swedish opponents an amnesty; the killings earned him the name Christian the Tyrant in Sweden and set off the revolt that broke the Kalmar Union.

Which Stockholm body chooses the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine?

The Karolinska Institute was given the job in Alfred Nobel's own will, and today fifty of its professors, sitting as the Nobel Assembly, make the final choice.

Which philosopher died in Stockholm in 1650, months after arriving to tutor Queen Christina?

Descartes, who liked to lie in bed until late morning, had to teach Christina at five in the morning in a cold, draughty castle; he fell ill and died within months of arriving.

Stockholm Palace replaced which medieval royal castle, destroyed by fire in 1697?

Tre Kronor took most of Sweden's royal archives and national library with it, which is why the country's medieval history is unusually hard to document.

Stockholm's Storkyrkan cathedral hosted which royal's wedding in June 2010?

Crown Princess Victoria married Daniel Westling, the personal trainer she had met at her gym, on 19 June, her parents' own wedding anniversary.

Which architect designed Stockholm Palace, with Carl Hårleman completing it after his death in 1728?

Nicodemus Tessin the Younger had just rebuilt the old castle's north wing when the 1697 fire gutted the rest, so he designed the new palace around the walls still standing.

UNESCO's listing for Drottningholm praises its palace, gardens, Chinese Pavilion and which perfectly preserved 1766 building?

The court theatre survived by neglect: long used as a furniture store, it was rediscovered in 1921 with its original sets and wooden stage machinery still in working order.

UNESCO calls Drottningholm the finest northern European royal residence inspired by which palace?

Versailles was the model, but the builder was a queen: Hedvig Eleonora bought the estate in 1661, saw the old house burn down that December and ordered a grander palace in its place.

The warship Vasa sank on her maiden voyage in 1628 after sailing roughly how far?

1,300 metres was as far as she got, still in sight of the shipyard that built her; 35 years later, divers using a newly perfected diving bell hauled up almost all her cannon.

Why did the Vasa sink on her 1628 maiden voyage?

A top-heavy build sank her, and the navy had seen it coming: when thirty men ran across her deck in a stability test, she rolled so badly that the admiral stopped it, yet she sailed anyway.

Junibacken, the children's museum on Djurgården, is devoted above all to which author?

Astrid Lindgren lent her story world on one condition: other writers and illustrators had to be shown too, because she wanted no part of a museum about herself.

Gamla Stan, Stockholm's historic core, was officially called what until 1980?

The Town between the Bridges stayed the official name long after locals had moved on: the metro station called Gamla stan opened in 1957, 23 years before the city caught up.

Stockholm City Hall, venue of the Nobel banquet, was built 1911–23 by which architect?

Ragnar Östberg kept reworking the design through all twelve years of building, and the lantern that tops the tower was one of his late changes of plan.

Which Stockholm City Hall room, left as bare red brick, hosts the Nobel banquet?

The Blue Hall was meant to be blue until its architect saw the red brick and left it bare, and the name stuck; after dinner, the guests climb the stairs to the Golden Hall to dance.

Why are the Nobel Prizes presented in Stockholm on 10 December each year?

Alfred Nobel died that day in 1896, and his will caused astonishment by leaving 94 percent of his fortune to fund the prizes, first handed out on the fifth anniversary in 1901.

Where in Stockholm is the Nobel Prize award ceremony held each December?

The Concert Hall, the blue building on Hötorget, hosts only the prize-giving; afterwards the laureates and their guests cross the city centre for the banquet at the City Hall.

Skansen on Djurgården, founded in 1891 by Artur Hazelius, is Sweden's oldest what?

Open-air museum: Hazelius bought old farmsteads and houses all over Sweden and had them moved to the hill piece by piece, and 'skansen' became the word for such museums across central Europe.

The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, has been called the world's longest what?

Art gallery: two artists campaigned in the 1950s until the city council voted to put art in the stations, and more than 90 of the 100 stations now carry it.

At which station do all three lines of the Stockholm Metro meet?

T-Centralen opened in 1957 as plain Centralen; the T for tunnelbana was added two months later because passengers kept confusing it with the main railway station next door.

After a seven-month trial and a referendum, Stockholm made which traffic measure permanent in 2007?

Congestion charge: the city's own voters narrowly said yes in 2006 while the surrounding municipalities that held votes said no, and parliament made it permanent the next year.

Sweden's largest airport, serving Stockholm, is called what?

Arlanda was planned from the 1940s because the runways at Bromma, the airport inside the city, were too short for the long-haul airliners due to fly to North America.

Who was stripped of two Stockholm 1912 golds?

Jim Thorpe won the pentathlon and decathlon, then lost both golds for having played paid baseball; his family got medals back only in 1983, thirty years after his death, and the IOC named him sole winner again in 2022.

As of 2025, which Stockholm football club plays its home matches at Sweden's national stadium in Solna?

AIK moved in for the 2013 season, months after the stadium opened as Friends Arena, a name chosen because the bank that bought the naming rights gave them to a charity fighting school bullying.

The Globe, Stockholm's giant spherical arena, was renamed in 2021 in memory of which DJ?

Avicii, born Tim Bergling in Stockholm, died in 2018; the new name was agreed with his family's foundation to draw attention to mental illness among young people.

Which pop group has had its own museum on Stockholm's Djurgården since 2013?

ABBA's museum keeps a red phone whose number only the four band members know; when it rings, whichever visitor picks up gets to talk to one of them.

'Stockholm syndrome' takes its name from a 1973 hostage crisis at which bank?

Kreditbanken's four staff spent six days in its vault with two convicts and came out defending them; the term is credited to a psychiatrist who was advising the police.

Which prime minister took a hostage's phone call during Stockholm's 1973 bank siege?

Olof Palme heard hostage Kristin Enmark beg to be allowed to leave the bank with her captors; she said she felt safe with them and feared a police assault more.

Stockholm entrepreneur Daniel Ek co-founded which tech company in 2006?

Spotify was Ek's answer to music piracy: he argued that laws alone would never stop it, so the only fix was a legal service that was better than stealing.

King, a games company that started out in Stockholm in 2003, makes which hit mobile game?

Candy Crush Saga launched on Facebook in 2012 and earned so much from players buying extra moves that Activision Blizzard paid $5.9 billion for King four years later.

Which Stockholm-born Hollywood star made her last film in 1941?

Greta Garbo was a teenage clerk in a Stockholm department store when a director gave her a first small film part; a few years later MGM took her to Hollywood.

Which king founded the Royal Swedish Opera and was later shot at a masked ball there?

Gustav III was shot in the back by noble conspirators in 1792 and died 13 days later; Verdi built an opera on the murder, though censors made him move the action to Boston.

Which old Stockholm quarter was largely torn down for a modern city centre?

Klara, home of the city's newspapers and bohemian poets, came down after the council voted in 1945 to drive the metro through it and build a business district; hundreds of buildings went.

Which 20th-century Stockholm landmark has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994?

The Woodland Cemetery was laid out in former gravel pits overgrown with pines after two young architects won a 1915 competition; its blend of graves and forest has influenced cemeteries in many countries.

Which Stockholm-born playwright wrote Miss Julie?

August Strindberg named his breakthrough novel The Red Room after the dining room at Berns where he met artists and journalists; its satire of Stockholm society made him famous.

Which film director led Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre from 1963 to 1966?

Ingmar Bergman was rehearsing on its stage in 1976 when two plainclothes policemen arrested him for tax evasion; the charges were dropped, but he went into exile in Munich.

Which amusement park sits on the island of Djurgården and doubles as a concert venue?

Gröna Lund began in 1883 when a German, Jacob Schultheis, rented the plot for carousels; four generations of his family ran it, one of whom married the son of the rival funfair next door.

Stockholm City Hall opened in 1923, 400 years after which king entered the city?

Gustav Vasa made his grand entry at Midsummer 1523, days after his rebels took the city from its Danish garrison; he had risen in revolt after his own father was executed there.

Sergels Torg, the sunken plaza at the heart of modern Stockholm, lies in which city district?

Norrmalm's sunken plaza is where the city goes to protest and to party: demonstrations fill its triangle-patterned paving, and fans jump into the fountain after big sporting wins.

Which crime writer's Millennium trilogy, set in and around Stockholm, was published only after his death?

Stieg Larsson delivered three finished novels and died of a heart attack in 2004 before any was printed; the trilogy went on to sell tens of millions of copies.

Which video game did Markus 'Notch' Persson create in Stockholm before selling his studio to Microsoft for $2.5 billion?

Minecraft began as Persson's own project in 2009; he sold up because he wanted to move on from the game, now widely counted as the best-selling video game of all time.

Which Swedish songwriter wrote '...Baby One More Time', which Britney Spears recorded at Stockholm's Cheiron Studios?

Max Martin first offered the song to the Backstreet Boys and TLC, and both turned it down; the 16-year-old Spears then flew to Stockholm to record it in May 1998.

Stockholm has been home since 1668 to the world's oldest surviving what?

Central bank: it took over from a private Stockholm bank that had issued Europe's first banknotes and then far too many of them, so at first the new bank was forbidden to print any.

The Sager House, adjacent to the Riksdag, serves as the official residence of whom?

The prime minister had no official home in the city until the state bought the house in the late 1980s as a secure residence, after a serving premier was murdered in 1986.

Which Stockholm church holds the tombs of Swedish monarchs from Gustavus Adolphus to Gustaf V?

Riddarholmen Church lost its spire to a lightning strike in 1835 and got the cast-iron one seen today; with no congregation since 1807, it is used only for burials and memorials.

Which Stockholm suburb, Ericsson's headquarters from 2003, is called Sweden's biggest IT centre?

Kista was laid out only in the 1970s; so many chip and telecoms firms clustered there in the 1980s that Swedes nicknamed it 'Chipsta'.

Which building houses the seat of the Swedish government in Stockholm?

Rosenbad was built in 1902 as a smart commercial block of flats, bank offices and an exclusive restaurant, which went on serving diners until 1956.

In 2010 Stockholm became the first European what?

European Green Capital: the judges pointed to a cut of a quarter in the city's emissions and its pledge at the time to be free of fossil fuels by 2050.

Strict quarantine rules meant which city's 1956 Olympics held their equestrian events in Stockholm instead?

Melbourne lost the horses because Australia refused to waive its six-month quarantine, so the riders competed in Stockholm in June, five months before the main Games opened.

Which Gamla Stan restaurant has operated at the same address since 1722?

Den Gyldene Freden was close to bankruptcy in 1919 when the painter Anders Zorn bought it and left it to the Swedish Academy, whose members still dine there every Thursday.

Stockholm-born brothers Alexander, Gustaf and Bill all became screen actors under which family name?

Skarsgård: Alexander, the eldest, was a child star who quit at 13 because the attention made him uncomfortable, and he did his military service in the navy before returning to acting.

The United Nations' first world conference on which global issue met in Stockholm in June 1972?

The environment: the Stockholm meeting led to the founding of the UN Environment Programme, and its opening date, 5 June, is still marked each year as World Environment Day.

Anglers in the very centre of Stockholm, beside the Royal Palace, regularly catch which prized fish?

Salmon swim up the short, fast stream that runs past the palace and around the parliament island, so sport fishers cast for them and for sea trout in the middle of the capital.