Sketching Sweden: A full-circle return to Stockholm

Eight years ago this month, I received an unexpected invitation.

With just a few weeks to go before my college graduation, I had still yet to make that all-important decision of What I Was Going To Do With My Life. But at an end-of-the-year party for fourth year students, I ran into two old friends, Kim and Emily, whom I had known since our freshman year. The first thing Kim said to me was, “Candace, come to London with us.”

It took all of two seconds to decide to join them on their move to the U.K. for six months, and I immediately set about applying for my own work visa. But while I couldn’t wait to set up our new lives in London, I was also just as excited about how our journey would begin — with a ten-day trip through Scandinavia.

I’d spent my entire life dreaming about stepping foot in Europe for the first time — and when we arrived in Stockholm, the city did not disappoint, most especially the historic neighborhood of Gamla Stan, which translates simply as ‘old town.’ I loved the web of winding, cobblestoned streets, the window boxes brimming with geraniums, and most of all, two very tall, very narrow buildings in Stortoget, the oldest square in Stockholm — one painted golden yellow, the other a warm shade of terra cotta red. There was just something about their presence in the square, and about their neat rows of windows and the detail of their ironwork.

Emily took a photo of me that first day in Stockholm, as I held an umbrella over my shoulder against a light summer rain, and I believe the look in my eyes is that of someone at the start of a journey they’ve long dreamed of taking; the look of pure wonder.

Despite many return trips to Europe over the years, I somehow never made a return to Stockholm happen — not until I started planning my current stay on Norway’s Lofoten Islands.

When an inexpensive flight presented itself from San Francisco to Stockholm, I leapt at the chance to finally return, if only for a night, and close the circle that was begun eight years earlier. And in an attempt to show that I was returning as a 29-year-old — and not the 22-year-old who had stayed in a 6-bed hostel dorm in Östermalm — I even treated myself to a room on one of Stockholm’s many boat hotels, or ‘botels,’ the Mälardrottningen, which is moored right along the island next to Gamla Stan.

While the hotel’s complimentary breakfast was a definite draw, my true motivation for staying there was that I wanted to be within immediate walking distance of Gamla Stan.

And as I set out on my only morning in Stockholm, intending to sketch in Stortoget, it all comes back to me. I can remember the sense of discovery — that you never know what vista awaits you around each bend of a cobblestoned street. I decide not to bring a map and will walk until I stumble across the square naturally, just as Kim, Emily, and I had eight years before. But it was August then, and here in the frigid March air, my patience is soon as thin as my cheap knit gloves.

Finally, I give myself permission to cheat a little. I stop at a souvenir shop, twirl a rack of postcards until I locate an image of the two buildings, and ask the shop owner if she can point me in the right direction.

“Stortoget?” she says. “It’s just up there.”

I sprint to cover the few remaining meters before I emerge into the square, and for the second time in my life, stare up in wonder at those two very tall, very narrow buildings, so incredibly different from anything I’d grown up around in the U.S.

As I sit sketching the pair of buildings for the next few hours, I remember how it felt to stand in this square with Kim and Emily for the first time. I remember how it was followed by our first meal of warm pancakes in a café just down the street. But mostly, I can remember the deeper sense of possibility that coursed through us then — the feeling of being on the brink of it all. As though hidden behind a cobblestoned bend of its own, our future lay out of sight, but still within reach.

On a brisk Sunday morning in Stockholm, I discover yet again what a gift it is to return to the touchstone places of our journeys — in the world, and in our lives.