Season 3 Episode 2 - THE MALMS

No matter how neighborhoods change, old meanings and power structures remain. This episode, we explore how the power and wealth wielded in the neighborhoods of Södermalm, Östermalm, and Gamla Stan, impact city residents today.

Check out Ellen Arkbo's music: ellenarkbro.bandcamp.com/album/for-organ-and-brass

Script

[Intro Music]

“The more citizen you get, the more exposed you also get.”

Jess 00:15 Welcome to Here There Be Dragons. This season, I’m taking you to Stockholm. I’m your host, Jess Myers.

Episode 2: The Malms

“The Malm is… extremely quiet.”

“Malm’s streets are… sort of the medieval flare about it.”

“There is a lot of small boats.”

“It’s too bourgeoise for me.”

“This part of the city is being radically changing.”

“Everybody lives in the city center has money.”

“There is something really beautiful about the design here.”

[Music]

Jess 01:03 I have to admit something to you. Before I packed up my life, bought absurd amount of warm socks, and boarded a plane to Stockholm, I didn’t know anything about the city. Well, that’s not true, let me rephrase. I knew what friends and colleagues told me; winter would be dark but cozy. Early nights, candles in the windows, and endless cinnamon buns.

But the city itself was really a stranger that I spent three months trying to meet. Nothing made this clear to me than the neighborhood I was living in. Whenever I would meet someone new [distant voice: Hej hej, how are you] and they would ask [Where are you staying] and I would say [Oh in Maria Torget]. The response was always some variation on [OooOOO fancy].

Fancy. Bougie. You need a lot of money to live over there. And I didn’t know. The reason I didn’t know was because I wasn’t paying rent. The apartment was a loan from the residency program at Konstnärsnämnden, the Swedish Arts Grant Committee.  But whenever I said where I lived, Stockholmers would get an idea about me, the same way I would get an idea about a New Yorker living in the West Village or a Parisian in the Marais. Honestly, living in the center gives you a small kind of power. Want a place to crash after drunk karaoke? I’ve got you. An impressive view for a Tinder selfie? I got you. A central meet-up before a work event? I’ve got you too.

02:34 I was on an island called Sodermalm. From my window, I could see across Lake Malaren to the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament as if it were floating on the water itself [water sound]. Walking down Hornsgatan every day to get to my studio, I would pass upscale thrift stores, classy-looking bakeries, and lunch counters promising everything from chia pudding to Japanese small plates. I heard hipster, I heard rich kids, and I saw the sheepish ways other Stockholmers would admit to living in Sodermalm as if expecting the eye roll. When I overheard my studio-mates complaining about the cost of jam cookies at the sandwich shop on the corner, I understood––ah-ha, right, exclusive.

But it wasn’t always that way.

03:18 Just a few decades ago, the geometry of the city center firmly excluded Sodermalm, a neighborhood that boasted nicknames like Knife-Soder and housed working-class families.

Aysnja was born and raised in Sodermalm. When we talked to her and her partner Ulrika about it, they told us a very different story about the origins of the now-bougie “Maria Torget.”

ULRIKA 03:40 So, my name is Ulrika. I am 49 years old. And… I’m a professor of gender studies at Obsidian University. And I live in Stockholm, Sodermalm.

ASYNJA 03:51 My name is Asynja Urge, and I’m 47 years old, turning 48 in May, Gemini. And… I work as a culture producer, marketing manager, project leader, club hopper, and everything between, queering the world. And… I live in Stockholm.

ULRIKA 04:14 And, you know, this is just an anecdote I remember my father telling me that Sodermalm when he was growing up, was considered really dangerous. The place where Asynia grew up around Maria Torget that was like a place for buying sex and drugs basically um in the 60s and early 70s.

ASYNJA 04:34 You have to know that in Sodermalm the 80s was actually seen as a dangerous place. It was a lot of white working-class, lot of culture, lot of activity, lot of political lefts, like communists, dangerous for many. So, I lived, I was brought up in sort of like bad neighborhood. I mean, you can’t imagine that nowadays, but…

Jess 04:58 To me it seems unimaginable that the place Asynja grew up is the same place I would get little gingerbread people with red currant buttons, before being jostled aside by herds of teens decked out in air pods and dark athleisure. Not exactly what I would call “the mean streets”.

But the gentrification of Sodermalm has largely been pinned on a policy change.

In the 1990s Sweden experienced a political shift to the right. Under that more conservative administration, the public housing that many working Swedes relied on was privatized. Those that could afford it bought their apartments and those who couldn’t were pushed out.

MAGNUS 05:38 My name is Magnus Hexson. I’m 55 years old. And I work at Yaspes Residency Program, responsible for designing architecture for the program.

Jess 05:52 Magnus, a long-time Sodermalm resident, and life-long Stockholmer, saw his neighborhood change drastically during this time.

MAGNUS 05:58 I’ve been living on Soder for I don’t know maybe 20 years or so and this part of the city has been radically changing maybe even the last 10 years or so. And.. I mean, going back even further in back to maybe the 70s this was a part of the city where many people wanted to live because it was more alternative, but it was also a part of the city where people didn't want to live. The typical ad in the papers was swapping flats was I want a bigger flat and I have this, and I don't want to live in Soder. That was like very usual and especially if it was from people living in other parts of the city like the east part, like Östermalm or Kungsholmen or Vasastan, so it was like not Soder.

Jess 06:51 All these names that Magnus just listed, are neighborhoods right next to Sodermalm. We’ll get to them soon. But all you need to know, for now, is that they’re really posh.

MAGNUS 07:00 And today of course it’s like the opposite. Today people really want to live here and I mean this is of course a very typical kind of gentrification situation, people with more money moves in because it's getting more expensive, and the people without money leaves and a lot of the diversity leaves as well, which makes it i guess for the people who used to live there less attractive.

Jess 07:28 Just as a quick example, the space where Magnus and I were recording this used to be an enormous tobacco factory [train noise] and now it’s an office building hosting artist studios (including mine), furniture companies, and an ad agency [people talking].

These shifts changed everything on the island... even the name of the neighborhood!

MAGNUS 07:47 Today you hear… instead of saying “Soder” that would be the old way of mentioning this part of the town, people say “Sodermalm”. And of course, the proper name is Sodermalm, but back in the days, people would say Soder because it also kind of um showed that you belonged there.

Jess 08:08 Just across the lake and north from Sodermalm, there’s another neighborhood, Ostermalm. Again, we’re gonna come back to it. And now, all you need to know about it is… it’s quite fancy.

MAGNUS 08:18 At a certain point I also heard that certain people in Kungsholmen who wanted to be as pretentious as the Östermalm, people said “Vestermalm” which is like maybe it's the proper kind way of saying or mentioning this part of the city but it's also very much a sign of being wanting to belong to this posh community.

08:42 So putting the “malm” back in Sodermalm… that’s... not insignificant. Just like in Brooklyn where North Flatbush became Prospect Lefferts Garden, or in Paris where any cute-ish street is renamed “village,” Malm is the name to attach the island to poshness. It’s a real estate broker’s most lethal tool in changing the reputation of a neighborhood.

Ostermalm and Sodermalm were historically seen as polar opposites in many residents’ imaginations. But as the working class is pushed further and further away from the island, that distinction is slipping.

Jess 09:16 So you’ve been “malmed”.

MAGNUS 09:18 Yeah, we've been malmed. Yes, of course, in many ways I would say.

Jess 09:20 Soder becoming a malm, meant Stockholmers began identifying it as part of the city center. When we talked about centers last season, we learned how Paris’ city center came to be called the city’s stomach. A better moniker for Stockholm’s center might be the city’s wallet or more accurately, what Stockholmers call it, “innanför tullarna”.

09:50 [Ideally sound or Erik saying “innanför tullarna”]

ERIK 09:51 There were a number of locks set up around the center of Stockholm, and there are still remnants and the names, so when you say “Hornstull”, or “Nortull”, “tull” means a lock, or a tariff station.

JESS 10:08 Innanfor tullarna which means inside the locks or the toll booths, toll or tull” -- it’s a reference to these tariff stations.

ERIK 10:15 So that’s where you actually taxing good coming into the city.

Jess 10:22 Hornstull and Skanstull are two locks on the island of Sodermalm. For a long time, Soder was the threshold between the city’s center and its edge.

ERIK 10:30 And this was I think kind of a natural growth of the center, and still relying on the extremities as producers of goods. So that kind of central core which was for a few hundred years the city of Stockholm, in the advent of the industrialization and the growth of the urban areas all over Sweden which was late on a European perspective, just kind of early 1900s rather than mid- or late-1800, which was late on a European perspective.

Jess 11:02 In a way, Soder becoming a malm made it part of Stockholm’s wealthy center in the minds of residents [jazz song].

11:13 As in most cities where there’s money there is power. While the Riksdag parliament made the beautiful view outside of my window, just across the lake and to the east is an all-together different kind of power, the Kings palace on a small island called Gamlastan [celebration music]. And where there are Kings there are courtiers and you don’t have to look too far to find them in the neighborhood Ostermalm.

Historically the central “malms” were the territory of kings, the aristocracy, and wealthy merchants, meaning today’s neighborhoods like Ostermalm, Norrmalm, Vasastan, and Kungsholmen have a reputation for being old, rich, white, and stuffy. When it comes to comfort, many of the residents we spoke to preferred to avoid these areas altogether.

[montage of pronouncing the malms]

12:03

“Ostermalm and Norrmalm and Kungsholmen and Djurgarden, this area is like you know red.”

"If there would be a colonial center in Sweden it would be Östermalm.”

“I also feel this feeling that I don't belong there.”

“I feel weird there. I feel uncomfortable in different when it comes to class and also the color of your skin.”

“The wealthier neighborhoods which in a way always makes me feel completely alienated when I enter these spaces. They're also extremely homogeneous.”

“And it still feels weird sometimes to go there because it's like you know, so white.”

“Kind of reminds me of my difference. Both in terms of class and of race.”

Jess 12:42 It might seem counterintuitive to imagine that wealth might lead to insecurity. But for many of the residents we spoke to, it was the implications of that wealth and the amount of power it yields that made the feeling of exclusion so dominant in the city center. For Michael, the head curator at the Ethnographic Museum, the feeling of the center was so specific, Swedish couldn’t quite describe it.

MICHAEL 13:07 Makes me feel uncomfortable. [Why?] It's too bourgeois for me. I don't know it's one of those places. People are so- I can't remember the word. The thing is the word doesn't exist in Swedish. It's um like when you feel you have it coming- that you own it? *Entitled?* Yeah that's the word. [No word in Swedish?] No you could say berättigad, which is very very strange word, very old word, ancient word. So it doesn't at all make the same connotations.

Jess 13:50 But not everyone feels excluded and some find different connections to the city center. Some residents have strategies to avoid the neighborhood’s stuffiness.

GUSTAV 14:10 My name is Gustav Toftgod. I am 35 years old.

Jess 14:17 For Gustav, who lives in a loaned apartment in Ostermalm, the standoffishness of his neighbors is ideal. Especially since as a tall white Swede, he can choose when to blend in and when to stand out.  

GUSTAV 14:29 I feel unwelcome a bit where I live in a way but I'm very happy about that. I don't fit in at all in this area. I guess it's something to do with some sort of feel about or that you want to be special, so you don't want to fit in.

Jess 14:50 What is it about the people of Ostermalm makes you feel different?

GUSTAV 14:56 I guess their looks. The way they look. The way they wear their hair in a back slick uh and they um they wear suits. It's much there's much more it's also an age thing. There's much more old people, which I also like.

It is traditionally um like the bourgeois right-wing people living there. And uh it's um.. it has very little to do with me in a way and I think that’s why I like it.

Jess 15:34 Others found their place in Ostermalm through different means, not by living there but by making meaning there.

YASMIN 15:40 So I'd say where I felt most safe as a kid would be definitely Vasastaden because that's where I went to school for all of primary school and all of secondary school was spent in Kungsholmen. Um yeah, I spent a lot of time there, have a lot of memories from not only the schools but the areas around them. the parks around them, and the different sport fields around them. And I felt very safe then moving around in those areas.

NASIM 16:20 So I came, I moved to Stockholm when I was 10. And then we lived in an area called Marsta and it's far out. So it's like on the Northern border close to the airport Arlanda. We lived there but my first memory of Stockholm was walking on Strandvagen. And it was like in the center of Stockholm that's just along the water and I was a bit- I was a bit sad that we were moving to another city [metro moving sound]. So my dad took me to Strandvägen where there's a lot of small boats and there was this boat called um Seabreeze and Breeze is my name Nasim. So he was like telling me this is the place for me, or I was there already in a sense. So Strandvagen is a magical street for me.

Jess 17:14 Nostalgia is a powerful tool to access inclusion and meaning. If you feel the streets of today are not welcoming, some use the imagination to place themselves in the time of kings and courtiers to feel a sense of belonging to something bigger and grander than daily life.

AHU 17:31 Gamla Stan has these old buildings and I love Gamla Stan mainly at night. I like going around taking pictures at night, because it' lit really interesting and of course tourists are not there. I mean at night like in the middle of the night where no one's there except me and the ghosts of you know Gamla Stan past or you know… Hahaha.

LOUISE 17:52 This is quite strange I guess, but I liked Gamla Stan. It has this narrow street cobble street. And it has this very old history about it, you can find everything quite near without being in like a shopping mall. You can find some things to your bikes in one shop and then you go to another and you can find a present for your partner and then you can go to or another place and have a coffee. So it's a very convenient area to move around in that way. I think it was the narrow streets and sort of the medieval flare about it that really made it feel like… something like home.

Jess 18:39 In Stockholm this use of nostalgia has often been to the delight of tourists, but other groups have used the same methods to terrorize and reject. [creepy sound]

Take Gamla Stan for example. It’s a small island just between Ostermalm and Sodermalm. And it’s the heart of old Stockholm. Famous for the King Palace, traditional Swedish architecture and masonry, little specialty shops, crowds, and crowds of tourists.

But in the 90s the little island’s association with an aristocratic past made it a haven for the rising neo-Nazi movement.  Occupying the streets next to the royal castle and intimidating anyone who protested, allowed Neo-Nazis to feel a sense of entitlement. The island made the perfect stage for white extremists to cast themselves as the rightful and only heirs to Swedish history and culture.

Whenever we mentioned Gamla Stan to Stockholmers in their 40s and 50s, they all said the same thing.

ULRIKA 19:32 In the late 80 early 90s Gamla Stan was not a place where you would go at night because there was a lot of Nazis and things like that. I would go there during the day but not after dark pretty much.

NASIM 19:46 During the 90s I was really scared as well, from when I was 10 until 20 because there was a lot of Nazis in the middle of the 90s. So I just remember me being more afraid then my parents really.  There was higher risk if you would come like a group of 10 teenagers, none of you were white.

Jess 20:11 We’re going to focus on the stories of two people. Michael, he’s an Afro Swedish man in his 50s. And he’s the curator of the ethnographic museum you’ve heard before.

[MICHAEL CHATTER]

And then Paulina,

PAULINA 20:33 Me llamo Paulina Torres Waikimil* tengo 43 años

Jess She’s in her forties. But she didn’t grow up in Stockholm. She was born in Chile 1975 and moved to Stockholm with her family when she was 12, fleeing the dictatorship in Chile. Sweden actually received a lot of Chileans like her, and the community is still pretty important to this day. You’ll hear her speaking in Spanish [Some Paula chatter].

PAULINA Me fui a temuco donde me crié contenta y feliz hasta que me vine a Suecia.

[Translation by Kim] And when I was 1 year old, I went to Temuco, where I grew content and happy until I came to Sweden.

Jess 21:07 One date stood out in particular to the both of them, November 30th.

MICHAEL 21:10 Definitely when I was young the 30th of November was kind of the big date. It was like it's the birthday of an old king. Colin Tolfte Charles the 12th which is like- he was considered a hero-king to the Neo-Nazis. So, they used to demonstrate and there was a lot of fighting. But they were kind of run out of town. I mean by suburban kids.

PAULINA 21:34 Por ejemplo yo no iba nunca las demostraciones del 30 de noviembre. Nunca salí a la calle 30 noviembre. Así pasaron años y ahora ahora se me olvida ya no lo tengo así compré un tiempo tuvo como 10 años así 30 noviembre iba a Paulina no salga.

[Translation by Kim] I never went to the protest on November 30th. I never went out on November 30th. Years went by like that, and now I forget. It’s no longer like that. But for about 10 years I had it in my mind, November 30th.

Jess 21:48 Michael had strong memories of actively avoiding Gamla Stan as a young person.

MICHAEL 21:53 It's situational. I can't say that there's any space that I feel really at home in or safe in, actually anywhere in Sweden ever. But if you turn it around places that I feel threatened in is very much to do with the people that are there, that are in the space at the particular given time. So an example is you know when I was growing up, when there were skinheads in the cities, yes, in the city center, yes, that was a terrible time. I didn't feel safe. Otherwise yeah it was kind of who depending on who, who’s there, who’s kind of defining the environment, and of course, angry young men are always kind of defining space in a way. So in the 90s certain areas like Gamla Stan the old city, where skinheads used to hang for instance. Everyone knew that, so that was kind of a place where you were really- felt worried.

Jess 22:47 Paulina had her own traumatic experience with Gamla Stan… that made it all the way to the evening news and public radio.

In 1996, Paula was about 17 years old and was studying to become a nursing assistant. She was on the tunelvana with her mother, and her grandfather.

PAULINA 23:06 Y cuando llegamos a Slussen,

Jess Slussen is a big metro station in Sodermalm, just on the other side to Gamla Stan, where Nazis publicly gathered.

PAULINA 23:15 Que terrible porque estaba lleno de neonazis, lleno.  y yo dije, dónde tunnelvana a no va a parar? Porque si para este neonazis eran cientos, cientos y haciéndo el signo de Hitler hacia arriba. Pero de repente una botella de cerveza un una persona neonazi golpea una botella con una botella de cerveza el vidrio, de dónde estaba mi mamá y mi abuelito sentado y lo rompe y vuelan vidrio y entre se le cae un vidrio a mi abuelito en una vena de la del cuello y sale sangre así entonces yo yo yo dije chuta aquí lo  van a a que los van a sacar la cabeza dije yo veo para el lado del túnelvana y se abren las puertas al mismo tiempo que se rompe el vidrio del tunnelvana del metro se abren la puerta y entran

[Translation by Kim] It was terrible because it was full of Neo-Nazis, FULL. And there were hundreds of them, I promise, HUNDREDS, all making the Hitler sign. And I said tunelvana was not gonna stop. And it stopped. Suddenly I see a beer bottle, a Neo-Nazi person hits the window, where my mother and my grandfather were sitting with the beer bottle. The glass shattered and a piece of glass falls on my grandfather’s neck and hits the vein. Blood pours out like this… And I said, crap, I think it’s gonna rip his head off. I looked over on the side of tunelvana and see they are opening the doors of the metro at the same time as they are breaking the window and they all come inside of the wagon.

Jess 24:18 The Neo-Nazis then got onto the tunelvana, and, according to Paulina, they started beating anyone with darker skin and dark hair.

PAULINA 24:25 ahí sentí yo que el solo hecho de ser extranjera con el pelo negro era un peligro porque eran neonazis, entraron los golpearon los golpearon y golpearon a toda la gente que era extranjera.

[Translation by Kim] In that moment, I felt that being a foreigner and having darker hair is dangerous. Because they were Neo-Nazis, they came in and hit everyone who was a foreigner.

Jess 24:37 They hit Paulina, punched her, and kicked her with their metal-tipped military boots. They also attacked a young man, who Paula believes was either Arab or Turkish.

PAULINA 24:48 Yo me transformé. Yo no no, no estaba no estaba consciente, solamente estaba nivel así como inconsciente defendiendome a muerte porque yo sabía que me iba a morir y eso me transformó. Cuando vi que mi mamá estaba protegiendo a un joven con pelo negro un hombre que era un hombre y le estaban golpeando la mano de mi mamá y es también le rompieron la uña con el dedo y entonces yo dije salió sangre y la sangre venía de la cabeza del joven, que era un hombre que aparecer de descendencia árabe por ahí.

[Translation by Kim] I transformed. I wasn’t conscious, I was just defending myself, otherwise, I knew I was going to die and that transformed me [people shouting]. And then I saw my mother was defending a young man who had dark hair. They were hitting my mom as well and tore off her fingernail. And I saw there was blood and I realized it was coming from the young man’s head.

Jess 25:24 The nazis finally left the tunelvana and Paulina and the others were able to seek help. The piece of broken glass that had cut her grandfather’s neck was just short of his artery.

Paula, her mother, and grandfather were obviously very traumatized by the attack. Paula no longer saw Sweden as a place of asylum. A few years later, she moved to Northern Ireland. Her grandfather decided to go back to Chile and her mother thought about it, but ultimately decided to remain in Sweden. 

PAULINA 25:55 Nadie quería quedarse aquí, eso es la única que se creía que era que era yo, pero pero pero yo me fui a Irlanda igual porque era difícil. O sea queda como trauma en el metro en el trauma, te queda la trauma en el cuerpo. Te queda.

[Translation by Kim] Everyone wanted to leave, no one wanted to stay here. The only one who wanted to stay was me, but I went to North Ireland because it was too difficult. The trauma stayed. The trauma stays in your body, you know. It stays.

Jess 27:11 Paula filed a complaint with the police, but no one followed up on it.

She was also contacted by a big-time journalist and producer in Sweden, Boss Lindquist. He convinced her to come and talk about the attack on public radio and public television.

[Radio voice] He tried to investigate why Paula’s complaints never led to an investigation. Together they went to the police station.

PAULINA 26:37 Primero dijo No no tenemos nada registrado de esa ataque, porque el dijó hay un ataque tanto y aquí yo vengo con la persona que que hizo la denuncia que pasó con eso. Y entonces la policía dijo que vamos ver, no No aquí no hay nada de eso. No hay nada. Entonces él dijo Yo vengo, y sacó su micrófono Yo vengo de la radio, sveriges radio pe-et*** Yo quiero saber y ahí la policía dijo a empujones váyanse váyanse váyanse yo dije Ups Qué pasó Aquí ahí y yo me fui, pues ya me fui del país después. Yo sentí yo sentí una deprotección enorme cuando vi eso por un sueco. Dije si él le tratan así que me queda a mí venir a la policía a pedir que pasó con una denuncia, que que dé un ataque. Imagínate. Yo no sé, yo estoy hablando, la verdad.

[Translation by Kim] We don’t have anything registered regarding that attack. Because the reporter had there was an attack, and someone filed a complaint, so we wanna know what’s going on with that complaint from the specific date, I’m here with the person that filed that complaint, and what’s going on. And the officer said they would check, and then said they had no information and nothing regarding any complaint. So the reporter took out his mic and said it from his radio what was going on and what was being done regarding to the complaint. And the police started to push us, telling us to get out, to leave, pushing us out. And then after that I left the country. I felt lack of protection when I saw them treat a white Swedish person this way. I said, if they treat him this way, imagine how it would be for me [train sound].

Jess 27:30 Ever since the attack more than 20 years ago, Paula still avoids the subway in favor of biking, and rarely leaves Sodermalm where she lives.

[Music]

Jess 28:03 Like Sodermalm, it is hard to imagine Gamla Stan, a place where I once saw an organized parade of St. Bernards sporting mini reindeer antlers, was a place of mass intimidation and blatant physical violence.

But no matter how neighborhoods change, old meaning and power structures remain, waiting for residents to invoke them again. Sodermalm is no different.

While it’s true that housing prices have skyrocketed and I certainly couldn’t live there if it wasn’t included in a grant, pockets of the old neighborhood remain for those who managed to stay.

AHU 28:38 if you had like a bigger map of Sodermalm, then I would get very detailed about it. There’s places that I go that I feel like. They make me feel like I'm in New York, for example, people are friendly or their owned by people from warmer countries. Chile or you know south America somewhere. There’s a guy here, he's an American guy, he's had this place called Larry's corner for- I don't know if you've heard of that. I mean, interesting people go there. He has the strangest- including my art exhibition- the strangest artists and musicians, I mean from all over the world will stop. And it's a tiny, tiny, tiny little place. And you can go there and feel so comfortable being just eccentric or weird.

SAMANTHA 29:31 I discovered the charm of Sodermalm that, like, but I think you have to spend a little more time there or go with someone that knows it because you need to find these like places that have the essence of it and understand why it's like so hip. But if you just go there for one day it can be kind of like hard to see it. Because it's also kind of like spread out all these places, so you can walk for a bunch of time on one street and never see anything interesting, and then go to another street and you see a lot of interesting places.

I mean it's this typical hipster places mainly, but there is also like there's so many kind of niche things. And it's a lot of like art, and you can find a lot of music, so I think that's the like- it is a creative area where a lot of like art and stuff is emerging. But it's also you have to keep in mind that it's a certain group of like people that get the chance to like- you know it's like kind of cultural elite place.

Jess 30:38 I was lucky to live in Sodermalm. Not just because of the great view and fancy bakeries, but because I met the people who could show me how it was... so I could see what it had become. From basement bars to karaoke, to old school saunas, and walks along the water, I met the people who took me by the hand and introduced me to many versions of the neighborhood. But as grateful as I was for the introduction, something kept nagging at me, why is it so hard to live in the city center?

We’ll find out more in the next episode, Moving [train sound].

VO: We are produced with the generous support of the Graham Foundation and Konstnärsnämnden (The Swedish Arts Grants Council). Thank you to our senior producer Adélie Pojzman-Pontay and our team of graduate assistants from the architecture department at the Rhode Island School of Design: Bilal Ismail Ahmed, Daniel Choconta CHO CONTA Guerrero, Kim Ayala EYE ALA, and Uthman Olowo. Fatou Camara consults for the show. Cory Jacobs does the music for the podcast. And Adrienne Lilly does our sound design.

If you’re subscribed on Patreon In our mini-episode next week, you’ll discover more about Paula Torres’ story as we talk with Bosse Lindquist, the reporter, and discover the rise of Neo-Nazi movement in 1990s Sweden. It’s not too late to subscribe and get access to some wonderful mini-episodes and stickers!

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Until next time, this has been Here There Be Dragons!

33:46

“Absolutely loath Gamla Stan. It's cobblestone-like invented by the devil.”