Season 3 Episode 1 - DENSITY

Welcome to Stockholm!

For all the city's seeming calm and quiet there were many stories of fear, safety, and identity to be told. We are excited to take you to the big little capital of Sweden, where one in every five Swedish residents call home. Let's find out how Stockholmers feel about their city's bigness and smallness.

Script

INTRO

[MUSIC]

0:00

Quote from movie WILD STRAWBERRIES

[Intro Music]

Jess 0:22 Welcome to Here There Be Dragons. I’m your host Jess Myers. This season I’m taking you to Stockholm.

Episode 1 Density

0:34

“So many people…”

“Complete cold and darkness…”

“Very homogenous, very white space…”

“It was unknown territory…”

“I belong to the space…”

“It welcomes everyone…”

“Stockholm, place to be…”

[Music]

Jess 0:52 I grew up in New Jersey, one of the densest states in the US. From there I’ve lived in Boston, Brooklyn and spent periods in Paris, L.A., and Hanoi. For me, cities are LOUD. They’re BIG and full of people. When I moved to Stockholm last year for a residency with the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, I had never been to Sweden before, or even Scandinavia, but I figured... okay, city, I can do that.

But when I landed, it was SO different from the cities I had lived in before [Airplane Landing Noise].

A friend picked me up at T-Centralen, the central train station. I didn’t realize that this was the most crowded I would see the city.

But November in Stockholm is an inside town. Dragging my suitcase up to my loaned apartment [Footsteps Upstairs] I barely saw another person.

And listener [Footsteps in the Hallway], it was a little spooky [Door Unlocked].

But the empty street wasn’t just the November weather. There are lots of little jokes about the big small city of Stockholm. Director Ingmar Bergman once said of the place, “It is ridiculous to think of itself as a city. It is simply a rather large village set in the middle of some forest and some lakes. You wonder what it thinks it’s doing there, looking so important.”

And it does look quite important, the smaller crowds don’t stop the capital from bustling on in the same way most capitals do. You have the old town, the cranes pulling up stories of housing, the busy shopping streets, all neatly arranged over 14 islands and connected by 55 bridges.

But Stockholm taught me how subjective density could be. Whether it was on the subway –the T-bana– watching people scramble to sit alone in a four-seat pod or on the street where from a block away pedestrians were already maneuvering to not bump into me. It had to be more than the weather.

When I spoke to other transplants…

ANASS My name is Anass Sedrati, I'm 30 years old.

…especially those from big cities, I heard the exact same thing.

ANASS 3:05 I am from Morocco. I've been living in Stockholm since 9 years. I am telecommunications engineer currently working as a project manager in a consulting company.

It was kind of low density so you could many times end up being by yourself in a big street, actually, and this was very striking for me because I was expecting, for example, to walk in the city and see people.

You know I was living alone and sometimes you just get bored you want to go to the city center and see some life, especially when it's November or December. But when I was going in the city center on, let's say Wednesday afternoon at 6 o'clock, and it was dark, it was really empty, and this was making me a bit sad.

It has nothing to do with the safety but it mostly was making me sad from the angle that I did not see life. And if you are looking for life you had to go to a bar or a disco but not in the street. So this was feeling very strange for me because it’s a big city, but I could not identify where people were.

Jess 4:14 Anass was coming to Stockholm from Paris, where observing the bustle of the street is a cornerstone of urban life. For him the emptiness was surprising. But when Yasmeen moved from Somalia…

YASMEEN I am twenty-two years old. I work as a students' assistant, and I also study.

Jess … the emptiness of Stockholm streets felt more like a threat than a quirk.

YASMEEN 4:36 I even used to go out sometimes at like really really late at night, like twelve o'clock, just to go for a walk, sometimes I would. I was worried about my mom and my family, so I would have a little bit of a panic attack. but if I go for a walk, I'm fine.

And… there were always like young people standing around the station. They have a bad reputation, like, “oh those youngsters that stand around the station, they're probably selling drugs, blah blah blah…” but what I noticed is, instead of the whole place being empty, I felt safer that they were around.

SAMUEL 5:10 Okay… My name is Samuel, or in Swedish, Samuel, In amharick Samuel.

Jess 5:15 For Samuel…

SAMUEL And I am thirty-two, oh god, and I actually do feel thirty-two, in a good way maybe.

Jess 5:23 coming from the capital of Ethiopia [Street Noise], as a young teenager, the emptiness of Stockholm made it feel... enormous, and unfamiliar. And that was a challenge for him.

SAMUEL 5:36 My mission was like, okay, how do I get over this fear that I have for this new city, was like massive and big in my head. Although Addis is like ten times bigger than Stockholm, you know but, the size… It was an unknown territory and I got lost like a couple of places, and I was like, “oh my god, I'm never gonna find the city”.

So when I was 14, I remember, I made a conscience effort to get to know Stockholm. And I talked to my mom and said, “I‘m taking the green line, from one end to the other, so don’t worry.” Like... I just wanna know.

I made like a pact to myself that I would get to know Stockholm the way that I would like to feel comfortable in it, and the way to understand it. And that also meant understanding socio-political aspects of it. And not just, you know, just the physical part.

[Music]

Jess I spent the winter of 2019 in Stockholm and, like Samuel, I also wanted to know the city. But most days by the time I got to sightseeing, it was already dark out and the streets were mostly empty. If I wanted to know the city, I’d have to find it first. 

For me growing up in New Jersey, a “city” meant New York City. 8 million people bustling at each other’s’ elbows night and day. City meant people on top of people on top of people.

But the ENTIRE country of Sweden is 10 million people.

Stockholm is both the capital AND the largest city. 20% of the entire country lives in its metropolitan area. That’s one in every five citizens.

As if New York was actually 66 million people instead of just 8.

So what I’m seeing as [Snow Silence], natives are seeing it as [Busy City Noise].

And not everyone likes it.

Jess 7:38 Both Yasmin…

YASMIN 7:32 My name is Yasmin Osman, I'm 34 years old and I'm a life coach.

Jess 7:43 …and Tanvir…

TANVIR My name is Tanvir Mansur, and I'm 32 years old, and I'm a freelance writer and producer.

Jess 7:53 lived for a few years in the city center, in neighborhoods called Kungsholmen and Södermalm. The experience quickly left them searching for calmer and quieter places to be.

YASMIN 8:03 So I am a high-sensitive and being in these high-density places with just so much energy buzzing. And especially it being a space where people go for fun for socializing, they go there when they have a lot of energy [People Chatting] and it's my home, it's where I go to, you know, rest and rejuvenate. That's something that's very difficult for me. I need a calm environment so I can feel comfortable, and so I can just really decompress.

TANVIR 8:36 I don't think it's good for your health to live in such a crowded city with lots of noises, like it's noise pollution, actually. And then actual pollution from the cars and everything. And for me, especially the worst thing about living at Södermalm was, as soon as I stepped out of the door, I was in the city. There is no transition period. I really need that transition period. You can almost feel your blood pressure rising as you arrive closer to the city.

Jess 9:09 For Yasmine and Tanvir, the noise and the pollution put them on edge. But for Eric, it was also the sensation of being surrounded by a crowd, but connected to no one.

ERIC HANSSON 9:20 Perhaps it's like the stress of the whole situation that you almost feel like you're a part of a, like, big ant community where everyone is running around and having... I mean not really connecting to each other. And just perhaps multiring, like, your personal space. And… yeah I’m just not… That’s not something for me, actually. I also think there’re a lot of people who like nature, so you shouldn’t have a problem with that.

Jess 9:49 But Stockholm’s “largeness” is a relatively recent development.

Sweden used to be known for losing its population. Starting in the mid 19th century, 1.5 million Swedes left the country, fleeing poverty and seeking opportunity. This was called The Great Emigration. At the time 1.5 million people, that’s... a little under 40% of Sweden’s entire population!

But that didn’t last long. Because of World War II, immigrants began flocking to the country, seeking stability and work. Rural-based Swedes, too, began seeking opportunities in Sweden cities.

Researcher and architect Erik Stenberg explains that this era of industrialization created a double draw to Stockholm as both the capital and a center of commerce.

ERIK STERNBERG 10:43 So my name is Erik Stenberg, I am an architect and associate professor at KTH, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm Sweden.

So as the industrialization really took hold of Sweden and Stockholm became a kind of a, not only the figurehead capital with a king, but also became the industrialized capital where a quarter of the country's production is happening, and I think it’s even more now.

The pull on the rest of Sweden was huge, so during the '20s, '30s, and '40s, a large portion of the residents moving into the city came from the smaller cities and smaller communities, all over Sweden Even though there was a general urbanization in Sweden, so there was a movement from the countryside to the cities all over Sweden, there was also this secondary pull towards the capital.

Jess 10:42 But all this would change after World War II. Unlike many European countries that were facing the aftermath of two land wars, Sweden was pretty stable, in comparison.

GUNILLA 11:51 Gunilla Lundahl.

Jess How old are you?

GUNILLA Eighty-two.

Jess 11:57 It was around this period that Gunilla’s family moved down to Stockholm from…

GUNILLA Vasterbotten, it’s near to the polar circle.

Adélie 12:08 And how old were you when you came to Stockholm then?

Jess That’s my producer Adélie you’re hearing.

GUNILLA 12:11 So I went there to begin school at about… 9 years old.

Jess So, moving to Stockholm, what was the first neighborhood you lived in?

GUNILLA 12:22 Huddinge. It's outside and it belongs to bigger Stockholm, but I lived there. So, I didn't live inside, but my school was inside Stockholm.

Jess And can you describe what the neighborhood was like?

GUNILLA 12:42 Yeah, it was, you could describe it as a bigger village, at that time, now it's incorporated in the bigger town, but at that time it was many way less, and few bigger buildings, and not so much buying and things like that.

Adélie 13:05 It must have been a big change coming down from the north of Sweden near the polar circle.

GUNILLA 13:08 Yes, it was. But… it was also a change beginning school, and so everything was changing… so many people.

I was instructed as a child that you have to bow for other people so it was very busy when you went to Stockholm to do this to everybody. That was something.

Jess 13:42 Gunilla was growing up, and so was her city. She told us about moving through Stockholm as development happened all around her, accommodating those who migrated there and setting the stage for those to come.

GUNILLA 13:54 I think already when I went to school, I had only time to pause a big hole, which was the city now, was Hertoriet, everything it was just a hole. So you went on bridges and things like that.

You could still be in nature when you were in Stockholm. Where I live there was a surrounding with mountain, the highest place of Stockholm, and you could go there and have your morning coffee, or something like that, so.

And walking in Stockholm, I would always like to be walking, and Stockholm wasn't so big so you could very often go to the places you wanted to see, so I think Stockholm was still a bit familiar to me, because it wasn't so big now.

[Music]

Jess 15:02 The magnetic pull to the nation’s capital that drew Gunilla and her family to Stockholm is still a strong force in Sweden today.

ERIK STERNBERG 15:11 There are mainly rural regions of Sweden who have had half a century of depopulation, and of course they are left with industries that were built up mainly around resources, resource depletion, such as iron ore, or forestry, or waterpower, hydroelectric power, etcetera, that have been abandoned in a sense, and so those cities are, or areas are experiencing severe economic troubles, and shortage of people. They have always lobbied and hoped for a politics of resource, dividing resources, rather than concentrating resources… I would say one of the trends right now of the urban research is, again, looking at this relationship between the countryside and the city centers and trying to find a way of fair distribution of resources.

Jess 16:19 Some residents who moved to the city from rural regions, felt they had few other choices. Arvid and Samantha moved to Stockholm from small towns in the last few years, but they might have had more options if more of the country’s resources were shared.

Here’s Arvid. He’s a 29 year old who works in IT.

ARVID 16:38 Well it was the- it is the capital in Sweden. So, if you wanna explore your dreams and develop and do what you want, follow your dreams while still living in Sweden, then Stockholm that's the place to be. Where I'm growing up where you uh-there are no jobs so you either have to find small- well in Swedish it's called smoljob, but um sporadic jobs. There’re no universities, so you can’t study in town. So you either have to find any job, whatever it is, or you have to move from there.

Jess 17:15 And here’s Samantha. 

SAMANTHA 17:18 My name is Samantha, I'm 18 and I'm studying jazz at the moment, so I play the double bass and I sing. And then I'm also working at a strip club here in Stockholm to just save up some money for, like, after graduation. People that are, like, born here, are like, have some grown-ups in Stockholm.

I see this a lot in my class because half of us come from other cities as they take in people from all of the Sweden and half of the people in my class is like from Stockholm. And those people who live here and have grown-ups here they don't really realize the privilege of being in the capital, where you have like so many options of what to do and where to go and the school you want to go to or like- you can get whatever education in the same city as you live. But like in Sweden, like, we don't have a lot of big cities, so everything is like centered to the capital. If you want to become something you’ll have to move. I mean it's kind of sad cause it's hard for new things to blossom in the smaller cities, because everybody that has like ambition is expected to go to the capital.

Jess 18:25 For some Swedes the pull to the capital was a necessity to find work and thrive, but others saw the city’s density as new and exciting. As Sweden attracted immigrants from all over the world, Stockholm became an increasingly global city.

ULRIKA 18:41 So my name is Ulrika, I'm 49 years old and I'm a professor of gender studies at Uppsala University, and I live in Stockholm Sodermalm.

And I remember very clearly when I came back from my first run in the US in 94, I lived in Stockholm again for a year. And then I'd lived in Chicago and places like that, I just remember feeling like Stockholm had become a much more global city, like a much more diverse city by the mid 90 than it was before. And I remember feeling very excited by that, you know,  whereas people were sort of like "what's going on with the country and the city" and I was like well finally it's looking like the world you know.

Jess 19:21 Ulrika, was excited to see that Stockholm was attracting people from all over the world.

But if you’re a long-time listener, you know not all migration is created equal.

While Swedes coming into Stockholm from rural towns had to find a means to fit into urban culture. They didn’ t have to contend with suspicion or scrutiny about whether they belonged in the city at all.

For Stockholmers of color, the homogeneity of the city meant that crowds could make the feeling otherness more intense. Stockholm as a city is very white, when you are the one in a crowd of the many, any scrutiny can pull out of your ease and into anxiety. Walking down the street as a black woman, I would find myself very conscious of my behavior, the volume of my voice, the amount of space I took up, and the number of eyes on me.

Black Stockholmers helped me to understand the feeling.

Here’s Yasmin again, she’s the 34-year-old life coach you heard earlier.

YASMIN 20:21 I would say as a kid, I would say as a kid I felt least safe in the central part of Stockholm so Ostermalm and T-Centralen [People Chatting]. The places where we would go for entertainment. Go window shopping, or to hang out at cafes, the places that are very high density, a lot of movement, a lot of traffic. And I would just say because of being a young black child in Stockholm in a time when um you don't necessarily see that many black people or people of color in the city, the looks that I would get. I would have a lot of anxiety about stepping into a store. I would be very aware of my body, my hands would have to be outside of my pockets so people can see I'm not stealing anything. If I'm going to a cafe I would be very conscious of myself to not make too much noise, to not be a nuisance. Just very aware of the looks I would get and how I would quote unquote welcomed into certain spaces. And so those became areas where I felt most uncomfortable energy that I didn't really, I had a hard time verbalizing and describing. And it just was something that I internalized.

In my adult life I've also lived in Hornstull, which is southside of inner Stockholm. That was also very high density place but also very homogenous, very white space and I was very conscious of that as soon as I left the building, I was very aware of what I wore, how I carried myself, which sentiment I embodied physically and had to claim my space in a different way and also had to prepare myself mentally you know sometimes maybe I'd bump into a neighbor in the stairs in my building and say hi and not get a hi back or just get an uncomfortable look.

ANDREA 22:19 I have a friend who used to joke that she thinks my project is to go educate white people about black people. My name is Andrea Davis Krunland. I'm 53. I work at the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm. I work as an exhibition’s producer.

it's probably I kind of feel like there's curiosity. I think people pick up on the fact that I feel I belong in the space and they come and question me about it: who are you, where are you from, why sort of find subtle ways to kind out why I think I belong in their space- in a space that they define as theirs.

And I'm like, you know, so for me, I'm totally fine with explaining to that them this is not your space, right now this is my space. We can share it. We can talk about it, but just making sure that there is some push back. I feel it's very important for my kids, I see with young people now that they found their voices but one generation before people were very afraid of being- and I still see them being afraid to go into spaces that they consider are white spaces. And sometimes even the white people in those spaces aren't defining it that way, but there's that fear that prevents people from even attempting.

And I personally think it's problematic, so I’m going to do everything personally that I can do to sort of change that. So I'm totally open to the conversation, but I'm really not open to the typical conversation, where it begins to be a sort of attack as to why do you think you should be here. You shouldn't be here.

Jess 24:06 For Andrea and Yasmin, the density of white Stockholmers meant they had to create strategies to feel comfortable in a crowd, whether it was confronting it head on or carefully signaling belonging. Both of these strategies can be exhausting and for me, it made being alone in the street seem not so bad after all.

ANASS 24:25 This is maybe something specifically applicable to a city like Stockholm, where it welcomes everyone. So because it's empty, not in a bad way, what I mean is that you always feel that you own the place, because you're alone there. And it might be the biggest street in the city center and you're alone there in the complete cold and darkness, which is somehow also a fine feeling it's not always bad.

So this is also how I define inclusion, if nobody's there and you're there, you feel that all this is yours and feel automatically and directly that you belong to the place, because there is a connection between you and the place.

Jess 25:17 For the transplant to Stockholm, and I include myself in this, Stockholmers anxieties over the density of their city seems… overstated, to put it gently. At first anyway.

But as soon as you lift the lid on those anxieties and sift through the myriad reasons behind them whether it’s race, class, the urban rural divide, the  slow urbanization, you find stories as complex as the capital itself. This is what drew the Here There Be Dragons team to Stockholm, for all the seeming calm and quiet there were many stories of fear, safety, and identity to be told.

Join us next episode where we get more of our bearing in the city, by starting in the center, the neighborhoods that started it all, or what we call “the Malms”.

CREDITS

26:28

For this season of the podcast we happy to report we are produced with the generous support of the Graham Foundation of Advanced Art and Studies based in Chicago and Konstnarsnamden (The Swedish Arts Council) based in Stockholm. Thankfully, our credits have gotten a bit longer. First and foremost our senior producer returns Adélie Pojzman-Pontay and we would also like to welcome our team of graduate assistants from the architecture department at the Rhode Island School of Design: Bilal Ismail Ahmed, Daniel Choconta Guerrero, Kimberly Ayala Najera, and Uthman Olowo. Fatou Camara consults for the show. Cory Jacobs does the music.  And the wonderful Adriene Lilly does our sound design.

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