Stockholm is known for its natural beauty as well as its historic civic buildings and monuments. Lesser known are the 20th-century artists’ house and studio museums, including those of the Pippi Longstocking author and two Swedish sculptors, Carl Milles and Carl Eldh. Two of the city’s architecturally significant dwellings range from the earthbound—the Markeliushuset, the first apartment building to prioritize working women—to the heavenly, the Woodland Cemetery, where Greta Garbo is buried. All are open to the public seasonally, and reservations are essential.
Astrid Lindgren’s Home, Dalagatan 46
Astrid Lindgren, the author of the Pippi Longstocking children’s-book series, about a much-beloved, firebrand orphan, lived at Dalagatan 46, in Stockholm, from 1941 until her death, in 2002. The modest apartment is on the second floor of a nondescript building across from the bucolic Vasaparken park.
Lindgren was also something of a rebel. A rural farmgirl from a close-knit, hardscrabble, storytelling family, her teenage newspaper apprenticeship led to an unplanned pregnancy. She made her way to Stockholm, where she worked clerical jobs until she had enough money to reclaim her son from foster care.
She married in 1931, had another child, then began writing essays and short stories. She created Pippi when her daughter was sick and wanted to hear a story. Around the same time, Lindgren slipped on ice. Confined to bed, she committed Pippi to the steno pads she used to write down all of her works. An unconventional summertime neighbor, a friend of her daughter’s, and the actress Mary Pickford all influenced the character.
Nineteenth-century Swedish furniture appears throughout the apartment. Her thin bed, with a quilted coverlet, along with homespun paintings and photos reflect Lindgren’s lifelong fealty to her humble roots. Scores of her books—she wrote 34 chapter books and 41 picture books—line the shelves. The most evocative things on display are her typewriter and a steno pad, which sit on a desk overlooking the park where she used to meet up with other young mothers. Quietly fierce, she became a celebrated political activist on behalf of children, animals, the environment, and peace.
Millesgården Museum
Carl Milles, the most celebrated Swedish sculptor of the first half of the 20th century, and his wife, Olga, a portrait painter, met in Paris while he was Rodin’s apprentice. When they purchased property in 1907, high above Lake Värtan, on the island of Lidingö, just 20 minutes from central Stockholm, they intended to build a home that incorporated their studios.
Over time, the multi-level site grew to include a caregiver’s house, a café, a restaurant, an art gallery, and more than 100 of Milles’s works interspersed throughout the many gardens, plazas, and fountains. The enormous project was interrupted by his most productive years, 1931 to 1951, which were spent in the United States teaching and working at Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Michigan. He was lured there by the architect Eliel Saarinen.
While Milles’s neoclassical sculptures were made of mostly granite and bronze, he often situated the works in Millesgården atop columns or in flowing water so that they appeared lighter. The mythology of the sea and heavens was paramount to his work, and, as he aged, his belief in spiritualism also influenced his work.
The capacious home and studios meld together, as do his own sculptures, which are commingled with his superb collection of antiquities. The art gallery has exhibitions of other artists as well as a section devoted to Milles.
Carl Eldh’s Ateljémuseum
If you dreamed of the quintessential artist’s space, you might conjure Eldh’s studio. A shy, humble man who was known for his sculptural portraits of politicians, royals, and celebrities (especially playwright August Strindberg), Eldh moved into the studio in 1919. The dark-brown, rustic building has northwest-facing windows, which span from floor to gabled ceiling and overlook Bellevue Park. It’s filled with examples of his models and sculptures in plaster, clay, stone, and bronze. There’s an archive of his tools, and works by his friends and colleagues.
The space looks as if he just walked out a moment ago. The intimacy of it—the couches under the rotunda, where Eldh received guests and clients, as well as the photographs that document his work and connections—reflects an authenticity that’s also evident in his public commissions, which dot the Swedish countryside.
Like Milles, Eldh lived and studied in Paris and was inspired by Rodin. His wife, Elise, and daughter, Brita, moved to Southern California to promote his work and, when they returned to Sweden, imported ideas from their Alhambra garden. After Eldh’s death, Brita turned her father’s studio into a museum and began hosting culture salons that continue today, along with dance and music activities and exhibits by contemporary artists in dialogue with Eldh. Tea is still served on the lawn.
Markeliushuset
Markeliushuset, a modernist apartment complex still in use today, was the first collective-housing unit in Sweden. Built in 1935 and designed by the architect and planner Sven Markelius in collaboration with the politician Alva Myrdal, the pumpkin-colored building embodies a progressive social infrastructure. The apartments were designed primarily for working women and their needs.
Myrdal believed that “housewives grow indolent, fat, and self-absorbed” without full-time work and parity with men. Modern families should not have to cook or clean or mind children; work was the priority. The building included a day-care center, a restaurant with dumbwaiters that provided food for tenants on demand, laundry and cleaning services, grocery stores, and outdoor gardens.
Today, the 46 apartments are run by a tenants’ association, and the restaurant and day care are privately owned. While you munch on a kanelbulle, you might see a dumbwaiter delivering meals to residents upstairs.If you are lucky enough to run into a tenant, they might agree to show you their apartment’s avant-garde interior.
Skogskyrkogården
It may seem odd to include a cemetery, but Skogskyrkogården, a 1994 addition to the UNESCO World Heritage sites, is more like a heavenly home. With its extraordinary chapels, open grasslands, hills, and forests, even Greta Garbo, who died in New York, chose this for her final resting place.
In 1915, the young architects Sigurd Lewerentz and Gunnar Asplund won an international competition with their proposal for the cemetery. Asplund, Sweden’s most celebrated architect, considered Alvar Aalto a mentor and later designed the much-revered Stockholm City Library.
Work wasn’t completed until 1940, which may partially account for the multitude of inspirations, including 19th-century Romanticism; primitive, ancient, and medieval Nordic style; and modernism. Their mission was to unify the landscape and buildings, giving visitors an experience of life and death, hope and sorrow, light and darkness, nature and architecture.
A stately, long entrance leads to more than 100,000 graves set among a pine plantation with a pond and a hillside overlook. But it’s the extraordinary chapels that are most arresting.
The Chapel of Resurrection mixes neoclassicism and brutalism. The Tallum Pavilion has ornate floors to draw your attention away from coffins, while the Woodland Chapel has a dome with a voluptuous, golden angel of death by Milles on the roof. The Monument Hall houses three more spectacular chapels—Faith, Hope, and the Holy Cross—replete with murals and atmospheric lighting.
The audio guide is comprehensive. To see the interior of the chapels you must book a private tour. It’s well worth it.
Patricia Zohn has contributed to numerous publications, including Wallpaper*, Artnet, the Huffington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times
