Stockholm

The story of Stockholm

Stockholm means, more or less, "log islet", stock and holm, though whether the logs were defensive pilings, boundary markers, or driftwood is still argued. Birger Jarl fortified the island of Gamla Stan in 1252, controlling the passage between the Baltic and Lake Mälaren.

The city became the seat of the Vasa kings and the capital of a 17th-century empire that ringed the Baltic. Its most famous relic of that ambition is a failure: the warship Vasa, so top-heavy with gun decks and royal vanity that she sank twenty minutes into her 1628 maiden voyage, was raised in 1961 almost intact and is now Scandinavia's most-visited museum.

Curiosities: Stockholm spreads across 14 islands linked by 57 bridges, with water clean enough to fish salmon downtown; the Nobel Prize banquet fills the City Hall each December; and the narrowest lane in Gamla Stan, Mårten Trotzigs Gränd, squeezes to 90 centimetres.