In this age of incremental global-warming, most northern European capitals get nothing more spectacular than grey and drizzly conditions as autumn gives way to winter. Not so Stockholm, where electric-blue skies often accompany a fantastical cityscape enrobed in glittering snow.
The city's homey Christmas markets provide the most tangible sign that the festive season is under way, and look even lovelier glowing beneath the snowflakes. Their stalls are laden with pepparkakor (gingerbread), Tomten (a Santa Claus-like figure) dolls, hand-dipped candles, bottles of glogg (mulled wine), and mountains of Christmas decorations. The glogg at Gamla Stan (Old Town)'s Christmas market, acknowledged as the most traditional seasonal market in the city, is typical. The heady burgundy-coloured brew, fortified with brandy and spiced with cinnamon, cloves and raisins, tastes as if it is inspired by a winter Bacchus. It's actually the work of Bergakungen, or the King of the Mountain, as my uncle calls himself. And so I find myself back in the town of my birth again, quaffing glogg with my unnervingly beautiful blonde, blue-eyed cousins, eyeing a timeless Christmas-card scene through the window and wondering why I don't come here every winter.
Before I arrive at an answer, a couple of young ice-skaters whiz by outside, reminding me this city truly is a winter wonderland. Sweden's capital is built on a cluster of 14 islands at the point where Europe's largest lagoon meets the Baltic Sea. With so many frozen waterways around the Venice of the North, outdoor skaters form an integral part of the Yuletide picture. Moreover, skating opportunities become unlimited when the Baltic freezes, which happens from time to time. Young Stockholmers love to glide over the ice and, later in life, many progress to long-distance skiing, which takes thousands of absurdly fit adults out beyond the city's Socialist-style suburban new towns as soon as there's enough snow on the ground.
It all happens here in December, including Stockholm's annual event of world-renown: the Nobel Prize ceremony. As luminaries from every corner of the world converge for the annual event, the city basks in global media interest and five-star hoteliers rub their hands with glee. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than at Scandinavia's most prestigious hotel, The Grand, which for a few days every year becomes a sudden informal Mensa club, partying famously and putting the world to rights. The ceremony is an invitation-only event but the celebratory mood spills out across the whole city.
Days later, a wonderfully ethereal festival arrives to keep the holiday momentum going. Saint Lucia's Day is marked by city processions of young ladies wearing flowing white dresses and crowns of lit candles. Banks of choristers add a heavenly sonic dimension to this mid-winter celebration. The Lutheran Swedes adopted Sicily's Saint Lucia for this time of year because of her name, which has connotations of light, and that is essential for this far northern land where natural illumination is in short supply close to Christmas.
Stockholm's holiday season is most palpable in Gamla Stan, which has the perfect architecture for fairy-tale images of Christmas in the far north. Rooftop snow resembles icing on gingerbread houses. Families file in and out of its two magnificent churches, one originally German, the other Finnish - reminders of Sweden's powerful Hanseatic League past.
