It’s a bit hard to comprehend how tiny Stockholm was in the 1800’s. Large portions of what is today considered to be “central” Stockholm were not developed, and there certainly wasn’t suburban development leapfrogging across the landscape. Walking from one end of town to the other took about an hour at a relatively leiseruly pace, and beyond that, the scenery became quite rural quite quickly.
Historic framework of the Summer Residence
I’ve previously written about a primarily 18th century phenomenon called malmgårdar, which I’ve inadequately translated to Suburban Farms. These farms were generally owned by the elite and were located on the very periphery of town. The owners used the farms as a summer residence to escape the diseases and the stench of warm weather before closed sewers, but the distinctive feature of the malmgårdar was that they were small, personal farms. Not just summer residences, these small estates produced fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy, beer, and spirits which laded the owner’s tables, both in the city and out at the farm.
Malmgårdar are a separate albeit not entirely unrelated phenomenon from summer houses. The use of malmgårdar was heavily weighted toward farming, but summer houses were generally just a residence (although I’m sure many of them had kitchen gardens).
Like malmgårdar, there’s no black and white line between a palace and a summer residence. The nobility had had estates out in the countryside around Stockholm for centuries, but these are essentially luxurious farm houses. Large and extravagant and designed by star architects yes, but the summer palaces are without exception also the seat of expansive, prosperous farming estates.
Historic Patterns of Landownership
This is a bit simplified, but: Being so close to the city, malmgårdar were generally built on land bought or rented from the city. Outside of the city’s domain, land was owned by the Crown or by the estates of the nobility. Historical landholding patterns vary considerably throughout Sweden, but around Stockholm, the nobility had a monopoly on land. These estates were tax-free and granted by the Crown. Until 1809, it was illegal for a commoner to buy land that was designated for the nobility, and even after the laws changed, the common practice of entailing made it impossible to split up or sell off parts of an estate. Even if there had been a market for summer houses outside of the city, there was no available land.
In the 1700’s, for many reasons, many aspects of the feudal system began to disintegrate. One such crack in the nobility’s facade was that the crown began to grant noble titles and new estates to merchants. Of course, these weren’t just any merchants but were the directors and presidents of such important and prestigious and outrageously profitable companies like Sweden’s East India Company. This “Skeppsbroadel,” roughly translated to “Park Avenue Nobility,” were probably the first developers of summer houses around Stockholm.
The First Summer Residences of the 1700’s
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| * = Downtown Stockholm. |
Järla Gård (map 2) has roots going back at least to the Viking era, but the property was bought in the 1760’s by Lefebure, another director in Sweden’s East India Company. He rebuilt the manor house, adding a second floor as well as two freestanding wings. While Järla had always been a large farm, Lefebure’s interest in the property was as a summer residence overlooking Järla Lake, even if farming activity continued for a while longer.
The trend continued farther east out of town on Nacka. Originally a part of the Järla Gård estate, Stora Nyckelviken (map 3) had been a prosperous farm for centuries, but it was bought in the 1740’s by yet another director of the East India Company, Petersen. He built the manor house as well as an extensive formal garden with pavilion. Stora Nyckelviken sits high above the Baltic water.
Closer to the water, Lilla Nyckelviken was also built by Petersen in the 1740’s. It’s a bit unclear what this house was originally used for, but throughout the centuries it has been rented to various prominent people as a summer cottage.
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| *** |
New Patterns of Landownership
The final nail in the coffin for the feudal system was probably the agricultural crises in the 1840’s and 50’s. Years of bad harvests caused not only starvation and mass emigration but also bankruptcy and a number of the noble estates around Stockholm went bankrupt. In many instances the estates changed hands intact, and these intact estates would curtail and channel the development of suburbia through the 1960’s. But in other instances, the estates were sold piecemeal. It’s these pieces of land that eventually became available for other purposes than agriculture. Some holdings were used for industrial endeavors. Others were developed into desirable summer colonies.
The Steamboat
Another all-important piece to the summer house puzzle was the steamboat. Since Sweden’s pre-history, travel had always been dominated by waterways instead of roadways, and this held true, with the exception of the train in the late 1800's, until the 1900’s. Since at least the 1600’s, Stockholm’s central and peripheral waterways had been trafficked by rowboats in a combination of regular traffic with fixed timetables and routes as well as by “taxi” rowboats. These rowboats of course had a limited range and longer distances in and out of the city were covered by sailing ships, but the ships were so dependent on the weather that they couldn’t be counted on to keep a schedule or to, say, get you to the office on time on a Monday morning.
Stockholm’s first steamboat started running in 1818 and like the train, it changed everything. This steamboat trafficked the route between the royal palace at Drottningholm and the city, but soon there were regular steamboat routes trafficking all of the Lake Mälaren ports—not just the larger towns, but even every small village along the way. Some of the lines focused on distance, while others focused on the areas just outside of Stockholm. Some boats were for passenger traffic, others for cargo.
Because the steamboats were at first built of wood, they were used foremost in the calmer waters of Lake Mälaren. But in the 1840’s, iron boats started to be built, and these were tough enough to brave the waters of the Baltic Sea. Soon enough, regular steamboat lines trafficked Stockholm’s archipelago as well as the cities up and down the coast.
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| A few historic steamboats are still used for tourist traffic today. |
Despite the steamboats being faster than rowboats, it still took a while to travel by boat. For this reason, and perhaps also because it was unthinkable to abandon the social and cultural center which was the city, much of this colonization began in the form of summer residences. Unfortunately, a rigorous study of Stockholm’s summer residences has never been undertaken, so there is no comprehensive source to fall back on. Additionally, most traces of the summer colonies have been erased by subsequent suburban growth, so it is not always easy to read the landscape for clues. Instead, I have pieced together information from a number of different sources and from my own observations.
There are several reasons why the earliest nineteenth century colonies of summer residences were built on the Lake Mälaren side of the city instead of on the Baltic Sea side. First, as mentioned above, a wide network of steamboat traffic was first established on the freshwater Mälaren side. Secondly, the summers were a bit warmer and drier on the Mälaren side, and the many protected bays provided calmer weather. Finally, the royal summer residences at Drottningholm, Ulriksdal, Haga, and even Rosersberg were all on the Mälaren side, and because Stockholm’s upper classes wanted to be close to and follow in the footsteps of the royalty, they tended to build their summer residences nearby or on the way to these palaces. For example, there was a clear trend to build summer residences along the road out to Drottningholm, and a few of these still remain on Kungsholmen today—remarkable considering that they are only a five minute’s walk to the subway!
Around Drottningholm (map 6), some of the surrounding area was developed as side-functions to the palace, and the King granted several nearby estates to friends, but other hangers-on built summer residences in the area in order to be close to the important people and events.
At the same time, the royal presence also hemmed the development of summer colonies. For example, the Crown owned a number of islands in Lake Mälaren that are close to the city and that would have made perfect summer colonies.
These islands include Lovön (map 7),
There is no source that has compiled all of the data, but I think it’s probably safe to say that most if not all of Mälaren’s shores and islands within about 20 kilometers of the city center were more or less lined with summer houses. While much of this landscape has been erased by later, larger-scaled suburban developments, there are still a number of visible traces. For example, there are still several summer houses (today year-round residences) on the shores of Ulvsundasjön (a bay of Lake Mälaren),
and sources mention that there were summer houses even deeper into the bay in Bälstaviken. Sources also mention that Bromma’s shores were also lined with summer houses, but again, there are no traces from that era.
Långholmen also features a couple of summer houses from the 1800’s.
Other traces include the tiny island of Lindholmen (map 11)
and the southern shores of Mälaren at Klubbensborg (map 12).
At first, many summer home builders rented their land from estate owners, but many were able to later buy the land outright as was the case with the island of Stora Essingen. In other cases, estate owners rented out entire areas or islands to a developer who then built colonies of summer houses as was the case with the island of Lilla Essingen.
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| Map of Lilla Essingen from 1906. Existing buildings, mostly summer houses, are marked in red. (The background is from * and I have added the colors.) |
All traces of summer house development on Lilla Essingen have since been erased,
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| Stora Essingen from 1907. Existing buildings are marked in red, and most of them were summer houses. (Map from **, I have added the colord.) |
The lasting influence of the summer colony is chiefly in Stora Essingen’s predominant type of development of detached single-family houses which is a sharp deviation from Stockholm’s usual suburban growth, especially considering the island’s proximity to the city center.
Gröndal is another urban area where there is still a hint of the earliest summer development (Gröndal translates to Green Valley). The early 19th century summer colony of artists, writers, and other creative types follows in the footsteps of several summer residences which were built in the late 1700’s by city elite in the Liljeholmen/Gröndal area: Stora Katrineberg, Charlottendal, and Fågelsången (see above). This last summer house translates to “Bird Song” and gives a clear indication of the house’s use: it is not a farm, it is not a noble estate, but is a place to enjoy nature in the summertime. While only a few original summer residences remain,
Gröndal’s structure of single-family houses and detached, smaller scale apartment buildings is, like Stora Essingen, a clear reminder of the earlier summer idyll.
Another summer artist colony was built further out of town southwest on Lake Mälaren’s southern shore.
Summer residences of the 1800’s were not limited to the freshwater Mälaren side of Stockholm; large numbers of houses were also built in the saltwater archipelago. I will cover this phenomenon in another blog post.
Conclusion
While it seems that more or less the entire coast of Mälaren including the Lake’s many islands were probably more-or-less lined with summer houses and colonies by the late 1800’s, there are only individual pinpricks of evidence remaining today. Traces of older summer communities are more visible in areas that are still dominated by single-family houses today (Mälarhöjden), but in suburban areas that were more rigorously planned in the 1960’s-80’s, all traces of summer settlement have been completely erased (Ekensberg).
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| Mälarhöjden on the left and Ekensberg on the right. |
Randomly stumbling upon an old summer cottage amidst the denser city fabric is always delightful; I feel like I’ve discovered some long forgotten trace of an older civilization. I’m always amazed that these small cottages have been able to survive the enormous pressure of development over the last 150 years.
While the summer residences of the 1700’s were very impactful—not only
did they lead the way for a broader development of summer cottages in
the 1800’s, but these estates are still pockets of undeveloped greenspace today—it was the summer cottages of the 1800's that have had the greater lasting impact on Stockholm's landscape. This nineteenth century phenomenon of summer cottages was the first mass annexation of rural land into greater Stockholm, and the colonies of summer cottages paved the way for later suburban development in both single-family and multi-family forms. Likewise, the broader cultural impact of the summer houses of the 1800’s is still felt today—55% of Swedes regularly use a summer house that is owned by someone in their family, and there are still a large number of summer houses in the outer areas of Stockholm County. The process of developing areas of summer cottages into areas of permanent residences is ongoing today as Stockholm's urban mass extends ever outward.
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