Making the Island of Södermalm Accessible

More than any other of the city’s neighborhoods, Södermalm is characterized by its dramatic topography.  The steep cliffs and high interior of the island had always been a challenge, but it wasn’t until the 1880’s that planners tried to address the problem.  If the island wasn’t easily accessible, demand for housing on the island would never reach its full potential, and getting supplies into the interior of the island for building projects would remain a major obstacle.

Other areas of the cities have had their topographical challenges, too.  Some of these, such as Tyskbagarbergen in Östermalm, are invisible today as the offending granite has now been completely blasted away.  

Other measures such as the Brunkeberg Ridge Tunnel between Östermalm and Norrmalm as well as the stairs navigating the cliffs of northern Kungsholmen are visible efforts to combat the city’s difficult geography.  

Even so, these other neighborhoods aren’t as defined by their topography in the same way that Södermalm is.  Because its high cliffs face the city, Söder’s high plateau metaphorically and physically sets the island apart from the rest of the city.  

Södermalm's cliffs on the saltwater and on the freshwater side of the island.

Furthermore, the interior of the island is littered with visible reminders that the island’s topography has been “adjusted” by man.  The rough granite edges and orderly granite walls are so ubiquitous that most people probably don’t pay much attention to them as they go about their daily lives.  No single sudden “adjustment” is hugely significant, but taken as a whole, the sheer number of these edges and walls adds up to a substantial movement affecting the island’s landscape.     

In my latest post about Södermalm’s first approved plan, I wrote about how the city council had added two tunnels to the plan to negotiate the steep grade between the water’s edge and the inland plateau, and that the King struck those expensive measures out of the plan.  The plan did include a new street that would cut through some of the island’s existing, dense urban fabric to wind its way up to the interior of the island.  But additional measures were more or less left to the future to decide.  This blog post focuses on those future solutions which have left their indelible mark on the neighborhood.    

Accessing Södermalm
Both private entrepreneurs and city planners tackled the problem of Södermalm’s inaccessibility at the turn of the century.  The entrepreneurs focused on new machine technology to combat the elevation differences while the city planners tended to use dynamite.

Elevators
My favorite solution to this problem is the elevators that were built from the water’s edge up to the high plateau (purple on map).  These elevators were built by private entrepreneurs who charged a per-person fee to transport people up (and down).  The first elevator was built at the square near the locks at Slussen, the only physical link between Södermalm and the rest of the city.  Slussen was, in other words, the most obvious place to build an elevator.

The original Katarina Elevator.  Left *.  Right **

Katarinahissen or Katarina Elevator (map 1) was named after the Katarina parish which lies just above Slussen, and the top of the elevator delivers you into the midst of that parish.  The first elevator was built in 1883 by engineer Knut Lindmark and was a prominent silhouette on the city’s skyline.  At the time, only church towers were more prominent, and only the Katarina elevator provided the public with such a dizzying view.  The elevator was replaced in 1936, and it is this elevator that remains today.  The new elevator has much the same placement and shape as the original.  Katarina is the only one of Södermalm’s elevators that is still in operation (it’s supposed to open again after all the construction around the current giant infrastructure project at Slussen is complete).

The current Katarina Elevator including the long, long bridge that links back to the neighborhood.

The Mariahissen or Maria Elevator (map 2) from 1885 took another approach to achieve prominence.  While the Katarina Elevator is a stand-alone and visibly technological structure, the Maria Elevator is embedded in a building and the elevator is not visible from the exterior.  However, the building, designed by F G A Dahl, has a prominent, recognizable design and its placement on the Maria hill makes it visible from much of the city.  The Maria Elevator is just to the west of Slussen and is named for its parish.  A bridge connects the elevator to a slightly higher level than the street behind the building.  

The Maria Elevator (brick building near the water) and it's bridge.

 

A few years later, in 1907, Stadsgårdshissen or Stadsgård Elevator (map 3) was built a few blocks east of Slussen.  This elevator connected the Stadsgård harbor to the interior of the island and was probably used primarily by the harbor workers.  This elevator structure was much simpler and while elegant, didn’t have the same prominence as the Katarina and Maria elevators.  Its users were pre-defined, and the elevator’s design didn’t scream to attract a larger ridership. 

The Stadsgård Elevator.  Photo on the left: ***

Dynamite

At the same time that private entrepreneurs built their elevator solutions, the city was also taking measures to make the island more accessible.  The first step was to widen the quays (orange on map).

Stadsgården (map 4) has been the home of one of Stockholm’s most important harbors and shipbuilding areas since at least the 1400’s.  In the 1700’s, a long wooden dock was built out in the water along the island’s edge in an effort to make the wharf wider.  From 1875-1915, the wooden docks were replaced in a large-scale infrastructure project where the wharf was widened by a combination of filling at the water’s edge and dynamiting the granite cliff.  The newly flattened and expanded Stadsgård harbor was connected to Slussen and to the harbor at Skeppsbron by both a road and with train tracks at the turn of the century.

The Stadsgården quay

Söder Mälarstrand (map 5) sits just on the other side of Slussen and is the freshwater harbor equivalent of Stadsgården.  Similarly, the original wooden wharf was slowly replaced by a stone quayside made of infill starting in the late 1800’s.  Blasting widened the wharf and connected it to Slussen with both a road and railroad tracks.  The freshwater and saltwater ports were now connected by land.  

Quay at Söder Mälarstrand

The next step was to connect the newly accessible ports at Stadsgården and Söder Mälarstrand to the interior of the island (red on map).  The main goal was to ease the transport of goods from the harbors to Södermalm’s interior, and it was an added bonus that transportation for humans was also made easier.  Söder Mälarstrand was first to be connected to the interior of the island in 1890.  A “gateway” was blasted into the cliff face, and the street Torkel Knutssonsgatan now winds up from the quayside up onto the plateau (map 6).  This was a major event at the time, the newspapers heralded the blasting of the “magnificent approach” (“den storartade uppfarten”).  The new gateway road sits much lower than an older existing cross street and a bridge was built across the new road so that the two sides of the existing street would still be connected.      

The Torkel Knutssonsgatan ramp.  The street Gamla Lundagatan connects across the new canyon on a bridge.

The new connection up from Stadsgården, Katarinavägen (map 7), was built between 1900-1914.  This was the winding road that the city council had added into the plan for Södermalm.  This street broke through already existing urban fabric and it was a huge project to blast this long ramp.  At the top of the ramp, the street was blasted through more granite to connect to the existing street network at Renstiernas gata.  

Left: The Katarinavägen ramp from the water.  Right: The gateway blasted through to the street network at Renstiernas gata. 

Here, streets which used to be connected are now completely disconnected from each other—no bridges were built like at Torkel Knutssonsgatan. 

Fjällgatan was not given a connection across the new canyon.

Another, later connection from the freshwater port at Söder Mälarstrand up to the island’s interior was built at Högalidsgatan (map 8) in the early 1900’s.  Like Katarinavägen, this road was also blasted as a long ramp mostly parallel to the original, lower street.  This road is now closed to cars but was originally open to all traffic.  

The Högalidsgatan ramp.

 

Accessibility in the Interior
Access from the water’s edge to the interior of the island was now realized.  But there was still a lot of work to do on the interior of the island to make transport across the island convenient and to give access to the island’s high bulbs.  

Easier Inclines 
Before the ”modern” era of city planning in the late 1800’s, streets and buildings followed the existing topography, no matter how steep.  

The resulting street inclines were sometimes all but impossible for horses and wagons to navigate, much less the new-fangled automobiles.  As streets were widened, buildings on one side of the street were allowed to remain while the buildings on the other side were demolished (yellow on map).  The street’s grade was often made just a little more manageable, meaning that the older buildings were connected to a higher street and the newer buildings were connected to a lower street, resulting in sections of two parallel streets.  The higher streets were limited to foot traffic while the more manageable lower streets were to be used by wagons.  The most prominent examples of this are the Horn Street Hump, Hornsgatspuckeln, on Hornsgatan (map 9) 

and the Little Hump, Lilla puckeln, on Brännkyrkagatan (map 10).

Sometimes the newly widened street was blasted to a more manageable grade without making accommodations for the older buildings, leaving them high and dry (green on map).  These buildings are now only accessible from the back.  Some examples: 

Hornsgatan (map 11)

Brännkyrkagatan (map 12)

Högbergsgatan/Skaraborgsgatan (map 13)

Åsögatan/Sågargatan (map 14)

Skånegatan (map 15)

Söder Mälarstrand (map 16)

When new streets were blasted through at unnaturally low levels, measures were needed to connect up to higher, existing streets.  For example, Fjällgatan now has a “tail” that serpentines up from the newly blasted gateway on Renstiernas gata that winds up to Fjällgatan’s original level (map 17).

Another, later phenomenon involved the blasting of two parallel streets to make the high bulbs more accessible for new development (blue on map).  Stairs were often provided as a shortcut for pedestrians.  

Sometimes the strip between the two parallel streets was wide enough to be planted with bushes and trees, giving the streets a much more verdant atmosphere than otherwise would be the case.  Also, these height differences are usually less dramatic, which further softens the effect.  Examples:

Hallandsgatan (2 directions) (map 18)

Assessorsgatan /Helgagatan (map 19)

Kristinehovsgatan (map 20)

Lundagatan (2 directions) (map 21)

Maria Prästgårdsgata (map 22)

Högbergsgatan/Högbergsbacken (2 directions) (map 23).  Here a more recent and very narrow building was built in the space between the two streets.

Even within a new development, difficult topography sometimes had to be leveled out in terraces or with two parallel streets at different levels (pink on map).  A couple of examples:

Assessorsgatan (map 24)

Pålsundsgatan (map 25)

 
Terraces

Some streets were blasted deep into the island’s granite to form terraces stepping down the hillsides (turquoise on map).  An example of this is at Högalidsgatan (map 26) and Heleneborgsgatan (map 27).  Parts of these streets give no clue that they sit on unnaturally low terraces levels, 

but where older development remains, such as at the home for the elderly at Stockholms Borgargille, these streets become canyonlike.  

I’m actually not sure why these streets were terraced down the slope of the hill—perhaps to give the future Högalid Church an even more prominent silhouette?  

Even with these unnaturally low terraces, the buildings sit high above Söder Mälarstrand and the water.  From this angle, you’d never know that the streets and buildings are unnaturally low. 

Conclusion
Most of the measures described above would have been unthinkable without dynamite, one of Sweden’s most important inventions.  Nobel patented the process which made blasting predictable, calculable, and safe in 1864.  Stockholm was quick to incorporate the new technology into its planning, and Södermalm is perhaps Stockholm’s most extensive example of early dynamite usage.

Once Södermalm was made accessible and its streets were given more manageable slopes, the island was quickly developed with apartment buildings.  As in other parts of the city, the easier to build upon lots were built first, with a big surge of building in the 1880’s, while the high, harder to build upon areas were built out decades later in the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s and were thus designed with newer planning ideals.  The older gridded development provides Södermalm’s background marching rhythm while the newer areas provide literal peaks of interest.  

Even if most people probably don’t really notice all of the protruding granite scattered along Södermalm’s streets, I think that these jagged edges give the island a slightly wild, brooding character.  So much of Södermalm is beautiful, but in a few places these heavy-handed street passages are far from elegant and are more of a show of brute force than pleasing planning esthetics.  The more attractive examples are those that have trees and bushes softening the hard edge of the high walls.   

In places, the streets are so deeply embedded in the island’s rock that the resulting streetscapes are inhuman in scale and have a dark, brooding character.  

Because some of the stone walls are oppressive in height and monotonously long, the adjacent passages are not particularly pleasant pedestrian routes and constitute some of Södermalm’s grungier streetscapes.  It was no surprise for me to read that the planners were prioritizing the movement of goods rather than people when designing some of these passageways.  Like the railroad slicing across central Stockholm, these cuts in Södermalm’s bedrock represent some of Stockholm’s first planning measures where technology and function trumped concerns for beauty and quality of life.  This trend of prioritizing transportation infrastructure over human wellbeing would unfortunately continue throughout much of the 20th century.

I’m not saying that Södermalm should have remained inaccessible.  Opening Södermalm up was a necessary measure and many beautiful cityscapes resulted from it.  Slightly later in Stockholm’s planning history, planners such as Hallman mastered the technique of layering buildings over steep gradients and curving roads up the contours to create picturesque, human-scaled neighborhoods despite challenging topography.  These designs celebrated the topography instead of treating it like an enemy to be conquered.  I’m curious how Hallman would have handled the more challenging cliffs on Södermalm—would he have found less brutish solutions to making the island accessible?      

Sources

Håkan Forsell, Söder, Drömmar och förvandlingar i en svensk stadsdel (2025)
Nils-Erik Landell, Stockholms kartor (2000)
Olof Hultin, Bengt Johansson, Johan Mårtelius, & Rasmus Waern, The Complete Guide to Architecture in Stockholm (2009)
Thomas Hall, Stockholm, The Making of a Metropolis (2009)
https://web.archive.org/web/20150207014014/http://historia.stockholmshamnar.se/Platser/Stockholm/StadsgardshamnenMasthamnen/
https://www.stockholmshamnar.se/historia/platser/stockholm/stadsgaardshamnen/

Images

All images are my own except for
* (old Katarinahissen, with horses) Wilhelm Lamm (1899), downloaded from https://www.dn.se/blogg/epstein/2013/09/27/unika-bilder-pa-gamla-slussen/
** (old Katarinahissen, from side) Axel Lindahls Fotografiaffär (1900), downloaded from https://stockholmskallan.stockholm.se/post/12308
*** (Stadsgårdshissen) Holger Ellgaard (1910), downloaded from (https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadsg%C3%A5rdshissen#/media/Fil:Stadsg%C3%A5rdshissen_2009z.jpg