Wild Raspberries, Naked Swims and Forest Bathing

Why Sweden is my forever second home and how good it feels to be back. This is where I rekindle my oldest, closest friendships and years of sweet memories.

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For two months this summer I am doing what I love most: traveling. First stop: I am spending three weeks in Sweden—Stockholm and its environs—my home for 18 years between 1989 and 2007. I arrived at twenty-nine, engaged to my now former Swedish husband, whom I’d met the summer before in Sweden on a visit to my American high school girlfriend and her (also now former) Swedish husband. For a young woman who had traveled abroad rarely, but was a hopeless romantic, I embraced my new life in Sweden with arms wide open.

And those arms stayed open, through the purchase of a house in a Stockholm suburb, the birth of two daughters, and a career as an English-language writer and editor for Swedish multinational companies. We left Sweden as a family in 2007 for the adventure of living on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean for four years before moving back to the States. Yet my love for Sweden has only become stronger over the decades.

For all of us, my ex-husband, our daughters and myself, Sweden is our home of the heart. As the Swedes say, “Borta bra, men hemma bäst,” which translates to “away is good, but home is best;” in essence—there's no place like home.

In this meal, I offer you a taste of what I love about Sweden, just a sample of its abundant smörgåsbord of delights. Smaklig måltid! (the Swedish version of bon appetit!)

Fika: Lifelong Friendships

For me, fika, one of Sweden's most cherished customs, is best paired with a dear friend and long, leisurely, spill-your-heart, belly-laugh conversations over strong Swedish coffee and a cinnamon bun (kanelbulle) or my favorite Swedish pastry, the Budapest cake (gluten free and decadent). This is no ordinary “let’s grab a cup of coffee and chat.” It’s a sit-down affair, coffee served in proper cups (no paper cups!) No one should be in a hurry and please, put your phone away. This is about connection, the soul kind.

The word ‘fika’ dates back to the 1700s, when coffee was introduced to Sweden and is a mixture of the letters for the Swedish word for coffee; kaffi (later kaffe). The Swedes quickly adopted coffee into their everyday life, and made the act of drinking coffee into a social event with pastries, snacks and social interactions.

These past few weeks in Sweden I’ve had many lovely fikas with some of my dearest women friends. We’ve known each other for decades, through marriage and children and divorce and remarriage or a (more or less) contented solitude. I’ve now lived away from Sweden almost as long as I lived there and these friendships have not become any less vital. In fact, these women are my touchstones; they lead me back to myself. A good and honest friend of 50 years cannot and will not lie to you even if it comes with a few tears and chagrined recognition that you cannot whitewash your past with this particular friend. And thank God for that!

In 1988, my grade-school friend from Long Island, Barbara, invited me to visit her in Sweden. The rest is history—and a long, beautiful friendship. Here we are with Lake Mälaren in the background.

One of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received was at lunch and fika with my friend Sheri who said that my ability to maintain and nurture friendships was “my superpower.” When I consider the 7 types of friendships that are crucial for health and well-being, my friends here in Stockholm tick many of the boxes. They are close friends, lifelong friends, younger friends, older friends, and same life stage friends. My life would be impoverished without them and my fikas far lonelier.

And now, onto our main meal:

Förrätt: The City

For your förrätt (appetizer), let me introduce you to the gorgeous city of Stockholm, which is situated on fourteen islands and on the banks to the archipelago where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic Sea and is nicknamed “Venice of the North.” Every time I return I see it through the same eyes as my first visit in 1988, astonished by its beauty once again. Its rich history is on display with the 13th-century Storkyrkan Cathedral and the Kungliga Slottet Royal Palace; its waterways busy with ferries and sightseeing boats shuttling passengers between the islands. One of my favorite freelance assignments was writing The Insight Pocket Guide to Stockholm in 2001.

Gamla Stan, the Old Town

Tucked amid a maze of narrow cobble-stone streets with buildings in hues of orange, rust-yellow and red is Gamla Stan, the Old Town, where I was fortunate enough to spend the first four nights of my stay, thanks to the generosity of a dear friend lending me her apartment. On my first morning I woke early and took a long walk (it is an eminently walkable city) and happened upon a free qi gong class on a grassy lawn in one of the main city parks, Kungsträdgården. As I moved my arms in the air and swayed in the gentle breeze like the tall tree above us, I thought of my mother, lover of trees and Stockholm and Sweden. It wasn’t easy for my mother to have me move across the world to make my home and raise her grandchildren but after visiting Sweden with my father, she understood. She too fell in love with its charms.

Pride Parade, Coastal Hikes, Crayfish Party

Here are some ways I indulged my appetite for Stockholm on this visit:

• For the first time ever, I had a chance to march with Democrats Abroad in Sweden in the Stockholm Pride Parade, Scandinavian’s largest at 500,000 strong, a glorious dance party and love fest through the streets of Stockholm.

• I glided on a paddleboard up and down Lake Mälaren with views of the Old Town and the neighborhood of Kungsholmen.

• In preparation for the Camino, I hiked with friends for hours through the many city parks and coastal paths around Lake Mälaren, even in an unexpected downpour and thunder storm (“This is great!”, I told my friend Barbara as we hurried to seek shelter, “this truly mimics the sudden rain of Galicia in Spain where I’ll be walking! Thanks for arranging this.”)

• At the home of my friend Joanie, I enjoyed the August tradition of the Swedish kräftskiva, or crayfish, party, wearing silly hats and singing drinking songs while downing shots of aquavit, a traditional Swedish drink distilled from grains and herbs (I had my non-alcoholic version:-)

What else do I love about Stockholm and Sweden? Its much-admired social democracy and emphasis on equality. In 2014, the Swedish government adopted the world's first explicitly feminist foreign policy and Sweden ranks first in the European Union on the Gender Equality Index. Sweden also prioritizes work-life balance with family-friendly policies. Here you’re as likely to see fathers as mothers pushing their young children in strollers. The Swedish parental insurance entitles parents to 480 days of paid parental leave when a child is born or adopted. Each parent has 90 days reserved exclusively for him/her. And a new law launched last month means that grandparents can now get paid to take care of grandkids.

You may wonder why I ever left since I do in fact hold Swedish citizenship. The answer is one word: winter. The winters here are long and very dark; the land of the midnight sun is glorious in summer but its long hours of darkness in winter are no longer appealing. I am spoiled by four years living in Malta and a decade in Florida. While I am so grateful to have raised my daughters here and been able to take advantage of all these generous policies, it’s summer Sweden that has my heart.

Huvudrätt: The Islands and the Archipelago

Photo by Tejas Kotha on Unsplash

Thousands of Islands, Wild Raspberries, Naked Swims

From the wooded shoreline, we walk into the brackish water of the Baltic Sea, this close Swedish female friend of my heart. We step lightly across the seaweed forest and dive from its warm surface to the chillier depths, with temperatures hovering around 18C/65F. We flip to our backs, our bare limbs and breasts toasted by the sun as we lift our faces toward a clear blue sky. In this inlet surrounded by pine forest, we are alone, at one with the sea and the sky and the forest and our thirty-five years of friendship.

Just 20 minutes away from Stockholm a world of 30, 000 islands beckons. The ability to find private spots for naked swims is only one of its many delights. This is the archipelago beloved by every Swede and any visitor lucky enough to board one of the many ferries leaving Stockholm daily from Lake Mälaren out to the Baltic Sea. I was fortunate enough to visit friends and family on three islands: Värmdö, Rindö and Ljusterö. Some islands are so small only a few of the typical Swedish red wooden houses are situated on it; others like Värmdö have over 45,000 residents, an increasing number of them living there year-round. It is every Swede’s dream to have a house on one of these islands (some preferring the very rustic, with no indoor plumbing) or at the very least, a friend in possession of one. And the ultimate dream is to sail one’s boat around the islands.

We arrived to our skinny dipping oasis on our bicycles, stopping to pick wild raspberries before pedaling through a forest incandescent in its sun-dappled green leaves on the birch trees. That brings us to our dessert.

Efterrätt: The Forest

Forest covers 70 per cent of the surface of Sweden, roughly the same size as California. There are around 87 billion trees—spruce, pine, birch and other broadleaf trees. I love best the moss-covered forest floor, when sunlight streams through the soaring pines, making the forest mystical, magical. Is it any wonder that I stop often on a forest walk to gaze up at the canopy, listen and watch for the lövsångaren (willow warbler) or the bofinken (chaffinch) or stoop to run my hands across the damp felt surface of the moss carpet? This slow meandering walk, using all five senses to experience the forest, is what the Japanese refer to as forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, “taking in the forest atmosphere”—a form of eco-therapy.

My friends in Sweden, aware that I am building up stamina for the Camino, have no patience for my desire for forest bathing as they proceed at a pace that leaves me breathless and always lagging behind. My desire to stop and take it all in cannot be helped. I don’t want to miss a moment of this grateful return to the home of my heart.

I mean, who doesn’t want to linger over a delicious dessert?

Tilltugg (Snacks) for Further Reading

If you’re hungry for more, here’s a few of the articles I’ve been reading and discussing with friends this week:

Online Dating After 50 Can be Miserable. It Can Also Be Liberating, Maggie Jones, The New York Times and featured last week on The Daily podcast.

“Is the End of Marriage the Beginning of Self-Knowledge?,” The New Yorker, Parul Seghal, August 5, 2024, a review and exploration of the novel everyone is talking about this summer: Liars by Sarah Manguso

Martin Gelin: Jag älskar New York, men det går inte att leva i USA, Dagens Nyheter, August 11, 2024. The headline translates to “I love New York but it is not possible to live in the USA.” After 23 years as a journalist for Sweden’s largest daily newspaper, based in New York, Gelin and his family are moving to France. He writes: “For hundreds of years, families have crossed the Atlantic in hopes of a better life. We are leaving here for the same reason.” He did not want to raise his infant son in a gun-plagued nation with the frightening ascent of Trump once again as a presidential candidate and a Supreme Court that Gelin writes is “now openly working to transform the U.S. into a nationalistic theocracy.” This is written in Swedish but it’s an increasingly shared perspective; see

Changing The Channel with Kirsten Powers

, the former CNN senior political analyst, leaving the US for Italy, for many of the reasons Gelin cites.

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LET’S CHAT!

Have you been to Sweden and if so, what were your impressions? Where have you been traveling this summer or what have your staycations been like? Remember the “how I spent my summer” essays we wrote in elementary school? I want to read yours!

And finally, a Love Letter to Sweden playlist. Enjoy! Thanks to my daughters Marielle & Sara for the contributions!