For those of you who are unable to visit the far north of Sweden do not despair for every year in October the Sami people make the long journey south down to Huddinge just outside of Stockholm.

They hold a miniature version of the traditional Jokkmokk market which is a large market and major social and cultural gathering which takes place in February every year. The Sami are one of the indigenous people of northern Europe and there are approximately 20,000 living in northern Sweden today. They are traditionally reindeer herders and are protective of their arctic culture.

The market in Huddinge is an opportunity to experience a little slice of Sami culture without leaving the city. There are stalls selling the Sami handicrafts such as fur, wood and leather goods, warm wool socks and mittens and some lovely tin and silverware and jewelry. This year it is also possible to buy a new range of beauty products made from extracts of hjortron (cloud berries), blueberries and lingon berries. In fact it is a good a chance to pick up some unusual Christmas presents and support the Sami economy at the same time.

image by mwri                                                             image by jsandb

The event is more than just a market however, there is joik the Sami folk songs to listen to, fashion shows with a difference and reindeer horns to be lassoed. If you are feeling hungry you can also try out a reindeer sausage or kebab.

The market is on between 22-25th October so why not head down there this weekend.

More info on the Jokmok market in Huddinge Centrum.

We needed to go up into Stockholm to buy a  few things at the weekend so with the beautiful warm weather holding on into September we decided to combine a rather mundane shopping trip with a bit of fun out on the water. Stockholm is roughly one third water, one third green space and one third city which makes it a stunning place to live in.

We headed out towards Djurgården park which is a vast green parkland only a short walk from the  city’s shopping centre. At the little cafe by Djurgårdsbron we donned some life vests and jumped into a big red pedalo for a little jaunt up Djurgårdsviken the canal that runs out to the Baltic Sea.

It surprised me how willingly the children hopped into what looked more like an oversized washing up bowl than a boat but they were clearly delighted to be out on the water. They loved the experience and even took over the leg straining peddling for a while giving Mum and Dad a chance to watch the other larger boats pass by, admire the graceful swans with their families of cygnets and have a laze in the sunshine.

It is also possible to hire kayaks, Canadian canoes, rowing boats and bicycles from the same place for around 70kr per hour. Our pedalo cost 100kr an hour and it provided a refreshing interlude to our shopping trip.

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I have found the last few weeks in July have always been the best for berry picking here in Stockholm. We usually head down to the local lake or forest to hunt for blue berries and on occasion we have found wild raspberries growing there too.  It seems to have been a good year for the berries with the blend of rainy and sunny weather we have had over recent weeks.

It is a great way of passing the time together with the children and the thought of all that lovely free food is a good incentive to keep us going despite the mosquitoes wanting to take a bite of us now and then. We all manage to come home with purple hands and mouths and a tubs full of delicious berries.

We are also lucky enough to have a large cherry tree growing in our garden as well as redcurrant and black currant bushes and these are also ripe around this time too. We spent a good few hours on Sunday harvesting this crop. My husband was up in the tree balancing precariously on the narrow branches trying to get the best cherries from the very top while my son was rustling round in the undergrowth below picking all the currants and I was quality controlling the pickings as they were passed over to me. My daughter was just happy to feast on them.

So this week we have been enjoying all the lovely antioxidant rich fruit in the form of blue berry  meringue,  black currant crumble and cherry pie and any surplus we can freeze to eat  in the Winter months and we can be reminded of those sunny July days all over again.

I have this image of the ideal Swedish Summer day, blue, blue sky, the garden overflowing with wildflowers, lazing happily in a hammock while the children amuse themselves picking smultron (wild strawberries).

Swedish medical experts recommend a break from work and the usual routines for a consecutive 3 to 4 weeks in the Summer to allow the body and mind to completely relax, de-stress, and recharge themselves for the next year. Many Swedes do manage to take several weeks off work in the Summer months usually beginning around mid- Summer and stretching well into July. It is often essential to take a long break in the Summer here in Sweden simply because this is when the weather is at its best and there are the long light nights and the school children have almost a 10 week break from their studies.

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It is popular to go ‘ute på landet’ out to the countryside often to a family owned Summer cottage by a lake or the coast to swim, boat, fish, pick berries and just generally let the natural environment recharge your batteries.

Well so far my Summer has been nothing like this. After entertaining guests for a few days over mid Summer I launched directly into moving apartments. This happened to coincide with a heat-wave and temperatures of over 30 degrees centigrade while I was moving furniture and boxes, cleaning the old apartment right through and then unpacking and organising the new apartment. Thankfully it is almost done now and we can enjoy the new place and hopefully the rest of the Summer break, now where did I put that hammock!
 

When we relocated to Stockholm from the UK my husband and I took the decision not to bring our car with us and to try life without four wheels. Well three years on we are still without a car and have been constantly surprised at how easy it is to live here without it. We are not located in central Stockholm where the hub of the public transport network is but out in the suburbs but even here it is still possible after a short walk or cycle to jump on a bus or a train to get to most places. We have been able to get to museums, city parks, country parks, to friends’ houses in other suburbs and even out to friends living in a small village south of Södertälje all by public transport. When you also connect up to the ferry boats that ply the waterways you also have access to Stockholm’s stunning archipelago and places out on Lake Mälaren like Drottningholm Palace and the Birka World Heritage site.

The Stockholm Public Transport network or SL operates a very efficient and well connected transport system which spans not just the city centre but extends out to the suburbs and commuter towns in and around the Stockholm region. The commuter trains and underground system run on renewable electricity and it is SL's mission to have 50% of their buses running on non fossil fuels such as ethanol or biogas by 2011 and 100% by 2025.

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As a family of four it is good to know our actions are contributing to a greener and cleaner environment but there have been other more personal benefits that have emerged from not owning a car. My husband has a more relaxing journey to work on the train with time to read and reflect and none of the hassle of having to find a parking place. As a family our days out are much more sociable as we have time to chat to one another whilst sitting on the train or bus and the arguments we used to have on car journeys about whether we should have turned left or right at the last junction are a thing of the past.

How to do the grocery shopping was something I was concerned about before we moved here but we find that a trip out on the bus to the supermarket to do a big monthly shop and then a trip home by taxi covers it and then we only have to buy the fresh stuff which can be picked up at the local shop on the way home from work. This approach not only saves money but also means we spend less time at the shops as we cannot just jump into a car to do it.

I walk or cycle with my children to and from school and we have wonderful little chats along the way often centred around what we see around us for instance a deer, a hare or a squirrel crossing our path or on a rainy day counting the hoards of slugs and snails that are crawling along.
The fact that we walk much more means that we are able to appreciate the seasonal changes,  kicking through the fallen leaves in Autumn, crunching through the crisp snow in Winter and enjoying the world coming back to life again in Spring.

The whole family now owns a bicycle and we are able to explore more and more of our surrounding area and get out to nature reserves and lakes and forests with relative ease. SL allows you to take your bicycle on the train during non-peak times and from this Summer even on a few of the buses making it possible to travel even further a field. Cycling is relatively easy and safe, out in the suburbs there is very little traffic especially compared to where we used to live on the outskirts of a big city in the UK. Most pavements are cycle ways as well as footpaths so children do not have to cycle out on the road and even in Stockholm city centre there are many designated cycle tracks which keep you off the roads.

All this walking and cycling means that the family is healthier and I am continually amazed by my children's stamina levels, they certainly know what their legs are for.