I went to Stockholm this past weekend and if you’ve never been to Stockholm, please make it your life mission to go at some point (okay, I suppose it’s not that important). Maybe because I learned so much while I was in Stockholm, I want everyone to experience what I did. If you asked me why it was such an emotional trip for me, I honestly don’t know if I could tell you. I do know that I was overcome by the landscape, I was moved by the creativity, and I felt connected to the modern movements of the city. SO I want to talk about those three things specifically and hopefully you can feel a little snippet of what I felt.

First things first, I cannot begin to describe the nature of this city. It was absolutely breathtaking (I’m being so serious- there were several moments where I felt like I couldn’t even breathe because I felt so unworthy of being in the presence of something so marvelous). It was like walking through a painting, one displaying the richest hues of autumn. The trees, the rivers, the flowers- all rhythmically dancing to the tune of fall.

I am the kind of person that feels personally connected to nature so when I witness an overwhelming scene like Stockholm, it’s like an out-of-body experience. I believe that nature has the power to bring peace and emotional healing, and this is evidence of that. The chaos of life stops and the calmness begins to settle in and it is truly life changing.

 

 

Secondly, I want to emphasize the creativity that dominated the city. Creative energy blasted through my veins while I was in Stockholm. It’s a city bursting with museums filled with culture and art and history. I am usually not a big museum person, but Stockholm executed these exhibitions so well. And I absolutely loved being brought into the creative worlds of artists from all over the world. At one point, I was able to utilize my own creative juices. Every time we get a little creative, our brain releases dopamine. We might not even realize it, but we subconsciously  become happier, which can be reflected in our behavior as we utilize our thirst for creativity (Harvard). At the Swedish History Museum, there was one section that offered a creative workshop. We were told we could make something out of clay to keep (a free souvenir, how could I say no?). If this doesn’t tell you the priority that creativity takes throughout the city of Stockholm, I don’t know what else could. It was amazing to see a public place offering a free space for people to let their imaginations run wild. I took this opportunity to take a break from learning about history and let my mind wander. I made a pink and white sun. To me, sunshine radiates positivity which is everything that I felt during this experience.

The third and final thing I feel like I need to share is the modernism I witnessed. Stockholm is a very modernized city. I’m talking ‘every building is getting renovated to be climate friendly’ kind of modern. It’s fashion forward, sexually forward, and feminist forward. I saw one photo in the National Museum that I felt truly encompassed all of these movements and I fell in love with it. It is a photo of the actress Anita Ekberg by Swedish photographer Georg Oddner. Ekberg was already a topic of conversation in the 1960s because she bathed publicly in the Trevi Fountain in her film, La Dolce Vita. In the photo (taken in the 1950s), she’s smoking a cigarette. Women who smoked in this time period were seen as provocative and therefore unconventional. As I saw this photo, the years of progress for women, for sexuality, for fashion, for ACCEPTANCE washed over me. I felt so proud to be a woman in this modern era, but I also felt so much respect for women like Ekberg who paved the way for us ladies.

**all photos except the Ekberg photo were taken by me**

Ekberg, Georg. Anita Ekberg, Actress. Stockholm.

Harvard. “Creative Thinking and the Brain.” Harvard Health, Harvard University, Dec. 2010, https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/creative-thinking-and-the-brain.