easa

Location

The EASA biennial will take place in Stockholm University, centred on Aula Magna, Frescativägen 6/Universitetsvägen 10 B-C, 114 18, Sweden.

Travel advice

For travel advice on reaching Stockholm and the venue, please read the Stockholm University travel page.

Sightseeing in Stockholm

For sightseeing ideas, scroll down below the map!

Map of EASA2018 venues and accommodation locations

Places to visit in Stockholm (or not) - a short guide from the Local Committee

Skansen

Skansen opened as a pioneer open-air museum in 1891, devoted to showing old Swedish buildings such as regional-style farm houses, at a time when there was a growing concern with safeguarding Swedish cultural tradition. (The Nordic Museum nearby became a partner institution for showing Swedish arts and crafts.) Old urban buildings, including small shops, were added somewhat later. These are all original buildings, moved from different parts of Sweden. Skansen has been internationally recognized as a model for similar institutions in different places, some of which have even adopted the name “Skansen”. There is also a zoological component, devoted to showing Swedish fauna. There are several eating places of various kinds on Skansen grounds. To get there, take the streetcar (tram) no.7 from the city center, or the ferry from the Old Town.

The Nordic Museum

“Nordiska Museet” is Sweden’s largest museum of national cultural history. It was founded in 1880, and moved into its impressive building after the following turn of the century. The collections are enormous, and the exhibits (partly permanent, partly temporary) are intriguing: clothes and fashion, textiles and jewellery, homes and furniture, photography, toys, folk art, glass and porcelain. There is also an exhibition devoted to the Sami, the indigenous people in northern Sweden. Go there by streetcar (tram) no. 7 from central Stockholm, or by ferry from the Old Town. Skansen, long its partner institution, is nearby, and so is the Vasa Museum. The museum has a restaurant.

The Vasa Museum

“Vasamuseet” is a reminder of Sweden’s time as an important European power in the 17th century, and also of a past national embarrassment. The ship Vasa, named after the royal dynasty of the period, was intended to be the pride of the Swedish Navy, and started its maiden voyage out of the Stockholm harbor on August 10, 1628 (390 years ago). But it was somehow wrongly constructed – and capsized almost immediately! Then it lay there at the sea bottom, quite well-preserved, until it was rediscovered in the 1950s, and raised again in 1961.
The whole ship is there in the middle of what may be Stockholm’s most remarkable, unusual museum.

The Ethnographic Museum

Etnografiska Museet opened in its present building, in a park-like area in east-central Stockholm, in 1980. By Euuropean standards it is a fairly small museum of its kind, with collections from non-European areas of the world. Through various kinds of events it tries to reach out to a wider audience, including families. A restaurant/café is attached to it.
You can get there by a pleasant walk along a canal (Djurgårdskanalen), or by bus 69. Closed on Mondays.

The Old Town

The Old Town, “Gamla Stan”, dates from the mid-13th century. It is on a small island at the center of Stockholm, where Lake Mälaren empties into the Baltic Sea – a strategic medieval location. There were city walls on the inside of what are now Västerlånggatan and Österlånggatan. The street pattern between these two streets remains medieval, and is largely a pedestrian area. Most of the present, in large part residential buildings are from the 17th-19th centuries. Somewhat slum-like in an earlier part of the 20th century, it has more lately tended toward gentrification. The Royal Palace is on the northeast corner (with a daily “changing of the guard” at noon), and there are a couple of large old churches. One of them is the German Church; the German merchant community was very strong in Stockholm in the days of the Hanseatic League. The Old Town also has a large number of restaurants. From approximately the southeastern corner of the Old Town there is a small ferry, allowing a 15-minute boat ride to the Djurgården area where Skansen, the Vasa Museum, and the Nordic Museum are located.

Hötorgshallen

At the commercial center of Stockholm there is Hötorget, with an open-air market for fruits, vegetables, clothing and various other items. In a building at the southwestern corner is the entrance to Hötorgshallen, a large mostly basement-level food market, with Swedish as well as more exotic goods represented: meat, fish, vegetables, bread, sweets etc, and a small state liquor store.

Rinkeby

With regard to “Staying, Moving, Settling”, Rinkeby is a site for inspecting “settling”. Like many European cities, Stockholm has suburbs (“banlieues”, “tower blocs” etc) which have become major transnational migrant quarters. Rinkeby, built in the late 1960s, is one of the best-known of these. In the 1970s, Turkish migrants were a large group; it was then a field site for a couple of Ph.D. dissertations in social anthropology. Other migrant groups have followed since then. At present, some 90 % of the population are of “foreign background”. In recent years, Rinkeby has acquired a reputation as a troubled area, even a “no-go zone”, with organized crime, and shooting deaths in public places. Most of the inhabitants, of course, have nothing to do with this. Still, a visit here may involve some personal risk. If you do want to go, you may be wise not to go alone, and to act unobtrusively. “Rinkeby” is a stop on the Stockholm subway Blue line, with “Hjulsta” as its end stop in this direction.

Any queries with the above please email conference(at)easaonline.org.