A photo-illustrated story about our old boats in The Stockholm Archipelago and a trip through the Stockholm / Waxholm Archipelago in the darkness of the Ice-Winter in February 2026
All pictures are taken with a mobile camera (Samsung A35) and processed in Topaz Photo AI 4 (scaled and sharpened) and finished in Photolab.
If you don´t like the ice-winter you can always look at the same Rindö Island in the summer via thed link below.
Thanks! Always interesting to see experiences from locations other than mine!
Climate change is real here in the Boulder/Denver area of Colorado. We had another record high day today (21.7 C), with 37 days over 60F (15.5+ C) this winter (another all-time record). No days with snow here in February! (Severe, near-record low snowpack in the Colorado mountains, approximately 63% of the median.) At the same time, record blizzards in NYC and Boston! Nice to see winter where you are!
Thanks for great introduction to Swedish ways. Really an interesting read.
I presume that for non-locals, trying fermented herring requires really a lot of preparatory aquavit 
Can you recommend some painters of Nordic landscapes that resonate with local “color perception”?
Is there someone to complement e.g. Sibelius in paint?
Pardon me, if I struck some local nuances…
These questions are related to my own experience. That occurred when landing in Nice about the golden hour and instantly realizing that I understood nothing of impressionism as it was thought in the school, before actually seeing the colors.
Swedish perception of colors seems to be much more subtle, thus less understood by non-Nordics. But maybe I’m wrong…
Van Gogh travelled south, perhaps some should travel north
Pekka Halonen; a very nice exposition has recently closed in Paris.
I have not yet published my photos.
You have also Bruno Liljefors but rather painting animals.
@jch2103 Oh, I have such nice memories 20 years ago when I was at a Professional meeting around Microsoft SQL-serverdatabases in Denver. I both managed to see Peter Forsberg the Swedish hockey player in Colorado Avalanche in Pepsi Arena and go for a day to the lovely Colorado Springs and Old Colorado Town with its fantastic background of tall mountains. I was there in the spring also hitch hiking to the Garden of Goods with its fantastic sandstone formations. I love to fish and I have always wanted to go up there in the mountains fishing trout.
You seem to have got a lot of the climate changes. We have too but not that bad. The fires are scary and we have had some too that required us to bring in help from Poland, Franced and Italy. Thanks to them mer managed to stop it. It was a wake up call and after that we have bought the same kind of planes the Italians used.
Fishing here is poor these days since EU permitted Spanish trawlers to “vaccum clean” the Baltic Sea for herring which they use to feed the chickens, so now the small companies in the north struggles thrying to meed the demands for fremented herring in Sweden. Luckily it seems impossible to export 
so still I use to manage to get my hands on a can or so.
@Wlodek Fermented herring is supposed to be one of the most stinking things you can eat but it is a little bit strange I think because when you open a can you just don´t feel the smell. It might be because our smell organs are getting sort of overwelmed almost instantly.
When I was a child there were so much herring here that it was almost unbelievable. We fished it with just any sinker and a thin line with up to 10 tripple hooks. And here at the sandy bottoms at Oxdjupet the fish stock were so packed that we couldn´t get the sinker down to the bottom because it landed on top of that stock. A few pulls up and down and you had three-four or even five fish for the bucket that got full in 15-20 minutes.
So the Waxholm herring is really a concept in the Stockholm area and that fish has saved many from starvation over the years but nowadays it is molstly sold pickled in all sorts of flavours. There are actually two herring seasons - one in May and early June and one in September. The main one is in the spring.
You asked about famous nature painters in Sweden who typically express themselves with a more muted and fine-tuned color scale typical of the Northern countries. I think personally that you shall look more to Denmark for that. There is a group that is called Skagen-målarna after the very edge of a famous Danish “Peninsula” called “Skagen”
Here is an AI-summary:
The Skagen Painters were a group of Nordic artists (mainly Danish, but also Norwegian and Swedish) who gathered in Skagen, at the northern tip of Jutland in Denmark, especially in the late 19th century.
They became famous for painting:
everyday life and fishing communities
beaches, sea, and coastal scenes
the distinctive Skagen light (clear, cool, and luminous)
P.S. Krøyer (Peder Severin Krøyer) — probably the most famous
Anna Ancher — especially known for her mastery of light in interiors
Michael Ancher — often painted fishermen and coastal life
Holger Drachmann (also a poet/writer, but part of the circle)
Carl Locher
Laurits Tuxen
They moved away (at least partly) from rigid academic painting and worked more with:
realism
plein-air painting (painting outdoors)
light and atmosphere (with some influence from newer movements like Impressionism, though they were not always strictly Impressionists)
So in practice, they were a kind of Nordic artist colony where summer light, salt air, fishing boats, and serious art all collided in the best possible way.
Perhaps the industry needs to invest in more powerful graphics cards? 
Yes but as you say Bruno Liljefors is famous for his very expressive pictures of animals in nature. Liljefors was details and Skagen-painters was light and open views and parties.
It is worth a try!
Isn´t it?
That was absolutely spot on!
Wlodek, were you ever at Musée d’Orsey in Paris. They had a lot of the impressionists. I skipped it last time because the queues were just terribly long.
I have been many times in Provence so I think I understand what you ment by the light in Provence.
You are very right about Swedish perception of colors but I wonder if that isn´t also a Lutheran thing. There was a stand up commedian that took that up in a performance a few years ago. The central concept was “White and Fresh” - you get it I suppose.
Once I was in Kashmir in northern India on a carpet emporium and one of the sales guys asked me where I was from and when I said Swedish he pulled out an absolutely “magic carpet” in light blue gray soft smoke colored silk. We are also very beige which also is sort of a word of abuse. You might have seen IKEA furniture in soft pale birch tree that many Swedish institutions and government offices traditionally use to have. I´m personally pretty tired of that look. In the seventies it was a lot of pine or spruce.
When I asked what a german would pick he pulled out a motif with a pastoral green pattern with shepherds and sheep scattered over it. An american? Then he pulled out a carpet in bright orange. Prejudice? - you tell me
In Sweden, it is still important not to stand out too much. There is something called Jantelagen - the Law of Jante. That has also an impact on the colors we use - and NOT use. Push that concept into Chat GPT if you are interested of the details.
Almost all floors in private homes in Sweden are covered by oak parquet or spruce or pine but that I guess is mostly because the whole country is coverd by pine and spruce. We use what we have.
I have just uploaded two slideshows that you will find on this page.
Many others to see…
@be51 Oh, thanks for that, lovelely. So much lovely to see. I have to look more tomorrow. I could not sleep now when I briefly woke up so I looked at quite a few of the paintings and pictures.
A great variety. Some of Halonens pictures remembered me of some fantastic russian art from an exibition at our National Museum in Stockholm 10 years ago. It was paintings from both S::t Petersburg and Moscow and a lot of Russians came to see them. Painting refecting the old Russian society. It was a broad movement called Peredvizniki where Russian painters was urged to get out to document the then present Russian society. I have never seen anything more more beautiful, sad, revealing, dark and upsetting artistery in virtuouse painting in all my life before. It really hit me like a fist in my stomach and I have not been able to forget it since then.
It is so sad I never will be able to go back to Russia again. I was there during the crazy Soviet times in 1978 and have always wanted to see Leningrad and Nevskij Prospekt, The Winterpalace and the Emeritage.
The pictures of the fantastically well preserved and well made Egyptian artifacts of Tutankamon can be seen now in Stockholm and it reminds me of that I have to remember to go there immediately. So thank you.
Even the murals were very interesting. I will send you a link with some murals from Estepona in Spain.
I am trying to rebuild my web site ; I want to put informations about each picture ; example of a notice about a painting
PEKKA HALONEN (1865-1933}
La Lessive sur la glace 1900 Huile sur toile
Helsinki, musée d’Art de l’Ateneum, galerie nationale de Finlande, collections Antell
Pour le pavillon de la Finlande à l’Exposition universelle de Paris en 1900, Pekka Halonen réalise deux grands panneaux: Le Chasseur de lynx et La Lessive sur la glace, conçus comme un diptyque allégorique. De profil, le chasseur, aux aguets, dominant la forêt enneigée, incarne la vie sauvage. Parallèlement, la femme faisant sa lessive, courbée sur la glace, à quelques mètres de son village, personifie la civilisation et le mode de vie rural.
I would like make this appear when looking at the painting.
But much work…
Good luck with the metadata. I have seriously worked for about five years now with my own picture archive and it has been a lot of hard work but it is really rewarding and keeps getting more and more fun the more it grows and the quality of the metadata improves.
It was also a real game changer when I migrated from PhotoMechanic (which by all means has been a good tool) to iMatch. It is first now that I don´t feel anymore that the metadata work is a sinker. AI has helped a lot with most general motifs. When doing so I get more time to write texts manually in those cases when that really is needed but as AI has improved it makes manual interference less and less needed.
Here comes the link to the murals in Estepona. The major in Estepone opened a mural competition about 10 years ago opening for the painting mostly of the newer buildings in the northern part of the City. I have some friends living there and they introduced me to all that often stunning art that has transformed those before pretty boring areas to something pretty spectacular and in fact the whole town has got a facelift that has raised the towns reputation and made it a much more attractive and prosperous place than it was before. It has not just been the murals.
Especially in the historic parts of the town every old road has got flowers in colorful harmonised colors on the walls on both sides of the roads and alleys. This has been notised even by the many Swedish expats in Estepona and rewarded a few years ago. This facelift has also made Estepona more prosperous economically so despite there also are other problems after the whole Andalusian coast with drugs, illegal immagration and crime, Estepone still seems a pretty nice and calm place to live in. You have to scroll a bit since the murals are at the end of the story.
@be51, @Stenis, thanks for your for directions. Actually @Stenis answer made my question more accurate, very interesting read indeed. The Kashmir story is typical, but “Law of Jante” was something new to me, just a bit extreme. How could it make Swedish people successful? While preventing dangerous psychopatic and narcisstic natures from gaining power, wouldn’t it supress creativity too? Just a simplistic question, I’m afraid, surely it’s more complex underneath…
I tend to use rather lively colors but after seeing some Liljefors paintings, maybe I’ll have to rethink the basics (e.g. use saturation like tonal contrast). Many other paintings hide a desire for warmth, something to expect.
That’s interesting. Maybe if you think your photo is overdone, overdo it even more and then nobody will notice?
My wife had similar experiences in Norway and Portugal, but there was no one around to persuade her to give it a try. When I was young, we had fish 1–3 times a day, so I don’t eat it anymore. I did try durian, though (ha!) .
Maybe the digital process is encouraging us to “over do” natural motifs a bit. There is this talk of getting the pictures to “pop”, whatever that really is. I can also se some lenses that has a warmer tone than others like for example my new Viltrox-lenses and the old Minolta generation 1-lenses I once also had.. Me and probably others too use to call it “verkligheten 2.0” or “the reality 2.0” in English. The most common thing is to make the grass a lot greener than it actually is.
I really think “Jante-lagen” has a lot to do also with us Swedes often preferring a softer tone in colors than others. That is just one of these ways we have not to stand out. Door frames and moldings in Swedish homes are generally white for this reason. Anything else is almost unthinkable here.
There was also a famous painter in Sweden called Carl Larsson and his wife that over the years developed a home-style that came to be seen as sort of the raw model for a how a nice cosy Swerdish rural home in total harmony oughgt to look like a houndred years ago. Sundborn still exists and can be visited for inspiration and many Swedes still go there for inspiration. This might be more of the example you were looking for.
Digital process makes it possible for a good reason, but it’s people’s choice to use positive/negative sliders settings. Just because some correction is available, it doesn’t mean you have to use it. But if some photo gets successful somewhere, many people try to replicate the edits, like a flock of stupid sheep. E.g. look at B&W Jazz photo genre. You can’t help that, it’s human (not sheep only). Luckily some sheep always get out of the flock from time to time (being eaten by wolves or survive as truly inventive)…
That is a very interesting question: Doesn´t Jante suppress creativity? One can suspect that but you just need to look at the Swedish “music wonder” over the last 50 years. It is not just about ABBA. Yes even Spotify was developed by a Swede Niklas EK. Max Martin that has produced an enless row of hits on the Billboard-list is Swedish and was chistianed Karl Martin Sandberg. He has worked with many American and Swedish artists.
There is also a long list of Swedish inventions and patents from John Ericssons propeller, Erikssons mobile phones and telephone switches, Håkan Lantz computer mouse (did you too think that the “mouse” was invented by Apple or Xerox?) and monitor graphics that Hitachi stole and not the least the navigation systems the whole flight industry is using today, Nobels dynamite, C E Johanssons precision tolerances and fits that has been used for houndred years in the industry to calibrate industrial machines used to produce all sorts of industrial products. hardmetal (Coromant) from Sandvik also indespensable in the worlds manufacturing workshops or SKF that invented the ball bearings that is used in any machine today with moving parts. Axel Nobels dynamite. Safety matches is also Swedish. Electrolux gave much of the world their refrigherators. Mining machinery like pnueumatic drills e.tc. from Atlas Copco and of course IKEA.
These days we hear mostly about Swedish warmaterial. JAS 39 Gripen, Our famous stealth Gotland-submarines that even the americans can´t see with their sonars or radars, CV 90 personal carriers (a tank) that is almost impossible to take out, NLAW and Carl Gustaf weapons responsible for taking out tousands of russian tanks in Ukraine (we call them cap-openers since a shot often makes the tank-turret go up 50 meters in the sky after a hit. Archer is a superefficient and fast precision howitzer that can shoot Bonus smart shells that strangely enough can take out two tanks with one single smart shot. CB90 Attack boats for high speed in shallow waters.
If I´m not badly informed Canada will manufacture Swedish Gripen fighters instead of American A35 and a lot of other countries are thinking to do the same after Gripen was appointed the preferrable NATO-fighter for the Archtic-region since it among other things can start and operate in temperatures below - 40 degrees - F35 can´t. SAAB already build airborn surveillance Global Eye planes together with Canadian Bombardier.
It might be a little bit strange that Sweden has been appointed to be if not the most or the second most innovatice country in the world (it has happened a few times) BUT I can tell you that Jante is a very problematic force in teh Nordic countries and despite Jante was written by a Danish author that lived in Norway too I wonder if the Jante-problems are not the worst in Sweden.
I have worked 20 years in a Nordic-company and of that reason have been working in Norway, Denmark and Finland a lot and I can say all of the people I have met from the other Nordic countries had real problems with the Swedes. It is just in Sweden where a boss/manager is NOT a boss in the way they were used too. A manager that would say to an employee “that is an order” would get into serious problems with the workers.
The more Swedish way is to politely ask is somebody “can look into that certain problem”. In Sweden CONSENSUS rules. Decisons are often built in the background in Sweden often by informal leaders and it is ofte hard to really understand when a decision is taken and when it formally is it is formally. The workers sometimes asked who is the boss - and they might have got a name but often the decisions were taken in consensus behind the scenes.
Most frustrated were probably the Finns since they long after the war lived in a command-economy marked by the influence of General Mannerheim. In Finland at that time the managers pointed with the whole hand as we say here. Few workers dared to take own initiatives which the Swedes had to do because no one else did. Swedes were in their turn irritated on the Finns that rarely dared to take their own decissions. The Danes were also used to a strong manager culture and asked right out: Who is the boss? But when we had agreed on something in Stockholm the Danes went home and did something completely different or even the opposit.
The Danes often took a pride in been the rebels in the Nordic room. The Norwegians were most like us I thought but not even the Norwegians had this this unclear and very vague leadership culture that we have in Sweden. The worst with the Norwegians were that they never eat proper food. I always felt starved there. The only thing they ate in the whole day was a few slices of bred and when it was overtime they never ate anything else than pizza (from Peppes Pizza). Frozen pizza was the most common meal I think in Norwegian homes at that time - maybe because all other food was so expensive.
But to our defence it can be said that in Sweden a leader not necessarily need to lead. It works anyway in an organic way (often without speaking a word) where everybody shares the responsibility. The best example I know is when I look at the boat clubs many boat owners are a part of. In the spring when boats are put in the water or when they are put on land again in the Fall/Autumn you would not believe how efficint that works in most clubs because everybody knows what to do and everybody helps the other. Thereis a so called harbor captain in every club but in the clubs I have been part of there has not been any shouting and yelling to get it to work. It works sort of organically anyway.
Another thing I never understood was when I was working in Finland with an upgrade of our business-system. In Sweden I was used to Finnish immigrant workers that really worked hard as hell (often much harder and better than most Swedes at this company) until we were done but when I was in Finland the place was totally empty at four o´clock. Where the hell is everybody we thought and where are their managers?? Then we realized that the parking place outside was empty.
To tease you, my wife bought in Oslo a T-shirt showing someone hanging himself because of boredom after he migrated from Norway to Sweden. Osmium humor, I would say. But that was 20+ years ago…
Overall, you are right, small nations tend to be very effective per capita.
BTW, you should have also mentioned Swedish Fields medallists – Atle Selberg and Lars Hormander. Stay inspired.
Thanks for insights.