Everything to do with chocolate

I wonder why my favourite Fabrique, decided to get rid of the big table in the centre of the shop. Having the small round tables and chairs is better, and it doesn’t reduce the number of seats. I do wonder if it’s to discourage laptop users working for hours on a single coffee. Or maybe it’s for the aesthetic. I will never, never know. But I like it.

I was in Stockholm to escape the medical contagion back at the house. I had decided to visit one of the few art galleries I had yet to visit in the city. There was an exhibition called The Flow of Everything on at Marabouparken, which I thought looked interesting. I was also quite keen to see the sculpture park. And so, on bus, train, tram, t-bana and Shank’s pony, I set off.

But first, a little bit of delicious, creamy history.

Back in 1919, Johan Throne Holst, a Norwegian chocolatier, started making chocolate in Sundbyberg, Stockholm. (Incidentally, Sundbyberg was where we collected our residency cards back in 2021.) One of the things that Johan did was to create a park especially for his employees to relax in; a place they could enjoy on lovely days.

Johan was already successful in Norway with Freia which, at the turn of the 20th century, owned 50% of the chocolate market in Norway. He decided to expand into Sweden. Unfortunately the name, Freia was already taken in Sweden, so he decided to call it Marabou. The reason for the name was because Freia chocolate was embossed with the image of a stork. And a Marabou is a type of stork.

These days, Marabou is embossed with an M. I think Freia still has the marabou. Ask a Norwegian as the chocolate still exists though, like Marabou, it’s now part of the evil Kraft empire.

But back to today. After a bit of a slog along hot and sweltering city streets and a short divergence along a marina, I arrived at the entrance to the park where families, a class of tiny school kids, exercising young adults from a local Friskis&Svettis and one young lady in a black bikini, were all enjoying the sun-drenched grass.

I walked into the deserted front desk of the gallery space and waited. Eventually I was joined by a woman selling tickets to the exhibition. She took my money, indicated where I should go (in Swedish that I understood) and left me to it.

The exhibition was not crowded. In fact, I was the only one there. This is a very rare treat. Having a space entirely to myself to wander around in. There’s no argy bargy stretching to see anything for one thing. And you can contemplate pieces in silence unless you read the labels out loud, I guess.

To say that I thought the exhibition was amazing would be a lie. I found a lot of it stretched the meaning of modern art a bit too far in the direction of ‘not art’ for my taste. And my taste is pretty broad.

The works were by three artists, Philip Dufva, Maria Hedlund and Eva Löfdahl.

Of the three, I found Löfdahl’s work the most appealing. Her pieces are intriguing, light and sometimes almost beautiful. My favourite was a piece called Alla varldar ger ett sken (2024) made up of large convex shapes, covered in glued together bits of maps and stuck to the wall. Sort of like a decoupage shield. I loved the various different places, especially Sundbyberg which was just near Africa.

I also quite liked some of her sculptured shapes.

I’m afraid that the work of the other two artists didn’t really do an awful lot for me.

Outside, in the park again, I was very keen on the various sculptures dotted around. A head on a very high pedestal greeting guests as they headed for the restaurant, a naked Zeus, legs astride, standing over two ladies at lunch and there was a rather intriguing piece called Margit by Bror Hjorth.

Margit was a favourite model of Hjorth. He painted her a number of times as well as making this bronze of her. You can read a bit about their relationship here. I discovered Hjorth’s work in the Moderna Museet back in July. Mind you, I have also realised that I saw some of his works at Sven Harry’s back in 2022.

Anyway, I found the Margit in the park quite delightful and mysterious. Though I’m not sure about her shell shaped pubis.

From behind, her bottom is delicately sculptured, resting on the column. It looked remarkably real, albeit in bronze.

There were many more pieces to admire in the park but I had to head back into Stockholm to buy a couple of text books for Mirinda.

And what an amazing bookshop I visited. The academic bookshops in Sweden are delightful emporiums of knowledge. And fika. At least this one was. Not that I had fika. I’d just finished an unexpected ramen at Manga and was in no way hungry.

Unexpected, because I’d responded to the enticing sign outside which read ‘icy cold Swedish beer’. Subsequently I thought it was a bar.

Imagine my immense joy when I was confronted with a ramen menu at the counter! Beer and ramen? I was in heaven.

Usually, when someone asks me what my favourite meal is, I answer “Pizza and beer,” but I reckon it’s a close run race with a good ramen. And an icy cold Swedish beer.

And that was my day. While at home, health was improving. Jason even had dinner with us, though, as a sign that he really is sick, he didn’t finish his hotpot.