THE Swede Life

Licorice ice cream, recycled jeans, and sky-high saunas? Welcome to Gothenburg, Scandinavia’s new capital of cool.

- Laura Moser

The city as seen from Skansen Kronan, a hilltop fortress.

My father bought a boxy silver Volvo on my first day of kindergarten. The car died on my last day of college, a half-decade after its speedometer broke at 124,000 miles. This, for most of my life, was all I knew of Gothenburg, the city on Sweden’s west coast that manufactured the only car I’ve ever loved. More recently, from my home in Berlin, I’d heard murmurings of a different sort about Sweden’s second city: that the seafood restaurants were out-of-this-world amazing; that it kept winning awards for sustainability; that its summer music festival, Way Out West, attracted A-lister musicians like Lily Allen, Chappell Roan, and Charli xcx. That, in short, Gothenburg was cool.

Salsa dancing on a summer evening near the Stenpiren ferry terminal in Gothenburg, Sweden.

I like cool, particularly of the relaxed Scandinavian variety, so I flew from Germany to check out Gothenburg for myself. After gray, graffitied Berlin, I was immediately struck on the shuttle from the airport by the colorful summer vistas out of both windows: purple flowers and green forests and navy lakes. Nature certainly wasn’t shy of announcing its beauty here.

Stora Hamnkanalen as seen from Brunnsparken, the city's central square; preparing plates at the New Nordic restaurant Human; a guest room at Hotel Pigalle.