Norrköping Meandering

Some Reflections on Sweden’s Manchester

A pedestrian pathway through an old industrial pipe in Norrköping; the pathway is now unfortunately closed

Normally, my web presence involves my meager, weird, and — I hope — humorous writings about Vikings, metal bands, and a recurring and unrelenting revulsion to office culture. But I also have a general interest in Scandinavian culture, history, and geography. And I have a very special affinity for the city of Norrköping in the county of Östergötland (Eastern Geatland) in the Kingdom of Sweden, and I wanted to share some images and information about this unique, generally overlooked place that I called home for a brief period of time in the past and recently revisited.

Well-lit pedestrian bridges crisscross the Motala Ström in central Norrköping’s Industrial Landscape district

Because Norrköping (literally, “North Shopping-place,” and the Swedish “k” in this instance is even pronounced like “sh” in English) really is a very pleasant, little city. But it wasn’t always. Located about 100 kilometers southwest of Stockholm, it’s known within Sweden as the nation’s “Manchester,” meaning that it was the country’s foremost mill town during the Industrial Revolution. And like Manchester, and most, if not all, other factory-dominated cities in the western world, it featured horrid living conditions during its productive heydays in the 1800s and subsequently fell on…