Διαβάστε αυτό το ποστ στα ελληνικά.
Last month, my significant other and I traveled to Sweden. We have a special relationship to the country, as SO is half Swedish, he speaks the language and has spent many summers there with his family, while I’ve been learning the language for the past 2.5 years but I had never been.
We spent 10 days in Stockholm and the island of Gotland, we met friends and relatives, we visited museums/sights/parks/events, we ate amazing pastries, we admired the blooming cherry trees and -very importantly, for this blog- we visited and shopped in various book and stationery shops.
I’d been preparing for this trip, since I follow @marionbcn on Instagram, who lives in Stockholm and does a lot of letter-writing and penpalling. So I asked her for recommendations and she was kind to send me an extensive list with descriptions and details. From that list I managed to visit about half the shops, but that means I have more for next time.
In the video below you can see a haul with the things we bought while in Sweden and the rest of this post will be a list with details, links and photos.
Stockholm is a beautiful city in many respects, but if you love stationery, books, and design, you will be floored by the variety and quality of the shops available.
Lets do this geographically, as my brain likes to group things and it’s easier that way.
Stockholm Old Town (Gamla Stan)
Kalejdoskop – Stora Nygatan 34
kaleidoscope. A sweet little shop in Old Town, mainly addressed to children I think. It has books, craft supplies, gifts, stationery, cards, toys and many more, with cute deigns and bright colors.
Postal Museum shop – Lilla Nygatan 6
This was one of the nicest shops I visited in Stockholm. A small bright shop full of stationery and postal products, from cards and envelopes, to wax seals and postage stamps. It also has well-known stationery brands and products.
City Center – North (Norrmalm)
North of the city center there are various department stores, which of course have sections with books, stationery, and other interesting stuff.
A very old and well-known Swedish department store, with branches in many cities. Åhléns City, at Stockholm’s city center, is a huge building with many floors and apart from its own stationery and book section, it also has a Muji store inside.
Muji is one of my very favorite shops in general, not just for stationery. It has everything, from clothes and homeware to stationery and accessories. Japanese design and quality, simple and practical and so close to my aesthetic. It does not exist in Greece and the shipping from their online store is a bit steep, so whenever I have the chance I always visit (or order things from friends abroad or send people there if they travel to a city that has a Muji store).
One more really big and impressive building, fancy and expensive. Their bookshop on the 3rd floor is decorated with old furniture and is full of books, music, cards and posters with scandinavian and vintage design. Well worth a visit, if just for the eye candy. I saw on the website that there’s a stationery section in the building’s basement, though we didn’t visit it.
Chain of bookshops with many branches all over the city. The one we visited was close to Åhléns, at the city center. Not very big but with a nice variety of books (I love swedish book design, the covers and general aesthetic of the books, I can browse for hours) and stationery. A wide selection of products, from notebooks, pens and pencils, art and office supplies and various other things, it’s very satisfactory for stationery lovers.
City Center – South (Södermalm)
St. Pauls Bok och Pappershandel –
A lovely corner shop, small and full of beautiful things. A wide selection of books in swedish and english (second-hand as well), papers and cards, notebooks, fabrics, handmade decorated papers, letter writing supplies (I had to show great restraint to not buy a beautiful letter writing set with papers and envelopes). You can lose yourself in there and browse for a long time. The owner, a nice elderly lady, asked us about Greek literature and poetry and which authors have been translated so that she might order their books for the shop.
Located in a little square with cherry trees (which were blooming at the time we visited), with coffee shops and other small shops, there is Bysis Bok & Papper. It seems small on the outside but once you get in you see that it’s quite spacious and full of lovely things (of course I’m biased, I like these things and everything seemed lovely). Books, a separate children’s department, stationery and gifts, a whole lot of little things like enamel pins, little cards and tags, stamps, bookends, wrapping paper, etc etc.
It’s in the name, it’s exactly what you’re imagining. A shop dedicated to stationery and art supplies, carrying all the good brands, Swedish and international. It’s not very big but it’s spacious, with long trestle tables full of products in the middle of the shop’s floor, and displays with products all along the walls, full of pens and pencils, notebooks, sketchbooks and paper pads, markers, various colors and supplies, whatever one might need. If I understand correctly, they collaborate with artists who paint on the shop’s front window. The design changed twice while we were in the city.
Swedish company producing diaries, stationery and office supplies, practical and with simple design and high quality. As I saw from their website, they have presence in many countries.
Museums
East Asian Museum (Östasiatiska Museet) –
From the museums that we visited, this one was really interesting because of its theme. Both the permanent collections and the exhibition currently displayed will excite paper lovers, but I will share all that in another post. Here I wanted to talk about the museum’s shop, which had amazing objects, from books, origami papers, homeware and gifts with Asian designs, tea accessories such as storage containers, cups and teapots, etc. Since Asia has a long and important history with paper (the Chinese invented it after all), the museum and its shop reflect this history.
Modern Art Museum (Moderna Museet) –
This museum shop is huge, compared to what I’m used to from museum shops. And it has an incredible array of items, all of them amazing. Tons of books on various subjects (art, history of art, architecture, design, etc, etc), stationery and craft supplies, gifts, homeware, sweets, accessories, more books, more design items, cards, a truly fantastic place! Both these museums are in the same area, so it’s very easy to visit both on the same day (that’s what we did).
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More posts from my trip to Sweden:
Paper Station 
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