![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
Destination: Stockholm
Once the promised land, a Lake Pepin village now is a favorite day trip.
© Beth Gauper
Shoppers go into a gift shop in Stockholm's one-block downtown.
Once, people went through hell to get to Stockholm, Wis.
It's different nowadays. It's only a joy ride away from the Twin Cities, and the streets of this pretty hamlet on Lake Pepin are lined with sports cars and motorcycles on weekends. There are shops, galleries, inns, a pub; it's the place to go for a room with a view or vroom with a brew.
In 1854, this bit of land at the foot of the Mississippi bluffs was the destination of more than 200 emigrants from the impoverished village of Bjurtjärn, Sweden. Promised "paradise on earth," they instead endured cholera, deprivation and betrayal.
Until recently, the locals assumed all the immigrants who left had made it to Stockholm. Then, the Bjurtjärn Theatre Group showed up in town with their historical play "Off to America: They Sold Their Homesteads."
"We found out things we didn't know happened," said Pat Carlson, who helped her husband, Mayor Wally Zick, arrange the first performance. "Some of it is shocking."
Then the 50 members of the Swedish troupe returned to Village Park for a second show, using their own nine-piece orchestra and sets built by Zick.
Speaking dialogue in English and singing in Swedish, they told the engrossing story of how Stockholm really was founded, based on a 19th-century article in a Swedish newspaper and their own research.
In rural Sweden, farmhand Petter Pettersson had read news of the Gold Rush. In 1849, he left for America with his brothers Erik and Anders, who felt oppressed not just by poverty but also by rigid social classes enforced by a tyrannical pastor, district judge and constable.
Petter and Anders went to California, but Erik worked as a lumberjack on the Mississippi, where he found a town site on Lake Pepin. He wrote home to the oldest brother, Jakob, and not long after Jakob had left for America, Erik returned to Sweden to recruit colonists with tales of free land and "soil rich like butter."
In 1854, he left Bjurtjärn with more than 200 people, from the richest landowner to the wife of the town drunk, who had her husband declared "incapacitated" so she could leave without him.
But Erik was a scoundrel. He pocketed their money and put them into the cheapest ship's quarters, where many became ill; on the train west, he packed them into cattle cars. A third of the villagers died, including his own mother, whom he pretended not to know so he could avoid paying for her funeral. Others decamped in Moline, Ill., after sending a sheriff to retrieve some of their money, and the man who became known as the "King of Stockholm" arrived with only 30 colonists.
Family story
The performance was top-notch — a juicy slice of history delivered on a silver platter. When it was over, producer Birgitta Haglund gave an epilogue and then turned the script over to Mayor Zick and Connie Anderson, bidding them to "take good care of our baby."
It's expensive to bring so many people to America, Haglund said, and now the troupe is moving on to other historical plays. But performing in Stockholm, she said, was special.
"When you see the tombstones, you get goose bumps," she said. "You can really feel the connection. And Erik Pettersson (actor Anders Haglund) is staying in his own house, and we use Jakob Pettersson's trunk in the play."
Many of Jakob's descendants were in the audience, including Sally Meixner of Stockholm.
"I was surprised they remembered us," she said. "There must be all kinds of stories that are passed on."
Jakob and his small party also encountered adversity on the way over.
The captain of their ship died, and his inexperienced son took over, ramming the boat into an iceberg before veering south to the tropics; in Moline, the Petterssons' daughter died.
In Stockholm, Jacob and his wife, Sara, a daughter of the feared district judge, lived in a log cabin for 15 years, until Jacob built a two-story stone cottage modeled after a painting of Sara's childhood home.
Today, the painting hangs in the town museum and the cottage is the Great River B&B, which proprietor Leland Krebs bought in 1980 from the third generation of Petersons. It still has its original maple floors, carefully crafted window moldings and 15-inch-thick stone walls, but now it's adorned with fresh flowers from the Stockholm shop Clementine, whose proprietor, Allison Lisk, mingles with socialites through her work with the American Friends of Versailles, and filled with work by local artists, such as the pierced-metal lamps made by Pepin blacksmith Tom Latané.
"Artists are the heartbeat of this area," says Krebs, who arrived in 1980, the year the first gallery opened.
Once, 300 people lived in Stockholm. They farmed and ran stores but also brewed lemon beer, bred kosher carp and dredged for clams used in buttons, eking out a living any way they could. But the town site was more pretty than practical, and there was no way for the town to grow.
It had virtually withered away by the time artistic types from the Twin Cities found it and opened the gallery, antiques and gifts shops and a cafe.
Fresh chapter
Now, nearly all the businesses have turned over, and a new generation of shopkeepers is operating in Stockholm. In the old opera house/general store, Amish Country has been replaced by four shops, anchored by Abode, which features the work of local artists, such as Gaylord Schanilec's prints, Mary Logue's hooked rugs, Perry Ingli's paintings and Lucy Elliott's shrines.
"It's unbelievable, the talent in this little tiny place," says proprietor Alan Nugent. "The premier talents in certain fields are located right here in Stockholm."
But what customers want most, he says, are pieces that portray bluffs, river scenes, barns — anything that looks like Stockholm.
"They want a piece of this place," he says. "There's something magical down here, and people respond to it. You hear about people who go down for a weekend visit and come back with a house."
That's about what happened to jazz pianist Butch Thompson and his wife, Mary Ellen Niedenfuer, who came to visit friends and ended up moving to Stockholm last fall.
"We'd been exploring different places to live, but we'd go home to St. Paul and say, 'No, home is really much nicer,' " Niedenfuer said.
"We didn't do that about this place," Thompson said.
Now, Niedenfuer is helping organize the Lake Pepin Art and Design Center, which now operates out of artists' studios but has leased an old building in Pepin.
"There are so many artists, and we're trying to get more of them to come out of the woods and get involved," she says.
The people who are attracted by Stockholm's beauty tend to sow more beauty. Many of the hollyhocks and lilies now blooming in gardens up and down the river come from Stockholm Gardens, where Harley Cochran and Beth Shide sell a wide selection of plants and maintain a glorious perennial garden along the highway through which people can walk.
In the tiny downtown, Bogus Creek Cafe and Bakery is known for its flower-draped courtyard, and a small garden surrounds a colorful ceramic totem by Maiden Rock artists John Turula and Russ Vogt.
The shop contents have changed, but little else. The whitewash is still peeling on the limestone facade of the 1864 Merchants' Hotel, now Green Gables gifts. Trains still thunder by next to the old house where veteran potter Diane Millner sells her stoneware. Birds nest under the sidewalk overhang of Crocus Oak antiques, in an old farm-implements store that's still heated by a wood-burning stove.
It's a pleasantly shabby look that suits Stockholm. But Jim McDonald, who helps Crocus Oak proprietor Larry Schultz on weekends, said he didn't think it looked very promising for retail when he first saw it.
"I came down with Larry and said, 'Why would you want to open anything here? You're not going to make 2 cents,' " McDonald said. "Now, we're the oldest business in Stockholm."
Retail is flourishing. Around the corner, Nancy Fitzsimons and daughter Shana Finnegan have opened The Palate in an old-fashioned but brand-new bungalow where they hold cooking classes and sell kitchenware, wine and gourmet food.
Finnegan bustles around her countertop, preparing tasty morsels to offer customers. She grew up in Stockholm, she said, and inherited a love of entertaining from her Swedish grandmother.
"One thing we like to do is feed people," Finnegan said. "My grandmother's philosophy was, you always have a cup of coffee on and something sweet to eat. That's kind of the premise we operate on here."
Two houses down, Ingebretsen's displayed a dazzling array of new but traditional Scandinavian handicrafts — $65 birchbark coffee cylinders, $79 Sami baby moccasins, $89 pendants of pewter and reindeer horn.
"It's the hand-doneness that puts the price up," said saleswoman Cindy Larson. "But it's nice they're still doing it."
Every July, the village of 97 is flooded with people looking for beautiful things during the annual Stockholm Art Fair in Village Park. It's the biggest day of the year in the town.
"It's pretty crazy but fun," says Sally Meixner.
Visitors listen to music, snack on pastries from the Good Apple and Bogus Creek and shop their hearts out. For a break, they sit on the benches along Spring Street and watch the world go by.
For the first settlers, Stockholm was home but hardly the paradise on earth they'd been promised. To day-trippers, though, it's close enough.
Trip Tips: Stockholm
Getting there: It's 1½ hours from the Twin Cities. If you drive via Prescott, stop to check out the Great River Road Visitor and Learning Center on Wisconsin 35 south of town, overlooking the confluence of the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers.
When to go: On Thursdays and Fridays in summer, nearly all the shops and restaurants are open, but there's less motorcycle traffic on the River Road. A few shops close for a day early in the week, but most are open daily through October, then weekends through Christmas; they close for winter and reopen for weekends in late March.
Non-motorcyclists may want to avoid the April and September benefit Flood Runs, when thousands of bikers circle Lake Pepin. Find dates at www.floodrun.org.
2008 events: July 19, Stockholm Art Fair.
Lodging: If you think the trains will bother you, bring earplugs.
The Great River B&B, Jacob Peterson's 1869 house, is on a lovely acreage with a barn just south of town next to Stockholm Gardens. It's full of original artwork, antiques and books and has gas fireplaces and a single whirlpool. There are three bedrooms, but proprietor Leland Krebs rents to only two people at a time, $175. He returns in the morning to prepare a light breakfast. 1-800-657-4756.
On the edge of town, the River Road Inn has three handsome suites with lake views and
decks, $185-$225, 612-306-1011, www.riverroadinn.com.
For smaller wallets, the Lake Pepin Inn motel in Pepin has very nice rooms, $60-$70. Call 1-715-442-5400.
There's camping in Village Park, right on Lake Pepin. It's $9 for tents, $12 for RVs, first-come, first-served. There are toilets but no showers and no sewage station for RVs.
Dining: In Stockholm, the courtyard of the Bogus Creek Cafe and Bakery is a lovely place to have breakfast or lunch.
On the highway, Gelly's Pub and Eatery is not popular with some locals because it painted over the iconic Texaco sign and hosts loud bands. However, it's a friendly place with good food and a nice deck. Its menu of burgers and pizza is augmented by such specials as fajitas, chicken-wild rice soup and rhubarb crisp, and it has a decent list of $3 beers.
In Pepin, the Harbor View Cafe in Pepin is very popular, but evening diners should get there by 4:45 p.m. to avoid a long wait; the restaurant does not take reservations or credit cards, 1-715-442-3893. For dining al fresco, the Pickle Factory has a deck and a view of Lake Pepin.
Cooking classes: The Palate offers frequent cooking classes with local chefs. Call 1-715-442-6400 to register.
Information: 1-715-442-9077 (The Good Apple doubles as the village information center), www.stockholmwisconsin.com.
Last updated on September 15, 2008Get our weekly stories, tips and updates delivered a day early — directly to your Inbox. Wondering what you'll get? Take a look at our newsletter archive.