Then Albert told Harold how Stockholm came to be built where it is. Albert had learned about the building of the city at school.
The city was built nearly seven hundred years ago. A rich nobleman planned the city in the days when many pirates sailed on the Baltic Sea, the sea which Stockholm faces. The nobleman wanted to build a fortress for protection from the pirates. All along the sea coast were islands—hundreds of islands. The nobleman chose three small islands back from the sea with many other islands in front of them and built a wall around them. He thought that behind the wall his people would be safe from the pirates.
A town grew up behind the wall. The days of the pirates passed. Stockholm became a city of trade. It grew and grew. Buildings spread over other islands until today the city covers a dozen islands in a large lake which opens into a channel of water which flows to the sea.
THE CITY OF STOCKHOLM
And Harold and Albert looked down on that city and watched the boats coming and going on the many waterways.
Albert took his guests to a little home outside the city. “This is where we live in the summer,” he said. Harold thought the place looked like a tiny city of playhouses, but as they came nearer he saw that the playhouses were real homes.
Harold’s aunt met them at the door of one of the cottages. It had two rooms and a porch. Vines and rose bushes grew over the porch. All the other cottages were much like the one where Albert lived.
Around each house was a garden spot. Albert said, “These are our ‘little farms.’” Albert does most of the gardening on his “little farm.”
The summer home though does not belong to Albert. The city owns those garden spots. A few years ago many countries of the world were at war. Sweden could not get the food from other countries that she needed. Stockholm began then the plan of renting garden spots to its citizens, so that they might grow the food that they needed. The plan proved so good that the city kept the garden spots after the war was over. And Albert’s father rents a little farm for Albert each summer. He pays a very small sum for the use of the garden and cottage for the entire summer—a sum equal to about five dollars in American money.