I think I'm beginning to understand how racial stereotypes become folk wisdom. When I was younger than I am today, I used to spend four or five months of the summer in Spain, mostly on the coasts, mostly busking, sunning myself and chasing fast women. One of my most abiding memories is of young Swedish men becoming horribly drunk and rampaging around the place like berserk Vikings. Swedes, I decided then, were hard-drinking rowdies and their womenfolk were all tall and blonde, with a striking resemblance to Britt Eklund.
Thirty years have passed since those observations first became part of my own set of personal prejudices. What changed them, or rather put them into a new perspective, was a trip to Sweden, specifically to Stockholm and subsequently to Soderkoping. The 'we' in this tale were five Irish journalists, guests of the Swedish Tourist board, who took us to Stockholm on a Friday afternoon. The flight from Dublin is a bit over two hours and we landed having had what I think is the best meal I've ever had at 30,000 feet, courtesy of Finnair. This in a way set the tone for the weekend, since food figured quite largely on the agenda.

As we walked off the plane and along the covered tunnel to the terminal we came to a closed door marked 'Customs'. It took a while to realise that it wasn't going to open by itself and the plane-load of passengers was backing up behind it. I noticed a little button marked 'Push in Emergency', so I did. A small piece of red plastic broke off and bounced noisily across the floor while many disapproving Swedish eyes watched me. The doors remained firmly shut. Is this, I wondered, an example of the vaunted Swedish efficiency? Thanks to the glass walls of our temporary prison, an official saw us and came and opened the door to cries of 'If Sweden's closed for the weekend, we can come back Monday.' Shortly afterwards we were sitting down to yet another meal in the Hotel Diplomat, a small and elegant hotel in Stockholm's centre overlooking the Baltic. It has the quaintly old-fashioned kind of elegance that comes complete with a cage lift, and I can't remember when I last saw one of those.

Dinner was described by our hostess, Sylvie, as a 'light supper' and its centrepiece was a perfectly cooked steak of salmon, very under-done and very delicious. With the meal over we were off to explore Stockholm by night. What hits you at once in this city, apart from its beautiful architecture, is the space. There's loads of it, lots of green space, open spaces and lots of water. It's built on an archipelago of islands surrounded to the North by inland lakes. Someone gave me the statistic that one third of the city is houses, one third water and one third green space. If, like me, you also had the pre-conception that Swedish design is all clean, plain lines, then you'll be surprised by the ornateness of the city. It's almost baroque in its excess of swirls, statues, ornamental ironwork, fancy brickwork and imposing classical public buildings. Anyway, we were walking over bridges to different islands on our way to Cafe Opera, which is, not surprisingly, part of the Opera House. It's a bar, restaurant, disco and casino, it's wonderfully ornate, and was full of Swedes enjoying their bank holiday weekend. Like night clubs everywhere in the world drink isn't cheap. Half a pint of beer works out at about a fiver, so you have to be well in funds to accomplish the simple feat of getting drunk.

Being with a bunch of Irish journos whose idea of a good time is to stay up late and drink - an idea with which I have some sympathy - caused a small problem. Our Swedish hosts were determined that we see as much as possible in the three days of our visit and the itinerary began at 8 am in the mornings. Sleep was to take something of a back seat. At eight the next morning our minibus was awaiting outside the hotel while somewhat bleary-eyed we sipped our morning coffees. First port of call was the City Hall, where the Nobel Prize ceremony takes place. It's a truly extraordinary building, an architectural tour de force which seems designed to tell you that this is the centre of a powerful and prosperous city. The scale is positively grand, huge galleried aulas and a multitude of smaller rooms each in different architectural styles which manage to combine in harmony. What's so unusual is the marriage of these different styles and materials. The entrance hall is brick and several stories high with galleries on one side; the ball room is 24 carat gold mosaic from floor to ceiling and the council chamber is wood in the style of the Arts and Crafts movement of the turn of the century. Other rooms are in 16th century style, there's Arab influence, Byzantine and Gothic. All these styles reflect the history of the city and its trade links through the Hanseatic league.

From the City Hall it's a short walk over a couple of bridges to the old town of Stockholm where we sat in the market square drinking coffees and taking in the feel of the place. It was sitting here that I began to notice how many of the houses are painted yellow, a sort of sympathetic magic making everything look sunny even on cloudy days. I suppose it's a good colour to ward off the dreariness of four-hour long winter days. A short walk downhill from here takes you to the old shore-line and from here we took one of Stockholm's many ferries to the island of Djurgarden where the outdoor museum of Swedish history is. It's called Skansen, and you can find traditional Swedish houses and farmsteads, people in period costume and livestock. It's interesting to see how the warlike Vikings transformed themselves into the liberal-socialist monarchist Swedes of today. We were taken for lunch here in one of Skansen's restaurants and we were treated once more to salmon.

After lunch a short walk took us to the Vasa Museum, which had to be the highlight of the trip. The Vasa was King Gustav's warship, designed and built in 1628 at huge expense to strike fear into his enemies across the Baltic. A 64 gun man o' war, it keeled over about a mile into its maiden voyage and sank in 30 metres of water in Stockholm's harbour, where it lay for 333 years. Salvaged in 1961 its timbers were almost completely intact, since the destructive common ship worm can't live in the Baltic's brackish water. It is now restored and housed in its own museum where the light is kept low and the humidity high to preserve the timbers. It's a truly beautiful ship covered in carvings of lions, mermaids, devils, buxom women and historical figures all intertwined in a baroque swirl of imagination. It would have been very easy to spend hours in this place.

After spending the afternoon window-shopping the plan for the evening was a visit to one of the city's traditional restaurants, deep in the cellars of an old building, called the Aurora. A restaurant for over a hundred years, it reeks of tradition. When dinner was over, which included the obligatory salmon, we spent our last Stockholm night in Cafe Opera again, this time giving the Blackjack tables an opportunity to take some Krone off me.

Next morning we set off for Soderkoping Brunn, a spa town in the centre south, some two hours drive away. It's a pretty little town of dainty wooden houses and has the quiet feel of the provinces. It's neat, orderly, disciplined, and there in the town square, is a sign-post giving distances to the North Pole, Moscow, London and Rome. It's not just many kilometres from Rome physically, but in the tenor of its life as well. It's a good juxtaposition; if you like peace and order and dislike chaos and noise, provincial Sweden is the place for you. On the way there I'd noticed that some of the towns had the same suffix of 'koping'. Our guide explained it to me; it means 'market' and is pronounced 'shopping'. Aha, I thought picturing early Vikings, isn't etymology wonderful - 'Sven, see you later, I'm going shopping.'

Lunch was what the Swedes do so well, smorgasbord. An amazing array of cold and hot dishes, lots of herring dishes and of course salmon too, all washed down with ice-cold aquavit and beer. By now you won't be surprised to read that a delicious dinner that night included, yes, some salmon. An early start the next morning took us back to Stockholm airport via the coastal town of Trosa where many of Stockholm's middle class keep a summer house and where we enjoyed a coffee in the early summer sunshine.

A farewell to Sweden left me with a strong desire to return to Stockholm, which captured my heart. Beautiful and friendly, it's a city of human proportions and can quite rightly be called 'The Venice of the North.'