Getting to be a regular. Previous visit here.

This book about the Swedish painter Anders Zorn’s American travels was on the bar.

Zorn got rich in America; he painted three American Presidents, Cleveland, Taft and Teddy Roosevelt. Back in Stockholm he was a leading member of the Bellman club, who drank, dined and sang the troubadour’s songs here. Sometime after 1910 the building fell into disrepair and Zorn bought it for the then huge sum of SEK150K and set about restoration and refurbishment. Despite a few later licks of paint it remains much as he left it.

Zorn died in 1920 leaving the freehold to the Swedish Academy, who still dine weekly in an upstairs room. The waitress says they’re discreet; she learned of Bob Dylan’s literature prize at the same time as the rest of us.

Here’s their private dining room. Each member has their own schnapps glass.

The other dining areas are a rabbit warren.

Some pictures and plaques

Below them all, the kitchen.

Jim Thornton