Oaks
The City Hall Oak – the tree that never gave up
In the inner courtyard of Stockholm City Hall stands a guardian tree today. It appears self-evident, spreading its crown in front of the administrative staircase, as if it has always been there.
But it was not the first guardian tree of the City Hall.
When the building was constructed in the early 20th century, there was already a tree on the site. In photographs from the construction period, a tall, slender tree can be seen against the brick façades. According to records, a thirty-year-old elm was planted there in 1918, on the spot where the courtyard tree was meant to stand. It died after only a few years.
The City Hall’s own accounts speak of several planting attempts: more elms, even a cherry tree. But none of them became the guardian tree that was intended – the one meant to endure and anchor the place over time.
In a newsreel from the inauguration in 1923, a small tree can be seen in the courtyard. It stands there, but not quite where the present tree stands today. Almost anonymous in the movement of the frame. That tree did not remain.
Sometime thereafter, according to the city’s records, in 1929 a new tree was planted.
In photographs from around 1930, we see her – still young, perhaps four to five meters tall, with a crown already broad and well-formed. The tree stands exactly where today’s tree stands. Its position aligns with the archway, the staircase, and the lines of the courtyard.
This suggests that the tree we see today was most likely planted in the late 1920s, after several unsuccessful attempts with other species.
And yet she stands there, somewhat apart. No other trees grow beside her – only stone and masonry. But each autumn, her acorns lie scattered between the cobblestones, and to bear abundantly she depends on pollen from other trees somewhere in the city. The wind carries it across rooftops and over water.
She stands alone, but is not alone.
There is something moving in that.
She is now more than a hundred years old, and has quietly stood there in the courtyard through decades of political decisions, celebrations, Nobel banquets, and everyday administration.
She is still young.
The world has changed.
She is the oak that took root and remained.
The oak Mrs Freddie on the left, in autumn colours.
Mrs Freddie and Pliny
In Tantolunden, at the edge of what is now Drakenberg Park, stand a pair of oaks that we have named Mrs Freddie and Pliny. They seem self-evident there, spreading their crowns over the cultivated ground, as if the land had always been a park.
But it has not.
As early as 1733, the area was known as Hornsbruk. Bricks were fired here on the slope down toward Årstaviken. The land was used for production, not recreation. During the 19th century, Ligna developed – first as a carpentry site, later as a small-scale industrial area with timber yards, mortar production, scrap, and workshops. A railway cut through the landscape. Steam locomotives passed with freight wagons. Horses pulled carts along Hornsgatan.
In the early 20th century, the City of Stockholm’s workhouse was built in the Skarpskytten block. The buildings were completed around 1903–1905. It was a large institution with courtyards and wings, intended for the city’s poor and unemployed.
It is likely that the two oaks were planted in connection with this construction. Mrs Freddie was planted together with an elm and a maple – three sisters. They stood beside the men’s house, or as it was sometimes called, Lignakyrkan. Pliny was planted separately, a stone’s throw away, between two barracks wings on what was otherwise an empty yard.
The oak Pliny.
When the buildings were new, the site functioned as a workhouse, part of the city’s poor relief system. The courtyards were filled with people living under regulated conditions, carrying out work that kept the institution running.
Outside the walls, toward the water, lay Ligna – a small-scale industrial area with timber yards, mortar production, scrap, and workshops. A railway ran close by, and steam locomotives blackened the façades of the institution. Hornstull was still on the edge of the city, shaped by timber yards, workshops, and storage grounds.
Högalid care home.
During the interwar period, the role of the institution changed and gradually became a care home. Those who lived there were increasingly elderly and chronically ill. During the war years and the postwar period, the institution continued to operate, even as the surrounding city was modernized.
In the 1950s and 60s, activity in Ligna declined. The area was replanned, and new transport routes were discussed. The buildings in Skarpskytten came to be seen as outdated and difficult to adapt to new demands.
When the process of closure began in the late 1960s, the trees had already grown large. They had stood through the transformation of social policy, through industrial activity, and through the modernization of the city. When the demolition machines arrived in 1971, they were no longer young, but established trees with deep roots and strong trunks.
The last part of the institution, the men’s house, is demolished. The trees to the right are the three sisters.
The oaks remained.
Today, Odla Ihop Tanto occupies the former institutional grounds – an urban permaculture garden where vegetables are grown and a forest garden is cultivated according to principles of care and resource stewardship. Where people were once confined, food is now grown in community.
I passed by the trees many times without really seeing them.
It was not until 2018 that I truly saw her. The summer was extremely dry. The grass was brittle, the ground hard. At the same time, it was a rich acorn year. Beneath Mrs Freddie’s crown lay an abundance of fruit.
It was the first time I encountered her as a food-bearing tree.
Mrs Freddie can be seen on the left, Pliny on the right.
The name Mrs Freddie comes from a Hupa woman who was photographed in the early 20th century while leaching acorns in running water. The ethnologist who took the photograph was named Pliny Earl Goddard. Giving the oaks names was a way of marking their presence in the landscape.
For more than a hundred years, the three sisters grew together. They were almost perceived as a single tree with a shared crown. In 2023, the elm fell ill – Dutch elm disease took her. The maple remains.
Mrs Freddie now stands at the edge of the cultivated ground. Her crown faces south. Today, she is around twenty meters tall.
Pliny still stands a stone’s throw away.
The landscape continues to change.
