Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

The crowd along the Haga Christmas market

Christmas is always a rush of activities, the whole city of Gothenburg is abuzz with festive activities and warm friendly people.

There are several Christmas markets going on through December, around the city of Gothenburg and these are pictures from the Haga Christmas market.

Haga is one of the oldest areas of the city of Gothenburg, which I think would be a very small equivalent to Stockholm’s larger Gamlestan. Today, the street of Haga is lined with stores that sell both antiquities and modern goods from shoes to clothes and groceries. There are also some very good cafés that one can rest in and have that daily cuppa with cinnamon rolls.

An antique bicycle standing outside a shop that specializes in antiques.

As you’ll notice in pictures, the streets are cobbled and quite narrow, since they only needed to accommodate the width of horse carriages back then.

Street vendors and stalls lined both sides of the street. It was a bit of a squash with so many people, nonetheless the stalls delighted in what they had to offer.

This candy stall got me drooling like a five year old child.

A candy stall at the Haga Christmas market

Varieties of candy, up-close.

Children’s dresses made out to look like Gingerbread cookies, well, at least the dress in the middle.

Across the stall that sold the ‘gingerbread’ dresses for children, was this stall that sold silk scarves, dyed with Swedish grown mushrooms, with Eva Loodh as consultant on this handicraft.

Scarves and shawls dyed with mushroom

The dying process of the shawls / scarves mean that no two colours are exactly alike. And the scarves are to be washed by hand.

Further down the street from the silk scarves, was a stall that specialized in decorative wooden figurines. The wry likeness of the beards on the wooden figurines and my hat is not missed.

There was a stall that sold the most delicious looking soaps! And I wondered if they smelled as good as they looked.

Here’s a very warm pair of sheep skin slippers – in purple! Perfect for walking around the house in and when curling up on the couch with hot chocolate.

We were halfway through the street when we began to hear trumpets and drums!

And a marching band came right through the cobbled streets of Haga, to the delight of many on the streets! I had initially thought they were simply marching by, but no, they were there to stay for awhile and to perform a few tunes for the public smack in the middle of the Christmas market!

The Haga Christmas market would not be complete with a little bit of food. There were many smaller stalls selling glogg and festive buns, such as the Lussekatter or saffron bread.

A cup of glogg and a sugared Lussekatter

This stall that sold large cinnamon rolls and Lussekatter belongs to one of my favourite cafés along Haga. You’ll notice which café it is from the very very large cinnamon rolls displayed, all year round, at its shop window.