Stockholm as a Mobile Valley: empty spaces or illusionary images?

City names are poetry, and there are few words in the language better able to summon vivid mental pictures. Who cannot see and smell, at mere mention of the name, the London of Dickens, the Paris of De Maupassant, the skyline of New York, the moonlit ruins of Athens, the classic profile of Fujiyama above Tokyo, the seven ancient hills of Rome? Visitors to Stockholm, like its native sons, have been coining thumbnail descriptions for years. One of the earliest and nearest at hand was “Venice of the North,” for few cities are as webbed with lakes and channels. More recently, Stockholm has been called the City of Space and Grace and the City of Lights and Water—even simply the City of Light (5). Anderson