You’re standing on a corner that once lived for applause. Right here at Östermalmstorg and Nybrogatan, in the block called Krejaren, Stockholm kept one of its most beloved popular stages: Folkan, short for Folkteatern. But the story starts even earlier... with a garden. The garden belonged to G. A. Müller, a decorative painter from the Royal Theatre, and he helped turn this spot into something magical in the eighteen fifties.
Architect Fredrik Wilhelm Scholander drew the first building in eighteen fifty-five. He imagined a diorama here, an optical show where audiences stared at an image that seemed to shift and move before their eyes. Think of it as a nineteenth-century special effect. Instead, the place opened in eighteen fifty-six as Ladugårdslandsteatern, with a real stage, a gallery for extra seating, and a curtain painted in cool blue mountain tones.
The early years felt wonderfully restless. Carl Gustaf Hessler led the first company, and traveling troupes rolled through after that. Then Anders Selinder took charge and even brought in his children’s theater, filling the place with young performers, bright costumes, and that delicious live-theater mix of nerves and excitement.
In eighteen seventy-seven, the theater changed its name to Bijou-teatern. And here is one of those incredible twists in Swedish cultural history: on the twenty-eighth of December, eighteen eighty-two, the Salvation Army held its first meeting in Sweden in this very building. One stage, and suddenly it carried not just entertainment, but a new religious movement too.
By eighteen eighty-seven, Stockholm knew it as Folkteatern... or simply Folkan. That nickname tells you everything. This was the people’s theater. In nineteen eighteen, one description said it aimed for amusing popular plays and had a faithful audience. You can almost hear the laughter already.
And what a lineup followed. Karl Gerhard played revues here from nineteen nineteen to nineteen forty-two. In the early nineteen thirties, Gösta Ekman rented the theater and even renamed it Gösta Ekmans Folkteater. Europafilm bought it in nineteen forty-three, and for a while it worked as both cinema and theater. Later came revues, farces, and family hits: Kar de Mumma’s annual revues, Pippi Longstocking with Siw Malmkvist, Annie with eleven-year-old Pernilla Wahlgren, and even the daring musical Oh, Calcutta!, performed with a fully nude cast. Folkan clearly knew how to shock, charm, and sell tickets.
The theater closed in two thousand one. Demolition crews tore the building down in the winter of two thousand seven to two thousand eight after owners said the wooden piles beneath it had rotted, and a new building rose here by two thousand ten.
This corner stays open twenty-four hours a day, so you can pause here anytime and imagine the curtain rising again.
Folkan may be gone, but its spirit still feels gloriously theatrical.
When you’re ready, continue on and let the next stop tell its own Stockholm story.
