Even on a sunny spring day, there is something wintry about Kungsträdgårdsgatan, the central Stockholm avenue where many Swedish banks have their main offices. With its gray buildings and sculptural trees, Kungsträdgårdsgatan suggests a solemnity that must have once marked Sweden in its pre-ABBA, pre-IKEA days.

Illustration by Jean-Manuel Duvivier

As it turns out, the Swedens of "Billy" bookshelves and Lutheran rectitude are one and the same at Kungsträdgårdsgatan 14, a palace of high finance, built for an insurance company during World War I and for decades the headquarters of Systembolaget.

With an Orwellian title and oversight from the Health Ministry, the "Company of Systems" is Sweden's national chain of liquor stores, and it maintains an absolute retail monopoly on anything stronger than light beer.

By common consent, booze is a semicontrolled substance in Sweden. For most of the last half-century, Systembolaget shops have been like pharmacies with shortened opening hours. If you managed to get there before 6 p.m. most weeknights, or 3 p.m. on Saturday, you could take a number, wait for it to be called, and then ask for bottles from someone standing behind a counter. All that sternness was sign of a thaw. Until the mid-1950s, alcohol was actually rationed in Sweden, and your allotment depended on who you were and how much you earned. Married women and the unemployed weren't allowed to buy anything at all.

These days, Systembolaget is decidedly hip—up to a point. The old pharmacy-style outlets have been largely replaced by aisled stores, and the monopoly maintains its popularity by stocking browsable shelves with whimsically named microbrews, obscure single-malt Scotches and wines from every continent you can think of.

I stopped by Systembolaget last week to meet with Jonas Röjerman, who bears the upper-middle-bureaucrat title "product quality manager." Mr. Röjerman is a former head sommelier at Stockholm's very grand Grand Hotel (which hosts the city's Nobel laureates during prize week), and he has been working at Systembolaget for four years. One of his duties, he said, is to test the wine testers.

"Some people think we are a state agency," he said. "But we are actually a company owned by the state." The purpose of all those rules, like the strict closing hours, is, he assured me, part of "the controlling system" inherent in the company's mandate. "Limiting access" to alcohol, he says, "is key."

I knew his own time was limited. You're on your way to a wine tasting, I said, hoping to find out what sampling wine on behalf of an entire nation would entail. "An educational tasting," he insisted, and my vision of a Nordic cocktail party disappeared behind a rack of white lab coats.


Swedes are famously satisfied with Systembolaget, which has resisted EU pressure to disband. But human nature, even in Sweden, will have its say, and I wondered if some Swedes try to bypass Systembolaget's rules, and even its variety, by taking matters into their own hands. The subject of moonshine provoked a smile. "I am from the western part of Sweden," beamed Mr. Röjerman, "where it's very common to make your own."

And? I asked. Have you ever tasted any? "It's like vodka," he said. "If it's made properly."

Sweden's Star Turn

A perennial star of the Venice Biennale isn't an artist but a building—the Nordic Pavilion, designed in the early 1960s by Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn.

Traditionally, Sweden, Norway and Finland share that marvel of an exhibition space, with a curator seeking out artists from each of the three countries. Starting this year, that is all set to change, as the countries begin a rotation, with Sweden getting first crack.

The Biennale officially opens tomorrow, and Stockholm curator Magnus af Petersens is putting two very different Swedes on show: New York-based Fia Backström, who has contributed an internationally minded multimedia installation; and Andreas Eriksson, a painter and sculptor based in, and inspired by, the Swedish countryside.

Larsson Lives

Seven years ago this November, a 50-year-old journalist dropped dead while going up the stairs of his Stockholm office.

At the time, most Swedes had never heard of Stieg Larsson. Now, one posthumous crime trilogy, three films and tens of millions of books later, he may be the best-known Swede since Greta Garbo. These days, the Stockholm City Museum regularly sells out its "Millennium" tours, which escort readers to sites made famous in the books.

"Only very few [tour-goers] are obsessed," says Stockholm guide Elisabeth Daude. Not obsessed perhaps, but determined. Last Wednesday, when the weather in Stockholm was anything but spring-like, 15 visitors—14 Americans and one Spaniard—defied a November-style storm to find out exactly where one dead man's lurid fantasies are still in bloom.

—Next week, Sam Leith in London.