Fly meetings – Stockholm's stinking legacy

When we think of Stockholm in the 18th and 19th centuries, we might see stately buildings, cobblestone streets, and a burgeoning cultural life. But beneath the surface was something else entirely: a fight against the city's own waste. And at the center of that fight were the infamous fly meetings.

August Strindberg and Claes Lundin describe how the Stockholmers called the places where the latrine was collected "fly meetings". Here, not only barrels of waste met, but also the city's inhabitants, smells and problems. It is said that there were three different fly meetings in Stockholm – and that they were often located where the city was most trafficked.

After an entrepreneur system was introduced in 1774, the so-called pudrette madams were responsible for the collection. They went from farm to farm, collected the latrine and took it to the collection points. One of these was at Packartorget (today's Norrmalmstorg), where barrels and carts could stand waiting for further transport – much to the chagrin of many.

In 1849, the city made a drastic decision: it bought Fjäderholmarna as a dumping ground for all this stinking cargo. Every morning, Stockholmers could see a string of latrine barges set out from the quays, fully loaded with barrels to be emptied far out in the archipelago. How many there were varied, but there was talk of about ten barges every day during peak season – a whole little fleet that rowed the city's problems away from the inner city.

However, not everyone was convinced that this helped. Archbishop Johan Olof Wallin repeatedly warned that the wind would carry diseases. He pointed in particular to the stinking waters in Klara sjö, träsket and Fatburssjön, which he believed could spread plague and the Black Death again.

And the fact is that the city's health was in danger. Cholera outbreaks, typhus and tuberculosis claimed thousands of lives during the 19th century.

In 1874, Sweden's first Public Health Act was introduced, which laid the foundation for a modern sanitation policy. Vaccinations began to protect against infectious diseases, and Stockholm gradually got cleaner water and better sewage.

Another major problem was the slaughterhouses inside the city, which attracted rats and spread disease. In 1912, the old establishments were closed, and instead the new modern slaughterhouse in Enskede opened, built to meet the hygiene requirements of the time.

In just over a hundred years, Stockholm went from stinking fly meetings at Packartorget to one of Europe's most modern capitals. It's easy to forget today, as we stroll among gleaming facades and neat parks, that it was once the fight against the city's own waste that influenced both the cityscape, health and people's everyday lives.