Inside Klättermusen Verkstad, a New Workshop & Creative Hub in Stockholm

Not Your Standard Outdoor Store

Set in Stockholm's Södermalm neighborhood, the store’s ground floor is a workshop, gallery, and event space. Community tables serve as stations for wood carving, jewelry making, knitting, floral arranging, needle punching, kids' crafts, and all sorts of other classes and meetups. As such, the art hanging on the walls and perched on the windowsills is constantly in rotation.

There’s also a record player station, a bar for serving drinks, and tables of beautiful books (including Field Mag ISSUE 02) and goods that shift and rotate as needed. A small selection of Klättermusen pieces are for sale too, but not quite as much as at Klättermusen’s more traditional retail locations in Oslo, Gothenburg, London, Paris, Munich, Berlin, and down the street in Stockholm. (New Yorkers should note: Klättermusen is also hosting a pop-up shop at Brooklyn's Hatchet through 31 Dec 2026.)

Downstairs at the Verkstad, the retail space is made up of vintage and consignment outdoor gear, handpicked and curated by Johansson. He has an eye for nautical, sporty pieces from American brands like Nautica and Eddie Bauer, as well as items from other Swedish brands like Peak Performance and Fjällräven.

Like many of our favorite brands, Klättermusen doesn’t fit neatly into a box. It has always had a knack for bridging the outdoors with other worlds—art, design, music, culture—and the Verkstad space is living evidence of that. “It’s a way to put the brand in new contexts,” Jansson says.

Johansson and Jansson love seeing people from different communities cross paths under the same roof: climbers alongside designers, artists alongside outdoor obsessives; people who might not otherwise find themselves in the same room. They’ve hosted run clubs, magazine launches, DJ and jazz nights, art exhibitions, pop-up chefs—and there are plans for more to come.

A Building With a History

Architects are another unexpected crowd drawn to Verkstad, not necessarily for Klättermusen but because the building it occupies, Tegelslagaren 12, is significant to Swedish architectural history.

Constructed in 1937, the brick-and-teak residential apartment complex was the first major project by two of Sweden’s most influential 20th-century architects, Sven Backström and Leif Reinius. The pair developed construction designs together from the 1930s until their retirement in the ‘80s, and became famous for shaping the country’s approach to post-war, high-quality complexes during the housing shortages of the time. Combining mostly natural materials, their work made density feel warm and inviting, not stark and austere like many plastered buildings of the era.

“There’s people traveling to Sweden to see it,” Jansson says.

Today, the six-story building has Sweden’s highest cultural-historical classification, and a renovation undertaken in 2023 and 2024 has been celebrated as a model for how to preserve historic architecture through reimagination rather than bulldozing. The story of Tegelslagaren 12 and its enduring significance is documented in the book The Rental Palace, which you can find for sale at Klättermusen Verkstad.

Above the commercial spaces on the street level are still residential apartment units, presumably housing the city’s creative people. It’s the perfect home for a concept like Klättermusen Verkstad that’s defined less by what it sells than by who it brings together.

As the summer crowds thin and the streets grow quiet over the colder months, Klättermusen Verkstad will enter its second winter as a refuge from the cold and dark, a cozy nook for gathering with others, and a point of inspiration even on the dreariest of days.

If you're planning a trip to Stockholm, you can find out what's happening at the space—from art exhibitions and fresh vintage to craft clubs and cooking classes—by following Klättermusen Verkstad on Instagram.