We know you think all we do is eat. You’re not totally wrong (see our smörgåsbord experience, among many other posts), but sometimes we go to a museum or two as well; it’s hard for us to eat more then three meals a day if we don’t do at least a bit of purposeful meandering. In our week-plus in Stockholm we did not by any means hit all of the museums – there are a lot of them. We focused on those that seemed to us particularly Swedish, in different ways. Here are our top five picks.
Historical Museum
The Swedish Historical Museum is co-located with the Economic Museum, which was closed when we were in town. Not to worry, though, this one has plenty of good stuff: prehistoric Viking remains, lots of interactive exhibits including on Norse mythology, a really interesting meta-exhibit about how we interpret artifacts that asks questions about what it means to be human. And gold, piles of it. Two thumbs up! Some of our favourite stuff was the runes, but we also really liked the fabrics. And, obvs, it wouldn’t be Vikings without the weapons.
Vasa Museum
We’ll be honest: we’re not all that keen on maritime museums, and had planned to give this one a miss. But so many people told us we’d be sorry that we reconsidered. The Vasa Museum is indeed a great one, containing artifacts from the ill-fated 17th century Vasa, a ship which sunk shortly after setting sail and was lost for centuries. There are also other land-based contemporary items. There are tons of daily-life things, from fabric to bones to ceramics to tools to coins. Even if you are landlubbers like us, it’s probably worth a visit.
Mediterranean and Ancient Near Eastern Museum
We were always going to go to this museum, no matter how small. But in fact, it was awesome: huge finds from the Swedish Cyprus expedition, plus Egyptian mummies lots of Greek and Roman busts and funerary monuments. Best of all, our favourite museum café in town, the Baghdad Café. Some tables are interspersed among the second-floor study collections, which make for excellent conversation pieces. Even better are those in a cosy room looking out on the street. Food is more or less Turkish, and excellent.
Far Eastern Museum
This museum was also a surprise: it hosts finds from Swedish excavations of several preshistoric sites in northeastern China, as well as an impressive collection of Chinese and (smaller Japanese and Korean) items from all periods. There’s a lovely gift shop as well, small but with good stuff. Our single favourite, because we like crabs, was this ceramic soup tureen.
Stockholm City Museum
The Stockholm City Museum is a little gem, right near our hotel. It covers the city from the Reformation, all the way through to the building of the subway system in the 1950s (and the stuff unearthed in the process). We especially liked the ‘memento mori’ exhibit. And, obviously, the dioramas, some of which you could walk right up to and barter for furs with.
There are tons of museums in Stockholm not on this list. Some of them we went to, some we didn’t. But these seemed to us to offer something you wouldn’t find elsewhere, focusing either on the country itself, or on expeditions made by its citizens. Fotografiska, for instance, is genuinely fabulous. It is also a museum with an international focus and worth a visit by anyone with even a passing interest in photography. The ABBA Museum is, by contrast, profoundly Swedish. But one of us (who is a hater) was not sure he could handle it. And the National Museum is also impressive, especially if you like 16-20th century painting.
