Museum sights in Sweden
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Vasaloppsmuseet
Even if you have no interest in skiing, you may be pleasantly surprised by the excellent Vasaloppsmuseet, which really communicates the passion behind the world’s largest cross-country skiing event. There’s some fantastic crackly black-and-white film of the first race, a display about nine-times winner and hardy old boy Nils ‘Mora-Nisse’ Karlsson, and an exhibit of prizes. Outside the museum is the race finish line, a favourite place for holiday snaps.
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Vin & Sprithistoriska Museet
Looking at history through a snaps glass, this engrossing ode to grog explores the often turbulent relationship between Swedes and their beloved brännvin (akvavit) and punsch (a liqueur). Step inside a 19th-century wine merchant’s distillery and happily sniff your way through 57 akvavit spices at the smelling organ. The wine bar hosts regular wine-tasting evenings (Skr350, book two weeks ahead), though you’ll need a group of eight to knock back in English.
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Tekniska Museet
The biggest drawcard at the vast and vibrant Museum of Science and Technology is CINO4, Sweden’s first 4-D cinema. Once you’ve been shaken, stirred and possibly squirted, check out the rest of this dazzling multimedia complex, which includes chatty Japanese robots, Sweden’s first motor car (from 1897), an artificial mine, a retro telephone collection and the Teknorama Science Centre, with its interactive displays on topics such as the basic principles of physics.
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Etnografiska Museet
The National Museum of Ethnography focuses on non-European cultures. Highly original temporary exhibitions (ranging from Amazon photography to the macabre etchings of Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada) complement permanent collection highlights like Mali crocodile masks, Mongolian temple tents and a Japanese teahouse. The formerly in-house restaurant Babajan, serving a stellar Afro-Asian-Middle Eastern menu, has moved to Katarina Banggata 75.
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Gammlia
Don’t miss Gammlia, a cluster of museums 1km east of the town centre. They include cultural and historical exhibits and Sami collections at the regional Västerbottens Museum; the modern art museum, Bildmuseet; and the Maritime Museum. These are surrounded by Friluftsmuseet, an open-air historic village where staff wear period clothes and describe traditional homestead life.
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Volvo Museum
Pay homage to one of Sweden’s enduring icons at the Volvo Museum, which contains everything from the company’s debut vehicle to the most cutting-edge experimental designs – including the first jet engine used by the Swedish Air Force. The museum is about 8km west of the city centre at Arendal. Fittingly, it’s tricky to get to without a car. Take tram 5 or 10 to Eketrägatan, then bus 32 to Arendal Skans.
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Judiska Museet
Expanding Swedish history beyond Vasa and Vikings, this kosher little museum explores Swedish Jewry since 1774. Nifty pull-out display cabinets cover everything from the Holocaust and Raoul Wallenberg (a Swedish Oscar Schindler of sorts) to Torah silverware, ceremonial Passover items, wince-inducing circumcision knives, and a seven-branched candlestick looted from Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. The temporary exhibitions are often brilliant.
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Medeltidsmuseet
While preparing to build a Riksdag car park here in the late 1970s, construction workers unearthed foundations dating from the 1530s. The ancient walls were preserved as found and a museum was built around them. Faithful reconstructions of typical abodes, sheds and workshops transport visitors to medieval Stockholm (albeit with a better lighting and sound system). Also in the museum is the well-preserved, 1520s-era ship, Riddarsholm.
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Arkitekturmuseet
Attached to the Moderna Museet and housed in an ex-military drill hall, the Museum of Architecture’s permanent exhibition covers 1000 years of Swedish architecture (from cabins to the contemporary) and boasts an archive of 2.5 million documents, photographs, plans, drawings and models. There’s a seasonal program of temporary exhibitions, and the museum hosts occasional seminars on everything from urban planning to future design.
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Gustav Vasa Kyrkan
This saintly show-off flaunts a white Italian neo-baroque exterior and 60m-high cupola adorned with dreamy New Testament frescoes by Vicke Andrén. Opened in 1906, its star attraction is Burchardt Precht’s 18th-century marble altarpiece, considered Sweden’s largest baroque sculpture.The creepy columbarium crypt has places for around 35,000 burial urns; enter from the Västmannagatan side of the church.
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Nobelmuseet
More about ideas and inspiration than artefacts, the minimalist Nobelmuseet features some fascinating short films on the theme of ‘creativity’, an audio archive of acceptance speeches, interviews with and readings from laureates like Martin Luther King and Ernest Hemingway, and cafe chairs signed by the visiting prize winners (turn them over to see!). To get the most out of the museum, join a free guided tour.
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Gamla Linköping
The town’s best attractions lie just outside the centre. Gamla Linköping, 2km west of the city, is one of the biggest living-museum villages in Sweden. It’s a gorgeous combo of cobbled streets, picket-fenced gardens and around 90 19th-century houses. There are about a dozen themed museums (all free, with various opening times), artisan shops and a small chocolate factory. Take bus 202 or 214 (Skr20).
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Postmuseum
While a museum dedicated to almost four centuries of Swedish postal history sounds positively mind-numbing, Stockholm’s Post Museum is surprisingly engrossing, crammed with old mail carriages, a climb-aboard train carriage, offbeat postcards and a cute children’s post office downstairs for budding postal workers. Previous temporary exhibitions have covered everything from the life of the Great Garbo to the kiss in art.
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Teknikens och Sjöfartens Hus
The excellent Teknikens och Sjöfartens Hus is a short way to the west. It's a technology and maritime museum, with aircraft, vehicles, a horse-drawn tram, steam engines, and the amazing 'U3' walk-in submarine, just outside the main building. The submarine was launched in Karlskrona in 1943 and decommissioned in 1967. Upstairs is a superb hands-on experiment room for kids, which will keep them (and you!) enthralled for ages.
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Skansen
This open-air museum (the world’s oldest) is a one-stop tour of Sweden, featuring over 150 traditional buildings from across the country, including a Sami camp with reindeer. Artisans blow glass in historic workshops, bakers sell Scandi treats in vintage bakeries and Nordic animals roam the in-house zoo. For a glimpse of pygmy marmosets, the world’s smallest monkeys, pop into the quirky aquarium.
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Kungliga Myntkabinettet
Anything but a dreary accountant’s fantasy, the fabulous Royal Coin Cabinet sparkles with a priceless collection of world-turning currency, including Viking silver and the world’s oldest coin (created in Greece in 625 BC), as well as its heaviest (a copper plate weighing 19.7kg). The exhibitions are innovative, the kids’ playroom is fun and the kitsch collection of piggy-banks alone is worth the trip.
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Livrustkammaren
Quite frankly, the Royal Armoury Museum is brilliant. A regal storage attic of sorts, its engrossing collection of booty spans over 500 years of royal childhoods, coronations, weddings and murders. Sneak a peek at lavish royal wardrobes, King Gustav III’s masquerade costume (worn when he was shot in 1792) and the preserved stomach contents of Baron Bielke, one of the conspirators to the king’s assassination.
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Stadsmuseum
You’ll find the remains of the Äskekärr Ship, Sweden’s only original Viking vessel, at Stadsmuseum, alongside silver treasure troves, weaponry and bling from the same period. Other highlights include exhibits on Göteborg’s history and an impressive booty of East Indian porcelain (the museum is located in the 18th-century former HQ of the Swedish East India Company).
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Östasiatiska Museet
Know your Buddha from your bodhisattvas at Stockholm’s Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, famed for its world-class booty of ancient Eastern art, stoneware and porcelain. Particularly noteworthy is the collection of wares from the Chinese dynasties of Song, Ming and Qing, as well as the museum’s fresh temporary shows, which cover anything from comic-book manga to the art of Japanese tattoos.
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Kalmar Länsmuseum
The highlight of this fine museum, in an old steam mill by the harbour, are finds from the 17th-century flagship Kronan. The ship exploded and sank just before a battle in 1676, with the loss of almost 800 men. It was rediscovered in 1980, and over 22,000 wonderfully preserved items have been excavated so far, including a spectacular gold hoard, clothing and musical instruments.
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Madesjö Hembygdsgård
There’s a superior homestead museum Madesjö Hembygdsgård, about 2.5km west of town. Housed inside the 200m-long kyrkstallarna (former church stables), it contains an admirable collection, with cannonballs, clothing, coffins, carpenters tools, a classroom and a fantastic (ice-) cycle – and they’re just the things beginning with ‘C’.
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Vitlycke Museum
If you’re bewildered by the long-armed men, sexual imagery and goat-drawn chariots of Bohuslän's prolific Bronze Age rock carvings, drop by Vitlycke Museum, which has a determined go at explaining them. Digital handheld guides can be hired for Skr40, but it’s much better to catch the English tour, complete with clued-up human being. Call ahead for tour times.
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Tullmuseet
Despite the patchy availability of English-language information, the Customs Museum is worth a snoop for its rather revealing exhibition on the ’art’ of smuggling, which includes a pair of spacious knickers used to smuggle alcohol in the 1920s. Crack-stuffed sneakers aside, there’s also a reconstruction of a 1920s customs warehouse and lab with eerily realistic mannequins.
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Naturhistoriska Museet
The Natural History Museum contains the world’s only stuffed blue whale. In the lead-up to Christmas, visitors are occasionally allowed to step inside its mouth for that Jonah feeling. As natural history museums go, this is an impressive one, with an overall collection spanning 10 million specimens of wildlife from around the world. To get there, take tram 1 or 6.
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Birka Museum
The Viking trading centre of Birka, on Björkö in Mälaren lake, is now a Unesco World Heritage site. It was founded around AD 760 with the intention of expanding and controlling trade in the region. Exhibits at the brilliant Birka Museum include finds from the excavations, copies of the most magnificent objects, and an interesting model of the village in Viking times.
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