Museum sights in Svealand
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Museum Gustavianum
A wondercabinet of wondercabinets, the Museum Gustavianum rewards appreciation of the weird and well organised. The shelves in the pleasantly musty building hold case after case of obsolete tools and preserved oddities, like Joseph Cornell shadowboxes gone wrong: stuffed birds, astrolabes, alligator mummies, exotic stones and dried sea creatures. Holding wider appeal is the 17th-century Augsburg Art Cabinet and its thousand ingenious trinkets. Don’t miss Olof Rudbeck’s vertiginous anatomical theatre, where executed criminals were dissected.
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Carolina Rediviva
Rare-book fiends should go directly to Carolina Rediviva, the university library. In a small, dark display room, glass cases hold precious maps and manuscripts, including some illuminated Ethiopian texts and the first book ever printed in Sweden. Occupying its own glowing VIP nook is the surviving half of the Codex Argentus (AD 520), aka the Silver Bible, written in gold and silver ink on purple vellum; aside from being pretty, it’s also linguistically important as the most complete existing document written in the Gothic language.
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Mining Complex
The mining complex, to the west of town at the top end of Gruvgatan, contains various sights. Most dramatic is the Stora Stöten (Great Pit), a vast hole caused by a major mine collapse in the 17th century. By a miracle, the miners were on holiday that day and no one was harmed. There are lookouts around the crater edge, and numerous mine buildings including a 15m waterwheel and shaft-head machinery. Opening hours are complicated – check the website for details. Take bus 709.
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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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Wadköping Museum Village
The Wadköping Museum Village contains craft workshops, a bakery and period buildings - including Kungsstugan (the King's Lodgings, a medieval house with 16th-century ceiling paintings) and Cajsa Warg's house (home of an 18th-century celebrity chef). You can wander round the village at any time, but the shops, café, exhibitions and museums are closed out of hours.
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Treasury
Gustav’s funerary sword, silver crown and shiny golden buttons are kept in the treasury in Domkyrka’s north tower, along with a great display of medieval textiles. Particularly fine are the clothes worn by the three noblemen who were murdered in the castle: they’re the only example of 16th-century Swedish high fashion still in existence.
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Upplandsmuseet
Upplandsmuseet, in an 18th-century watermill, houses county collections on folk art, music and the history of Uppsala from the Middle Ages onwards, as well as more modern displays. (A recent installation presented photographs from the life of author Astrid Lindgren.) Kids particularly will find the inventive dioramas and reconstructions engrossing.
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Gamla Uppsala Museum
Gamla Uppsala Museum contains finds from the cremation mounds, a poignant mix of charred and melted beads, bones and buckles. More intact pieces come from various boat graves in and around the site. The museum is arranged as a timeline – useful for recreating the history of the area.
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Zornmuseet
Zornmuseet displays many of the best-loved portraits and characteristic nudes of the Mora painter Anders Zorn (1860–1920), one of Sweden’s most renowned artists. His naturalistic depictions of Swedish life and the countryside are on display, as well as the Zorn family silver collection.
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Linnémuseet
No matter how many times the brochures refer to Linné’s ‘sexual system’ of classification, the excitement to be had at Linnémuseet is primarily intellectual; still, botanists and vegetarians will enjoy a visit to the pioneering scientist’s home and workshop.
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Peace Museum
In the dungeon below Uppsala Slott’s south tower is the Peace Museum, with displays on various world conflicts and atrocities, as well as Sweden’s long record of neutrality and the achievements of former UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld.
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Biologiska Museet
Many Swedish schools once had private natural history collections, but most were binned in the 1960s. Örebro’s Biologiska Museet, in Karolinska Skolan, is a survivor, and is worth a glance for its tier upon tier of stuffed birds.
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Disagården
Follow signs from the grave mounds to Disagården, a 19th-century farming village turned open-air museum consisting of 26 timber buildings and a platform stage that serves as the focal point for Uppsala’s Midsummer celebrations.
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Mine Museum
The mine museum contains everything you could possibly want to know about the history, administration, engineering, geology and copper production of the mine, as well as the sad story of Fat Mats the miner.
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Uppsala Art Museum
Located at the Uppsala Slott entrance marked E, Uppsala Art Museum displays Swedish and international contemporary art and ceramics as well as the art-study collection of Uppsala University.
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Dalarnas Museum
Dalarnas Museum is a super introduction to Swedish folk art, music and costumes. Selma Lagerlöf’s study is preserved here, and there are ever-changing art and craft exhibitions.
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Länsmuseum & Konsthall
The Länsmuseum & Konsthall has temporary exhibits, a permanent collection of artwork grouped by theme, and historical displays about the region (mostly in Swedish).
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Vasaborgen
In the ruins of the death-stained dungeons is a waxworks museum, Vasaborgen, where Renaissance scenes and intrigues are brought to life.
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Slottet History Exhibition
Inside the Slottet, you are allowed unaccompanied into the northwest tower, where there's a small history exhibition.
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