Tuesday, 28-May-2024
I’d first seen the Nordiska Museet after wandering around near the Vasa Museum – It’s a staggeringly beautiful building on the Djurgården island, though unfortunately it did close a bit early in the day… which meant I couldn’t do a double-header of both the Vasa and the Nordiska.
But hey – that meant I had a mission to go back to, now didn’t it? I do love quests and missions, so… I won’t complain.
Heading in on Tuesday after the National Gallery worked perfectly – I was trying to rest my poor walking muscles a bit, and so decided to take one of the electric scooters, which left me more than energetic enough to dive into the museum itself. I did grab a quick cup of coffee first, along with some glorious chocolates, to fortify myself… but that’s just good tactics, right?
The museum itself was… not quite what I was expecting. Not in a bad way, though!
You see, I was expecting something like a natural history museum, or a history museum. Something describing the geology of Sweden, or perhaps the history of human settlement? But instead, I got something similar, but at the same time more direct and grounded – The Nordiska Museet of Stockholm discussed the culture of Sweden, and how it evolved over time.
There’s overlaps with a history museum, to be sure, but it was a really interesting shift that I can’t say I’ve ever really seen before. It’s subtle, but the exhibits were focused on discussing the people of Sweden, instead of the events, which lent it a far more human feeling than the almost sterile “this happened, then that happened” nature of many other exhibits.
Neither is bad, by any stretch of the imagination! Knowing the raw details is key, but hearing the stories of individuals, and how one person may have lived their life during each of the archetypical ages of Swedish Culture… it struck. It hit hard, in some cases, and I’ll freely admit that I teared up at some of the descriptions of people. Two specific stories come to mind; one of a couple from a woodmill town, who met after moving to the new urban world (from the smaller farming and fishing villages), and raised a family in spite of the challenges – and the story of a woman fleeing from World War 2 named Selma, who fled Estonia leaving her mother behind trying to build a safer life for her son in Sweden.
It’s an interesting bend to the traditional museum, and not at all what I expected from the soaring gothic-style building the exhibits were housed in.
While it was unexpected, it was not unappreciated. It hit close to home, and I’ll absolutely be thankful for this interested and unexpected glimpse into life across the ages.
