The first thing I did on our second day in Stockholm was buy the three-day city pass with its access to most of the city’s museums and other attractions. During our free time, I was able to visit a total of 10 museums, 3 churches, and even 1 amusement park all over Stockholm. Some were attended as a group, some individually, but all worth the visit.
Being Norwegian, a lot of my time in Stockholm was spent on the shared history between Sweden, Norway, and the other Nordic countries. As the most famous museum in the city, we naturally began with the Vasa Museum. The sheer scale of the ship was impressive to say the least, but the thing that we found the most interesting was a smaller exhibit called “The Faces of the Vasa”. In this exhibit, scientists used digital imaging and other technologies to reconstruct the faces of the people who died on the Vasa. The exhibit provided a tangible human element that is often missing from events that happened so long ago. When I read that only 2 of the over 200 people who died on the Vasa were women, I shuddered, thinking about what those women must have endured.
On our last day, the two of us visited a place that we had been wanting to go to for years- the Nobel Prize Museum. The space was a beautiful homage to all of the incredible men and women who have dedicated their lives to the pursuits of knowledge and peace. When we were scrolling through an interactive database of all past laureates, I was shocked to look at the list of winners in the field of Economics. Of the 93 individuals awarded, only 3 were women. This disproportion made me all the more proud of all of the incredible women in my cohort who are specializing in underrepresented fields within their MBA coursework.
Another museum we visited that day was the National Museum. The 4-storied palace structure featured permanent exhibits from artists across the centuries. We were also lucky enough to attend a temporary exhibition of the work of Harriet Backer, a Norwegian painter born in the 1800’s who is considered the “Greatest Female Nordic Painter”. Her work was incredible and the vast collection of over 150 works were impressive for not only their detail but for their sheer scale. Unlike many other painters of the era, Backer did not have any single focus. Her paintings included everything from landscapes to portraits and were both in the styles of realism and impressionism.
The final museum that I want to focus on was the Viking Museum. Even though it was one of the smallest museums I visited, it was nevertheless worth the visit. The top floor was a traditional museum with various exhibits of Viking artifacts from around Scandinavia. The bottom floor was much more interesting. There I was ushered into what looked to be a small ride by two employees dressed as Vikings. From there I was sent on a guided journey through the museum’s many dioramas as a narrator told a story similar to that of Homer’s Odyssey from Greece. It was the story of a man trying to get home.
There is not possible space enough in this short article to mention all of the incredible things I saw in each of the 10 museums I went to, but I want to at least mention each: Skansen, the Shipwreck Museum, the Nordiska Museet, the Stockholm Toy Museum, Liljevalchs, and the ABBA Museum.
