Stockholm Mop-Up Post

I visited a few more museums in Stockholm (believe it or not), but for various reasons, none of them merited a post of their own, so I’m going to briefly discuss each here. The first was the Nobel Museum, which we rushed out to see shortly after arriving in Stockholm, because it offers free entry on Tuesday evenings from 5-8 (and is 120 SEK, or about 11 pounds the rest of the time, so you’re saving a substantial amount of money). I was actually pretty excited about seeing this, because it sounded really cool, and I was interested to learn more about Alfred Nobel and all the Nobel prize winners over the years, but it ended up just being a terrible experience all around.

  

To start with, we had to queue for a while in a square to gain entry whilst some sort of demonstration (as in protest) was taking place right next to us (not sure what, because all their signs were in Swedish, but judging by the flags, it had something to do with Cuba). And when we finally got inside, man, what a disappointment!  The “museum” was really small, consisting of a sort of grand entrance hall, a smaller hallway off to one side, and a couple lecture theatre-type spaces showing short films. Almost all the “artefacts” in the main hall were re-creations, and there weren’t even many of those, the museum mainly being composed of posters and videos, and it was way too crowded in there to read or watch any of them properly, not that they looked all that interesting in the first place (they seemed to have only very basic information on them). There were a few actual artefacts in the smaller hall, but we were completely crammed in (don’t be deceived by the photo, the smaller hall was about 10x more crowded than the main one), and I don’t do well with crowds (I’m not actually agoraphobic or anything, I just don’t like people), so I gave them only a brief glance. We were in and out of the place in under half an hour (not counting the queueing time), and I’m so glad we didn’t waste 11 quid each on this! The highlight was seriously the gift shop with its postcards featuring extremely obscure Nobel prize winners which I found (probably inappropriately) hilarious.  If, despite my negativity, you still want to see the museum, I would definitely just suck it up and brave the crowds and come on a Tuesday evening, because no way is this place worth what they’re charging. 1/5.

  

Though we didn’t want to pay to go in the Royal Palace (it wasn’t only cheapness in this case; it’s just that Stockholm’s looked like a fairly standard issue royal palace (god, that makes me sound like an awful snob), and I thought I’d rather spend time seeing museums unique to Stockholm), we did see a couple of the free museums attached to the Palace. The first of these was the Royal Armoury or Livrustkammaren (I love the Swedish word for it, since it contains “rust,” which could accurately describe old unloved armour). Most of the object labels were in Swedish only, but there were signs in English on the walls explaining what was in each room, so I managed well enough.

  

Though there wasn’t as much actual armour in here as there is in some armouries, I still thought it was alright. They had a collection of clothing belonging to the Swedish royal family through the centuries, and some child-size armour as well. They also had a random exhibition about samurai swords.

  

My main complaint (other than the number of people in there, particularly this one weird American couple who kept following us around and taking pictures of whatever we were taking pictures of, which was super annoying) was that the different sections of the museum weren’t connected, so after reaching the end of the main hall, and discovering that the upper floor was the children’s space (which wasn’t marked anywhere in English til after we went up, so I took a cheeky picture in the dressing-up throne since I was already there), we had to walk back through all the galleries (a not insubstantial number of them) to go down into the basement to see the carriage house. It definitely wasn’t the greatest armoury I’ve ever been to (that honour probably goes to the Royal Armouries in Leeds, because it’s so much more than just an armoury), but it wasn’t awful either, particularly because it was free. 2.5/5.

  

The final museum is the Royal Coin Cabinet. I’m gonna be honest; the only reason we visited this is because their brochure said they had the world’s largest coin, which visitors could try to lift (you can see me doing just that, above). So we barely even looked at what was in the museum, and made a beeline for the coin, which was a rectangular slab that weighed 19 kg (not all that hard to lift for an adult, but it was tied down, so you could only lift it a couple inches in the air anyway). I did stop to admire some of the designs of Weimer-era, heavily inflated German notes (check out that moon!), but I don’t feel that I can even give this one a score because I really didn’t take the time to read anything. It is another free way to kill some time though, which is pretty much exactly what we were doing before our flight home.

 

However, visiting museums wasn’t the only thing we did in Stockholm (though it was probably how we spent 80% of our non-sleeping/watching TV in our hotel room (I learned that minigolf is a televised sport in Sweden, which is kind of awesome) time there). We also strolled around a bit and explored the city, and thus got to see some cool statues and things. I love the poor beggar fox statue because it reminds me of Disney’s Robin Hood (I think it was supposed to be making me think about the plight of the homeless, but he was just so darn cute). And you may be able to spot some lady bits on the side of that building, beneath the guy’s head (don’t ask me why).

  

I’m guessing that lions are one of the symbols of Stockholm, because they were EVERYWHERE in Stockholm – on buildings, on statues, and even serving as adorable traffic bollards at the ends of pedestrianised streets. We found one with a cone on his head down the street from our hotel, on one of the main shopping streets, but the island I refer to as “Hipster Island” was the only place I saw female lions too, and they were pretty great.

  

We only ate in a restaurant once, because Sweden is not cheap, and except for the sweets (not counting licorice, because barf), Swedish food didn’t sound particularly appealing (actually we don’t eat out much on holiday generally unless we’re in a country with a particularly delicious nonmeaty national cuisine, because restaurant food every day can get expensive anywhere, plus my vegetarianism and general picky eating make restaurants tricky in some countries. I’m kind of the worst); the rest of the time we resorted to good ol’ bread, hummus, and crisps from the supermarket. So what did I choose to eat on our one restaurant visit? Yep, a big old bowl of hummus (with falafel balls and amazing deep fried halloumi) from FLFL on “Hipster Island,” because I can’t pass up falafel, and their hummus was about 10x better than the supermarket stuff, so I have no regrets. I supplemented my hummusy diet with frequent stops at bakeries for kanelbuller (cinnamon buns), ice cream (the Swedes seem particularly partial to soft serve with sprinkles, as am I (the real stuff, made with actual milk and available as chocolate/vanilla twist, unlike the shitty disgusting unflavoured Mr. Whippy you get in the UK) so I was as happy as a sandboy), and of course Daim bars, which are probably my favourite candy bar, so it was nice to be in their homeland (and I loved the special edition orange ones, which I’ve never seen in the UK).

   

I actually wasn’t too sure how I would feel about Stockholm when we booked the trip, because I didn’t particularly enjoy either Copenhagen or Malmo when we visited a few years ago, and I thought all of Scandinavia would be similar, so I’m happy to report that I was proven wrong!  Stockholm is a beautiful city, and each island has a distinct character, which made it an interesting place to explore. I also liked that it felt fairly hip (though not overly so, except maybe on “Hipster Island”) and there were so many museums there that I barely even scratched the surface (just means I’ll have to return some day!). It was fairly easy to get around via public transport, mainly trams and buses, though we did take a ferry once just for the hell of it (they also have a metro system, but we never ended up using it) – we purchased a travel card for the duration of our stay which meant we didn’t have to worry about the cost of individual trips; my only complaint is that a lot of the buses only came twice an hour, so you had a lengthy wait if you missed one (I might just be spoiled by TfL though)!  Be forewarned that Stockholm is as expensive as everyone says it is, but by not eating out much (ice cream doesn’t count), and getting a deal on our hotel + flight, our trip as a whole wasn’t any more expensive than anywhere else in Europe. Also be aware that Stockholm is practically a cashless city; we didn’t bother to exchange any money before we left, and ended up not using cash at all during our stay. Even market stalls and ice cream carts there take cards, and a lot of the museums don’t accept cash at all, so definitely bring a card with a decent exchange rate and no foreign transaction fees.  So yeah, that’s Stockholm – a city that I’d happily return to despite all the crowds of peak tourist season, and I can’t really give a place a better endorsement than that!

 

Stockholm: Medieval Museum (Medeltidsmuseet)

After visiting the Swedish History Museum and enjoying their excellent historical timeline galleries, I found it difficult to believe that another, smaller museum would be able to cover medieval Sweden as well as they did, so I was happy to skip the Medieval Museum, which we had originally planned on visiting. However, by the last day of our trip, we decided that we’d spent enough money (probably my fault; I was eating like three ice creams a day, but thinking about it now makes me feel a little ill since I’ve been working through the remains of my birthday ice cream pie all week and have been in pretty much a constant state of bloat as a result. (Yes Jessica, nice subtle way to sneak your birthday in there. And actually, who am I kidding, I’d eat an ice cream right now if you put it in front of me)), but we had about 5 hours to kill before our flight home and the Medieval Museum was free, so we found ourselves there anyway.

  

It is located right by the Royal Palace in “Old Town Island” (Gamla Stan), so I also found myself back in Old Town, even though I vowed not to go there again after fighting my way through the hordes of tourists one too many times, but it ended up being OK because the entrance was in a fairly secluded area by a small pier, so we didn’t have to force a path through the crowded, narrow shopping streets, and we got to see an unexpected changing of the guard as they paraded by (with a jolly band!) whilst we were waiting for the museum to open. Because the museum opens quite late, at noon, even though we got what we thought was a late start, we still had to hang around for a bit until they unlocked the doors (and we weren’t the only ones waiting!).

  

The museum is built around some ruins of medieval Stockholm that were excavated in the 1970s when they were trying to turn the site into a parking garage (obviously that fell through when they found the ruins), including an old wall, and a medieval churchyard (though I think they moved the human remains elsewhere, so it’s really only the wall left). The museum consists of a tunnel leading into a small entryway room, and one larger room where the ruins and most of the museum content was located.

  

Almost every label in the museum was written in Swedish and English, which was the case at all of Stockholm’s museums (or the ones we visited, anyway). There was a short introductory video at the start of the tunnel about how the ruins were discovered, and the opening gallery attempted to “introduce” us to some of the people who would have lived in the medieval city; though I love wax figures, these ones were a bit odd because they kept them in a darkened nook behind glass, only intermittently shining a light on them. I guess maybe it was supposed to give them a ghostly effect, but really it just made them hard to see.

  

The main room was a little better, as I could instantly tell upon walking in and seeing a wax figure of an alleged plague victim sitting there (but with no sign of buboes, I’m not sure I trust their diagnosis. I suppose she could have had pneumonic plague, which would explain the blood on her handkerchief, but TB would have been my first guess). There was also a small reconstructed village, complete with graveyard and gallows hill (which was obviously my favourite bit), and the ruins of the medieval wall were down the centre of the room (though apparently some of the wall was built in 1530, which is really early modern rather than medieval (putting my MA to use right there)).

  

To be honest with you, a lot of the information in this gallery seemed outdated…for example, in the section about food, it was mentioned that medieval people ate heavily spiced food to kill the taste of rotten meat, but I’m pretty sure that for a while now the consensus amongst historians has been that people ate heavily spiced food both as a sign of prestige, and simply because they liked the taste. After all, most meat was slaughtered as needed, so it was very fresh, and, then as now, people weren’t going to eat rotten food unless it was a starvation situation, in which case they certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford expensive spices!

  

And though I definitely enjoyed the mannequins (even the iffy plague victim), you could only go into a couple of the reconstructed buildings, and they didn’t have much in them (most of the mannequins are from street scenes). One building simply had a room full of long tables, with signs saying that you weren’t allowed to eat or drink there (which spoiled the atmosphere somewhat; also, it seemed like kind of a waste of space, since there was literally nothing else in that boring room), and another contained samples of cloth and a video showing how medieval women would have gotten dressed (interesting, but they didn’t really have to show her lacing up the whole damn kirtle. They could have just skipped ahead after the first set of laces).  There was also a mock-up of a church with a statue of St. George in it, and reading his story just annoyed me (I mean, I knew it involved a dragon, obviously, but I wasn’t aware of all the irritating details). So, this town had to sacrifice someone to a dragon like every week so he didn’t destroy them all, but it wasn’t until a princess was about to be sacrificed that George stepped in and killed the dragon. Why didn’t he just do that as soon as the dragon started demanding human sacrifices? I guess the ordinary people weren’t worthy of being saved?! What a jerk! I wish the dragon had killed George’s ass instead.

  

But as far as the museum goes, although I shouldn’t complain too much about a free museum (I probably still have though), it was something of a disappointment. I learned far more about medieval Stockholm at the Swedish History Museum, and there were way more interactive elements there too!  Except for a handful of video screens and a small display that opened in 2015 about archaeological findings from Slussen (a juncture in Stockholm that connects Sodermalm with Stadsholmen), and despite their claims to have undergone a renovation in 2010, it feels like the content of the museum (certainly the text) hasn’t really been updated since the museum opened in 1986. It was a perfectly acceptable way to kill some time without spending any money, but it’s not one of Stockholm’s better museums, and I regret not just coughing up the damn krona and visiting the Nordic Museum instead, as it sounds really good, and really, how often am I going to be in Stockholm?  I guess I’ll consider missing out my penance for cheapness. 2.5/5 for the Medieval Museum.