The largest city in Scandenvia, Stockholm is buzzy, has excellent public transport, and far too much to see in the couple of days I had available on this visit in July 2023, but I managed to fit a fair amount in, with this post focusing on museums, and another on everything else. This was my third visit to Sweden’s capital, it’s a great city.

New since my last visit the ABBA Museum had pretty much everything a fan would hope to see, their costumes, gold records, how they came together, conquered the world, fell apart, and came back with Mamma Mia and ABBA Voyage. It was quite a claustrophobic experience though, as the exhibition is underground, and was super busy. I enjoyed it but it was a relief to emerge back into the daylight with some personal space.

My favourite place was the Museum of Ethnography, which had well presented and varied collections from around the world, with specific exhibitions on Mexico, Native Americans, Japan, and the ingenious people of Taiwan.

There was a collection of the highly controversial Benin Bronzes. Oddly this was the only one without English translation.

They have made their large collection more accessible through these storage areas, showing the extent and breadth of their collection, some of which was acquired in dubious fashion.

The collections in the Swedish History Museum were extensive and well presented. Downstairs the treasure room contained huge amounts of gold and silver objects, including notable golden collars.

It had the best exhibition of Viking artefacts I saw on my travels through Scandinavia.

There were plenty more objects upstairs, nicely presented if lacking a particularly clear historical narrative.

When I last visited most of the museums in Stockholm were free, but by 2023 almost all of them were charging ~140SEK. The Stockholm Medieval Museum thankfully was an exception, and well worth a visit to better understand life in Medieval Stockholm.

I made my second visit to the incredible Vasa Museum, home to the near complete 17th century flagship of the Swedish navy, which sank on its maiden voyage. It’s design was too narrow and too heavy, and the gun ports were open when a gust of wind tipped it over, and shortly after it was on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

Originally the ship, and particularly the hundreds of statues adorning it, would have been brightly painted as shown by these replicas.

I went to four open air museums in Scandenvia and Skansen is my joint favourite with Olso’s Norwegian Folk Museum. Skansen has a wonderful variety of heritage buildings, nicely laid out, helped by visiting on a lovely sunny day.

The church and church steeples were particularly eye catching.