Historiska Museet – Joel’s Journeys & Jaunts

Has anyone noticed that my posts have been getting shorter lately? I’ve only started writing this one, so I’m not sure if that trend will continue here. Some literary fervour might unexpectedly spring forth from me as I compose this, but I think this will be another short entry.

I visited only one institution in Stockholm this afternoon, the Historiska Museet. And, no, that’s not a trick statement. I didn’t leave Stockholm.

I can’t blame my foot this time, as I have over the past few days. It’s now pretty close to its old self. And I do mean old. It’s the same age as the rest of me.

I’m no longer limping. And I’m no longer moving at half of the decrepit-old-man speed I walked at before my foot started hurting a few days ago. I’m back to my full decrepit-old-man speed again.

The fact is, I’m just getting tired. I’ve been travelling on this trip for more than three weeks now. It’s starting to drain me. I’m just pleased that it took this long to do so. I feared it might happen sooner, considering I’m not as young as I used to be. Then again, who is?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could retire first, and then work when you’re older? The kind of travelling I’ve wanted to do for a long time and the kind of travelling I planned to do when I retired, which is the kind of travelling that I am doing now that I’m retired, can be draining, particularly for someone who is no longer of a young persuasion.

I’ve loved this trip to Sweden; every part of it. There’s so much of the country, and of this city, Stockholm, that I haven’t yet seen. So from that standpoint, I wish I had more of this trip left than I do. I’ve got one more full day. What I have planned for the morning and into the early afternoon tomorrow should be relaxing.

I have one activity planned for the afternoon tomorrow. It may be a little strenuous, but it won’t be an overly long activity. And it might not even happen at all if I don’t finish the morning activity when I’m scheduled to finish it.

The day after tomorrow, I head home. As much as I’ve loved Sweden, and I’ve loved it a lot, I think I’ll be ready to go then.

All of that is a long way of explaining why I didn’t push myself to do more this afternoon. I spent longer over lunch in Gamla Stan than I would have if I were feeling more energetic. It was about a 35-minute walk from the restaurant to the Historiska Museet, and roughly the same from there to my hotel.

I didn’t push myself in the Historiska Museet and took it at a leisurely pace. Hence, I didn’t do more this afternoon.

At the Historiska Museet

Google Translate* tells me that “Historiska Museet” means “Historical Museum” in English. As I’ve pointed out before, in my experience here, the Swedes are rarely, if ever, creative in naming their institutions. Well, at least you know what you’re getting. If they named it, say, “The Royal Ontario Museum” rather than “Historiska Museet,” how would you know what sort of museum it was? Besides, Ontario is a Canadian province, and there is already a Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, so that would be inane.

(*You’re probably getting tired of me saying “Google Translate tells me…” or “Google Translate translates…” almost every time I provide a translation in these pages. Sorry about that. I don’t speak Swedish. I want anyone who does speak Swedish to know who to blame if I get a translation wrong. It’s not me. It’s Google.)

Historiska Museet is fairly large. And it has several sections.

Gold Room

Downstairs in Historiska Museet, there’s something they call the “Gold Room,” but it contains both gold and silver. The English portion of a sign near the entrance to the room says, “The Gold Room contains 52 kilograms of gold and over 200 kilograms of silver. … Under a law passed in the 17th century, any unclaimed finds more than 100 years old and made of gold, silver or copper alloy must be purchased by the state. As a result, an unusually large number of gold and silver artifacts have been preserved.”

The sign didn’t mention anything about that 17th-century law having since been repealed. So make sure you don’t leave any of your gold, silver or copper in Sweden lying around unattended because your heirs will lose the rights to it.

Thinking about it more, the sign says the state has to purchase unclaimed gold, silver, or copper. If it’s unclaimed, who are they buying it from? If it would help, I’d be willing, for a small six-digit fee (excluding any decimal places) per transaction, to act as an agent for that.

The collection includes pendants and other jewelry, drinking vessels, coins, wedding crowns that churches loaned out to future brides to wear at their weddings, and a whole lot of other stuff I’ve forgotten.

Oh, wait. I did remember one thing. There’s a collection of soup spoons. That’s it. No forks. No knives. No teaspoons. Just soup spoons. Is that all they ate? Soups? Man, woman, or gender-fluid people cannot live by soup alone.

Ground Floor Galleries

On the ground floor, there’s a “Prehistories” gallery that looks at archaeological finds and what they can tell us about how people lived before history began to be recorded.

There’s also a Viking gallery on this floor. One of the first exhibits is a glass display case with a couple of skulls and other bones. That’s the thing about the Vikings. Everyone thinks of them as great explorers and conquerors, but where did that get them? Dead with their skulls and other bones on display in a history museum in Stockholm, that’s where.

I learned something about Vikings that I didn’t know before. (I learned a lot of things, but I have since forgotten them and they are once again unknown, waiting to be rediscovered by me.)

Vikings had very hierarchical societies. According to a sign in this section, “its members were valued differently. The major difference was between the free and the unfree. But even within these groups, individuals were ranked based on class, kin, sex and place of origin.”

Thank goodness we’ve advanced since then! For those of us fortunate enough to be rocking in the free world, we now live in societies that are diverse, equitable, and inclusive for all. There is no longer a fear of “the other.” We no longer round up, detain, and deport people primarily based on geographic origin or the colour of their skin. The rich and connected no longer get unfair advantages based solely on their wealth, kin, or friends. And women now have a totally equal place in society.

Before you yell at me, let me say that, no, I was not serious. Not in the least. It can be depressing how little we’ve progressed and how some countries appear to be moving backwards in those regards. Sigh.

But enough about that.

Upper Floor Galleries

On the upper floor of Historiska Museet, there’s a large exhibit hall chronicling the history of Sweden since the year 1000. On the floor of this gallery, there’s a timeline snaking through the gallery to pull you along through it. On it, there are all of the years from 1000 to 2001—every single year. Although the last few numbers run up a wall at the end of the gallery.

At a few points on the timeline, there are short paragraphs, in Swedish and English, about something that happened in (or around) that year. The timeframes of the displayed artifacts in the gallery match the numbers on the floor at that point.

The funny thing is, before I got to this gallery, I didn’t remember going to the Historiska Museet when I was in Stockholm a decade or so ago. Not at all. When I got to this gallery and saw the timeline on the floor, I vividly remembered it. I still couldn’t remember any of the artifacts, despite most of them likely being the same, but I remembered the timeline snaking along the floor.

At various points in the gallery, there were signs with overarching information about the period covered at that point in the timeline. Those signs were in both Swedish and English. But there were other, more detailed information panels that were in Swedish only. However, there were laminated, ring-bound pages with English translations hanging in small racks in some of the sections.

Also on this floor, there was a gallery displaying Medieval clothing, but they were recreations. They stood, unprotected, in the middle of the room. There were also swatches you could feel hanging beside many of the clothing items. There were no signs saying you couldn’t touch the clothing itself, but it was no more difficult to touch than the swatches, and generally less difficult.

This top floor had a lot of exhibit space. In addition to what I’ve already mentioned, there was a room stocked with medieval art, mostly religious art. There was one room filled with large, elaborately carved and decorated Medieval altar cabinets from churches.

I took pictures of a few of those altar cabinets. I’ll post one of them here. But I’ll also post a zoom of one section of that altar cabinet. Have you ever seen such a happy-looking baby in your life? I guess he didn’t foresee what his end would be. And in the baby Jesus images, why is his purported real father rarely in the picture? Did he shirk his paternal duties?

This floor of Historiska Museet also included a small display on the Sami, the indigenous people of the region. According to a sign in this exhibit, “The Sami are one of the world’s original populations.”

There are other rooms at the Historiska Museet, a couple of which I didn’t go into, and a couple of which I went into but have forgotten the contents of. And I haven’t come close to doing justice to all of the exhibits and items on display. But I’m getting tired, and this post is already a lot longer than I thought it would be when I started it. So let’s put a bow on it, shall we?

Oh, one more thing. The Historiska Museet is well outside of Stockholm’s old town, literally, Gamla Stan. Nevertheless, it’s still in a neighbourhood with very handsome architecture. I’ll post a few pictures of it below.