I returned home today to discover that Mirinda’s personnummer had already arrived in the post. She only found out it was being send out yesterday. That says a lot for the Swedish postal service. And the efficiency of the Skatteverket.
Mirinda had spotted the postie delivering a letter and raced out to retrieve it. In the meanwhilst, I was in Stockholm visiting museums, as I do of a Tuesday.
Though, this week, I was on the outskirts of Stockholm, in Frescati, visiting the Natural History Museum. Which was a shame, really.
The Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet is just around the corner from the University of Stockholm. The museum was built first, in 1916. It was also built long before the E18 motorway that is, these days, right on the doorstep. And very noisy with it. It’s also a long bus ride, followed by the T-Bana for a few stops.
Transport aside, the museum houses a collection that has been in existence since the 1700’s and was originally looked after by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.
It all looks quite deserted from the photo above but don’t be misled. It was anything but deserted.
I think today was the Swedish day during which every primary school unleashes its charges into the halls of this particular museum. Once happily deposited on a floor they run, scream, and generally make excessive amounts of noise, bumping into adults who they obviously do not see.
I’m not going to moan about them. It was clearly my fault for going at the same time. It’s good to see kids visiting museums, though I’m not sure what sort of information they are likely to take in while racing passed things at breakneck speed. Perhaps they get it by osmosis. A sort of education by proximity kind of thing.
Suffice it to say, it was not a pleasant experience for me. You’d think I’d know from my days at the Science Museum and the almost permanent queue outside the Natural History Museum in London. As Mirinda said when I told her, perhaps I need to return outside term time on a weekend.
I did manage to walk all around the museum and, from what I did manage to see, it all looks marvellous. The room of rocks was lovely, for instance. When I first entered, it was delightfully unpopulated by little people. Ah, I thought, an oasis of calm. This didn’t last very long. Kids slowly filtered in until it was as overrun as the section on mammals.
I did get to touch this:
It doesn’t look like much but, in fact, it’s a chunk of iron meteorite that is older than the Earth. This one fell in a shower in Siberia in 1947 along with a lot of other bits. It’s 4.6 billions years old.
After the rocks, I thought it might be a good idea to have some lunch, thinking that the kids might vanish after lunch and leave a hiatus in the museum. The restaurant/café is supposed to be quite good. I have no idea because, when I reached it, it was packed with a queue stretching out into the hall where the toilets are.
There were seats outside, where I would gladly have sat, but they were inaccessible because they were being prepared for the warmer months. I gave up on the food idea and headed for the human evolution exhibit.
Obviously, I wanted to see their Lucy. Unlike the other casts I’ve seen, this one was quite hairy and she had a mate walking behind her.
This gallery led to the dinosaurs so, obviously, it was rammed with kids. They do love the dinosaurs. It’s good to see, though not by me. I decided to leave the museum.
In the uni grounds there’s a small gallery space called Accelerator. It has a café attached to it. I thought I’d try this, given I had to walk by it on the way to the T-Bana anyway. I walked through the door, took one look and walked back out again. It was packed with uni students having lunch.
This was when I decided to head back into town and visit the Army Museum.
The Armémuseum has an excellent restaurant/café (Artilleriet) attached to it, where I had a lovely, unmolested lunch before heading to the top floor of the museum to read the history of war in Sweden.
It all starts in the 1500’s and progresses, floor by floor, to the current conflict in Ukraine. Not that Sweden is fighting in Ukraine but there is an exhibit on the ground floor called Meanwhile in Mariupol, dedicated to the war.
It was on the top floor that I spent most of my visit. I like finding intersections of history during my visits to disparate museums and this one was no exception. Kings, queens, battles, wins and defeats, it was all there.
There are even a couple of tableaux on the top floor, including this old woman who was skinning a dead horse for supper.
Having toured the whole top floor, I’d had about enough and started to head for the front door. I’ll have to return some other time. I’m not sure that two huge museums in a day is really doing either one justice. Not for me, anyway.
While the Natural History Museum is well away from the centre of Stockholm, the Army Museum is very close so I hopped on a bus to T-Centralen and was soon on the T-Bana back to Brommaplan then on a 177 home.
A tiring day but, also an educational one. Like when NOT to go to the Natural History Museum.
