Nordiska museet
- Nordic Museum
Address
Phone
+46 (0)8 519 545 55 (Wednesdays 12.00–18.00)
History
The founder of the museum was Artur Hazelius, who also founded Skansen. Hazelius made his first fundraising trip in the summer of 1872 to save a folk culture that he believed was at risk of being lost. From the start, he collected objects, folk memories, and literature. On October 24, 1873, the "Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection" opened in Stockholm at Drottninggatan 71 (in Davidson's pavilions). The collections grew rapidly, and Hazelius offered the collections as a gift to the Swedish state before establishing the Nordiska museet foundation in 1880.
Geographical and Cultural Context
Nordiska museet is a foundation-owned Swedish cultural history museum on the island Djurgården in Stockholm. Its mission is to preserve and bring to life the memory of Swedish life and work from the 16th century to the present day. Its collections include over 1.5 million objects.
Mandates/Sources of Authority
The Nordiska museet foundation receives an annual government grant and is part of the circle of central museums. The state supervises Nordiska museet's executive board, whose members are appointed by the government but must comply with the foundation's statutes and other governing documents. In principle, the foundation receives no state funding to manage the cultural-historical environments outside Stockholm.
Building(s)
The museum was founded in 1873 by Artur Hazelius. The building was designed in Renaissance style by Isak Gustaf Clason, and opened in 1907. The museum's archives and library are located on level 1, street level.
Archival and Other Holdings
The founder of the museum, Artur Hazelius, laid the foundation for the archival collections in the 1870s. The collections contain documents relating to people's lives, work and environments: sketches, letters, manuscripts, records of folk life, guild documents, photographs, accounts, diaries and drawings.
The archive is largely based on the museum's own research and collections. However, the archive also contains individual archives that have become part of the museum, subject collections and documents relating to the museum's own history.
The museum has several archives and collections of testimonies and documents related to the Holocaust.
Opening Times
September-May: open Wednesdays 12-18. You can obtain material from the archive until 16.30. June and August: open Wednesdays 12-16. You can get material from the archive until 15. July: closed.
Conditions of Access
The conditions of accessibility of collections vary between collections and documents.