Museum visiting in Stockholm

There are some 87 museums in Stockholm, so there's always another to investigate. Each time I visit I try and see one or two that are new to me, but I must admit I'm getting to the point on the list where I either think I'm not interested (day out at the Tobacco and Match museum anyone?) or the more difficult to reach by public transport with no sense of direction and a cartoon map.

This time it's been a pleasant surprise though, I've visited two that I had previously thought too boring - The Museum of Ethnography and The Historiska Museet, or the Museum of Antiquities.

The Museum of Ethnography is described in the brochure as 'a meeting place of cultures for everyone interested in the wider world'. As a lover of the old fashioned style museum I loved the current exhibition of 'bringing the world home' which is a broad selection of objects from the museums archives, displayed in old fashioned glass museum cases, aisles and aisles of oddities behind glass - just what I love in a museum. As a twist they have displayed everything in groups as it is stored, which is by material rather than origin. In order to give the illusion of never ending cabinets they have installed mirrors at the end of the rows, which worked a little too well, as I found myself stepping aside to give way to, well um myself!

I did struggle in this exhibition to match up the cabinets with the English translation sheet, so just gave up and enjoyed the looking with no great information on what I was looking at.

This fellow wins best oddity I've found to draw in a while, the skin of a baby hippopotamus which must have been folded for transport.

The displays on climate, and how cultures adapt to extreme climates were something different, and there was an extensive Aboriginal display. It was good to see that it was fair representation on the modern Aboriginal culture, explaining the issues of the stolen generation and land rights. There was an area of displays and film related to Swedish explorers in Australia who took skeletons and recently deceased from funeral sites as museum items, and film documenting the apology and ceremonies related to the return of these in recent history.

There were displays on historical expeditions, to Papua New Guinea and the Congo (and cultural damage there by well meaning missionaries of their day).

All up, lots of interesting objects to draw, and rather sadly the opportunity to see how history has repeated itself over and over; white men travel to foreign lands and try to 'improve' the locals by stealing their children and raising them as white, introducing alcohol, tobacco and violence to traditional cultures - apologising after 200 years and leaving these cultures in a mess of identity, dependency and violence. Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Congo, North America, Canada, and Northern Scandanavia.

The Historiska Museum has it's 'Gold Room' as pride of place, with an extensive collection of antique gold, silver and jewel currency and jewellery. For me the more interesting sections were the textiles hall, with ancient embroideries, many were church vestments. The amount of work put into these was amazing. I sketched some of the animal shapes to perhaps embroider myself later as the designs were really interesting.

There were halls full of old church icons, alters, and iconastas - which made me wonder if every old church in Sweden was gutted at some point? There was so much of it. It was great to see them, but I did feel a little sad about how much of it had been removed from where it belonged? I would have liked to drawn some of these but there were no seats available and my back was not cooperating with standing and holding a sketchbook to draw.

I ran out of time to take in everything, and while doing a speed view through the remaining exhibitions on my way out, this fellow caught my interest. At about four feet high, carved from wood with rope decoration, holding a skeleton which appeared to be various real bones with a wooden carved skull. I had to stop and read, and then draw;

"Associated with the cannibal dancing society: skeleton made from various animals such as seal paws and a carved human skull. When covered in vegetable pastry it looked like a human corpse. Used in ceremony when someone was obsessed with the cannibal spirit to regain their human nature"

I'll definitely look forward to another visit when I'm looking for a drawing refuge on a rainy day.

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