Introduction:
“The Museum of Ethnography is a place for everyone interested in the world. Bring the whole family on an extraordinary trip and experience art, culture and food in an exciting and inspiring environment. With pieces from America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania the museum is a place full of dreams, achievements and treasures from Swedish adventurers, merchants, collectors and scientists. Restaurant Matmekka and museum shop. Free entry.” copied from webpage.
The Storage, an ethnographic treasury, containing donated, found and abandoned items that travelers and explorers brought back to Sweden. Approximately 6,000 items are arranged according to the materials with which they were made. This is how items are cared for in the collections where they are stored under the various conditions of temperature and humidity that best preserve leather, straw, cloth, etc. The idea is that different relationships among items may emerge in the mind of the visitor viewing them arranged in The Storage in this unusual manner. There is very little information on the cards with the items about where they were collected. In order to learn more about each item, the visitor has the option to borrow an electronic tablet computer from the front desk personnel to call up an item number and learn more. Most of the museum is organized by geographic region and by peoples, e.g. an Australia section and a section on Native American Indian culture. There are also contemporary ethnographic exhibits such as pantyhose!
We were there in early August, 2017, and there were very few visitors at the museum, which was clean and carefully lighted to highlight the well-constructed exhibits. Most textual information was in Swedish and English, though sometimes the more detailed descriptions were in Swedish only. I did not use the electronic tablet this trip as I was mainly interested in surveying what was on display. Originally, I decided to visit the museum to learn more about Sven Hedin (1865-1952), the great Swedish explorer whose book titled My Life as an Explorer I had enjoyed reading as part of my preparation to visit the Silk Road during my trip to Western China in 2002. I was surprised to learn from the docents that only a small corner of one of the rooms was devoted to this great explorer. The docent said she wished it could be an entire room in the museum instead. I asked of course about straw sandals and shoes. She said that there were some scattered throughout the exhibit rooms and especially in The Storage where travelers had brought them back as gifts and momentos for friends and family.
My wife Gayle and I liked this museum very much and we decided we would revisit it with more time on any future trip to Stockholm.
