Maritime History Museum

**Sjöhistoriska museet**
	; Exterior view 2005
Data
place	Stockholm
Art	Maritime History Museum
opening	May 28, 1938
Website	www.sjohistoriska.se

The Maritime History Museum ( Swedish Sjöhistoriska museet ) is a maritime museum in Stockholm . It is located on the northern bank of Djurgårdsbrunnsviken in the Östermalm district .

background

When the decision to build a maritime history museum in Stockholm was made in the early 1930s, the question had been debated for 40 years and the growing maritime collections were shown in makeshift venues for just as long. The new building was finally financed by a donation from the Knut and Alice Wallenbergs Foundation . The prerequisite for the donation was that the state had a suitable plot of land available and that the building should not be designed in the modern style, since one did not want "another shoebox", possibly an allusion to the Technical Museum ( Tekniska museet ), in strict functionalism.

The building

A stick anchor at the entrance, Djurgårdsbrunnsviken in the background

Door handle on the main portal

Princess Sibylla and Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf at the exhibition “Swedish Sailors' Deeds in Times of Unrest” 1940.

The site chosen was the former exhibition site of the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 at Djurgårdsbrunnsviken, an exhibition that is widely regarded as the breakthrough of modernism in Sweden.

The museum was designed by Stadshus architect Ragnar Östberg , who never really got used to the modern style. So he designed absolutely no “shoe box”, but a slightly curved, elongated structure, the simple monumentality of which is reminiscent of the Swedish architecture of the 18th century and Gustav III's architect, Olof Tempelman . The central part of the building is highlighted by a tower with a dome . The roofs are covered with sheet copper, the facades are painted white. This was Östberg's last realized work, with which he demonstrated his distance to modernity, precisely in the place where modernity had made its entrance in Sweden a few years earlier. The museum was inaugurated by King Gustav V on May 28, 1938 .

The building is a listed building and is managed by Statens fastighetsverk .

The museum

The permanent exhibition features a large collection of paintings and lifelike ship models that describe the history of the Swedish Navy . The main attraction, however, is the original stern and the replica of the royal cabin of the Amphion , the pleasure yacht Gustav III, which was designed by Fredrik Henrik af Chapman and which also served the king as a command post.

In addition to the permanent exhibition, there are temporary themed exhibitions. In 1940, one of these exhibitions with the theme “Swedish Sailors' Deeds in Times of Trouble” attracted 25,000 visitors within three months.

The museum's collections include an archive of historical construction drawings for boats, a photo collection with around 600,000 pictures and Scandinavia's largest nautical library with almost 60,000 volumes. Anyone can now search the archives online.

The museum has a separate boat hall ( Båthall 2 ) near the Vasa Museum . This hall contains one of the largest historical boat collections in Europe and has around a hundred boats from the 15th to the 20th century. Here, for example, is the royal sloop "Vasaorden", which belongs to the royal fleet and is sailed by them. In the Galärvarvet area on the west side of Djurgården , which belongs to the museum, there are also several museum ships, including the Finngrundet and the Sankt Erik .

In 2004 the museum had about 30,000 visitors and in 2005 about 149,000 visitors. The strong increase was due to the fact that from 2005 entry was free. Since 2007, however, admission has been charged again with exceptions.