We accidentally decided to go to the Skansen museum – we went on a bus tour of the city, which drove around Djurgården (among other places) pointing out the attractions available there. We thought there was some deal for getting in cheaply because we’d been on the bus tour but had managed to get ourselves confused. But we decided to go anyway.
It is an open air museum taking up much of the island. It started as a collection of buildings from around Sweden before the industrialisation of the country. So theres a lot of buildings which don’t appear to be in their correct context (which gave the place a slightly sickly sweet Disney meets New England feel).
First stop was food, we climbed from the entrance up to the nearest cafe, sat upon a tall rocky outcrop. The venison stew was remarkably good value (being something like 10 krona more than you’d pay for a McDonalds hamburger) and gave A. her first taste of lingonberries. Just what we needed.
We noticed a lot of people carrying big bags of apples, and decided to go the direction they came from. There was an apple and pear festival going on, but the poor pears hardly had a look in, the apples stole the show. There were a number of stalls selling apples in various forms, mostly raw for later consumption but you could have them cooked in different ways.
The museum, as well as having many buildings from all over the country, houses a zoo with a number of animal enclosures and walks through reproductions of rural scenes.
This post has been split into parts to make it easier to digest with full size pictures (and easier for my somewhat delicate hosting service to deliver those pictures to you).
Buildings of Skansen




Pingback: Skansen open air museum – part 2 | Neil Hopcroft
Pingback: Skansen open air museum – part 3 | Neil Hopcroft
Pingback: Djurgården – part 1 | Neil Hopcroft