Nordiska museet

NN for Nordiska Museet in the Blogging from A to Z challenge.

The online jewellery collection of Nordiska Museet in Stockholm is the very collection that inspired me to pick this theme for the A to Z.

In the museum, you can see 1.000 jewellery pieces in the exhibition Smycken (Jewellery). It was set up as a temporary exhibition, but when I visited last summer, I learned that it is now becoming permanent, given the success.

However, if you can’t make it to go there, or if 1.000 is not enough for you, there is this online archive with images of 10.000 jewellery pieces. 10.000! As in “ten thousand”! Did you hear me, t-e-n… t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d. If you could only read my lips!

The museum was founded in 1872 and since the start, it has collected jewellery (amongst many other kinds of things). The collection is mixed and includes also ordinary jewellery, used by ordinary people. And that is what I really like with it. It has some very unique, special pieces, but it also has the ordinary.

I’m aware it may not feel very tempting to browse a collection in a foreign language, but if you would ever be interested and if there is anything I can do to help you get over the language barrier, just let me know!

Some words are the same (silver is silver, ring is ring) or very similar (gold is guld and copper is koppar). It’s more difficult to guess that necklace is halsband and bracelet is armband.

But don’t worry, in English, you find:

  • a few Highlights/Guldkorn (first choose your device: dator/computer or surfplatta/tablet, then choose information in Swedish or English)
  • the Timeline, with a presentation of 23 pieces from the 16th century until the early 1980’s (available in Swedish and English).

What else can I say than ENJOY!

 

 

 

10 thoughts on “Nordiska museet”

  3. That’s really cool, the pieces are beautiful! I had a look at the highlights and the timeline, would you mind telling me how to browse through the entire collection? It would be a great way to get inspiration for the book I’m writing 🙂 Thanks for sharing!

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    • OK, I’ll try to guide you through it here, with translations of some texts you will see while searching. Let me know if this is helpful, and otherwise, feel free to get back to me either in a comment or by email (see Contact). Here we go:
      Sök I smyckessamlingen = Search the jewellery collection
      Du har sökt på … och fick … träffar = You have searched for … and got … hits
      Utvidgat sök = Advanced search
      When you click on an item, you get to see some key data, f ex Benämning = kind of jewellery (necklace, ring, etc). The tags (in pink) might be helpful to search further.

      For jewellery from around the world, here a few other resources:
      Victoria & Albert collections http://collections.vam.ac.uk/ and http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/j/jewellery/
      Museum of Fine Arts Boston http://www.mfa.org/collections/jewelry

      I’m curious about the book you are writing, but don’t feel forced to reveal anything if you don’t want to, entirely up to you! I’m glad if this can be inspiring for your writing. Just get in touch if I can help in this labyrint of Nordic jewellery items!
      Good luck with your book!

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      • Thank you SO much for doing this! I’m just away for the Easter weekend but I will go through the website when I get back – excited to see it all! And thank you for the additional resources, that’s amazing! Looking forward to reading all about it.
        I don’t want to reveal what the book is about if that’s ok, I’m still creating the world and the story, so feeling shy about it still 🙂 but I will definitely let you know once it’s further on 🙂 Although it’s a fantasy, I’m using some Nordic aspects as inspiration for the creation, so this is going to be incredibly useful – thank you again….

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