Malmö Museum

  Malmö, Skåne, Sweden
Sunday, June 22, 2008

On a dreary Sunday Morning I decided to go indoors to pass the day. The weather had been rainy on and off and there wasn't much sunshine to be seen...so I decided to leave my activity for the day up to my googling fingers..and lo and behold I found the Malmö Museum. Malmö is the city just South of Lomma is the largest city in the area. So there was sure to be some fun touristy stuff to be found. At the student rate of 20kr (3.32USD) you have access to 5 different museums. That is pretty sweet considering most things in Sweden I consider expensive. The reason for the low rate is that the museum is funded by the city and aides in the subsidized price. Still our gain. We arrived at the museum around 11 and parked out in front of th museum, but the fee for parking was 8kr an hour so we drove about a block away and parked for free. Saving money key to life in Sweden.

We first headed to the main museum, which was a converted from an old castle surrounded by a medieval moat.

Entrance to Castle

When you walk in you have a number of routes to take. We decided to go straight and head up the marble staircase. Upon entrance you see 6 huge sketched 3 on each side by famous Swedish Artist Carl Larsson. He is like the Norman Rockwell of Sweden portraying everyday life for display. I had only seen really small works of Larsson's at the museum in Stockholm, so to see these huge pieces was insane.

Carl Larsson Sketch paintings

You can see the sketch marks and how he went about making these gargantuan works of art. On the wall adjacent to the sketches were wire sculptures of the human body. They cast beautiful shadows that are even more detailed than the actual sculptures.

Wire Sculptured Forms

Veering to the left we entered a room that covered the natural history of the Southern Sweden region since 11000BCE to the present. They had early weapons such as arrowheads to excavated remains on display. It is crazy to see such history goes back so long. America is only 200 years old. It's a trip.

Excavating

You can walk down the displays and see the intricacy of the tools increase and soon you see full blown axes and arrowheads with points sharp enough to kill a moose. Further on you see lots of the items from the Medieval period and the most recent royalty of Sweden where you see sculptures and even their old studies.

After seeing all of the artifacts we headed upstairs and the museum shifts from a natural history museum to the contemporary exhibition of current works of art by young Scandinavian Artists. The exhibition was called "The Real Thing" and was a colorful array of paintings, sculpture, film, and installations.

Neon Pink

Staffan's favorite piece was large oil on canvas in hot pink. I liked this installation made of various boxes to show states of packing. It was fun walking around and looking at the artwork and just admiring the craziest things people can think of.

Funny Couple

We went back down and walked into another wing of the castle that had displays about the history and culture of the region the past 500 years. My favorite piece was a couple on the harbor where a husband and wife have succumb to drink and the wife has to relieve herself in a barrel.

Unloading The Herring

I respect their honesty in portraying culture and life. After trying to decipher all those exhibits we walked to the cannon tower of the castle. This section was used for protecting the castle from the Danes mostly. And was properly equipped with the force and will to do so. Walking along the thin corridor were portraits and stories of the people that had roles in the border wars between Denmark and Sweden. Some of them funny and some of them filled with intrigue the Benedict Arnold's of the day. At the depths of this building you enter the actual place where the cannons were fired and was a circular chamber lit by few electrical lights and some lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

Cannon Tower

Cannons still dotted the openings and one can move around the heavy cannon balls and see how heavy they were. It was creepy and the lack of natural light, must have made it very tense during wartime. Just waiting to fire or waiting to be sieged at a moment's notice.

Leaving the ghostly soldier's tower we headed to the area that the Sheriff once inhabited. This section documented many of the criminals at the time. I wish they would have had more audio presentations of the criminals...because there was a lot of reading involved. But interesting nonetheless.

Down in the basement of the museum was the more natural section with live animal displays as well as the animals of the region. Seeing a fake moose and the size of it is crazy. They are huge. I never want to run into one of those on the road. We would loose, no contest.  The wild pigs were pretty cool looking too. Though stuffed still pretty mean looking. Mats (Staffan's Dad) wants to have one for their housewarming party, I dig it. Roasted pig always a plus to a party.

Cute little Critters

Further on we saw many tiny displays of animals from snakes, lizard, poison arrow frogs, flying squirrels, and bats. They also had tanks full of fish that inhabit local Swedish waters and lakes...helping me further know what we are eating for dinner. Haha. Good fish. The scariest of the Swedish fish was a pike...not as scary as a barracuda, but still pretty mean looking. I was getting pretty hungry around this time and we realized it was around 1:30pm, so we had been walking a good 2.5hrs around the museum. So we stopped at the museum and shared a plate of deep fried flat fish with remoulade sauce potatoes and some greens. After seeing so many fish I had to indulge.

Recharged and ready to see some more. We left the main museum to have a go at the other museums down the street. The museums were only open til 4pm so we had to hurry to see the rest. We first stopped at a temporary exhibition of photographs, by surprisingly an American woman documenting the second World War. Some of the scenes I found interesting but hard to look at as you stare and look at a child injured from a bomb. The pictures set an eerie look at the war and the behind the scenes of how it effects all life...not just the soldiers. I liked seeing the photos of the works of art that were camouflaged in France in attempts to salvage the beauty made during times of peace. Just huge monuments drapes in camouflage to protect from bombs dropping from the sky. My favorite picture was that of the photographer taking a bath in Hitler's bathtub. That was quite amusing.

On to the technical museum to see Swedish technology at it's best...Go Volvo! The first area was composed of transportation items such as cars and planes. The engines were huge and funny to see the old cars and electric bicycles. Also seeing big machines and pumps. A Swede also invented ball bearings and you can see them at work in the museum.

Torpedo Bay UBoat

The best part was getting to go aboard a Swedish U-boat. It was so cramp and tight, but crazy to imagine that this boat used to be underwater and carry almost 30 men at once no cushion or comfort whatsoever.

We headed up the stairs to the science section and got to play with all the exhibits from lighting headlights using a bike to sitting in front of a split mirror that fused our faces in mirrored layers, which was pretty freaky to dancing on blocks that made different musical notes if you stepped on them. I also found out at one of the exhibits I just need Sun Protection Factor 2 for my skin and I can stay outside for 15 min without sunscreen with no problem. Not a new revelation, but I have never measured my melanin count before so I thought it was cool. Staffan also was rather high for a white boy, which is nice to know he won't turn into a lobster in the sun. By the time we got done playing in that section it was time to head out...the museum was closing. We still had some sections to see...but it was closing time so it was time to peace out.

The day ended though with a nice sunset and the clouds from my bedroom window were as pink as cotton candy.

Cotton Candy Clouds1