Biologiska Museet - Museum of Biology, Stockholm

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By the time we reached the Biology Museum, it was closed for the day!
This is something to be aware of, its opening hours are short.

Never mind, the building was worth having a look at from the outside. It is built in the design of a Norwegian Stave church, and around the entrance door, are lots of beautiful carvings.
The Museum dates back to 1893, and is near Skansen open air Museum.

The museum's founder, Gustaf Kolthoff, was a taxidermist, hunter, and amateur zoologist who wanted to create a museum about the Nordic animal world.
To me, it sounded quite interesting, as there is more than one Diorama with stuffed animals depicting wildlife in their natural environment. To make it more life like, there is only natural lighting in the building, meaning that all light comes through the skylight.

The large room, viewed from two different heights, shows the landscape in southern Sweden, coasts, forests from northern Scandinavia - with all the Nordic animals: moose, bear , deer, badgers, hares, birds of all kinds and many, many more.

OPEN....October to March
Tuesday-Friday 12-3PM....Saturday-Sunday 10-3PM

April-September
Every day 11-4PM

ADMISSION......Adults: 45 SEK .....Children 6-15 years: 10 SEK.

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The Biological Museum is situated at Djurgården. It was built in 1893 to a design by architect Agi Lindegren who was inspired by the medieval Norwegian stave churches. The founder of the museum, Gustaf Kolthoff was a taxidermist, an amateur zoologist and an author. The pioneering educational aspect of the museum was the use of the diorama for the first time on a grand scale in order to present the natural habitat. The perspective of the diorama unites foreground and background. The large, painted backgrounds are the work of Bruno Liljefors who is famous for his dramatic paintings of birds and animals.

The museum contains collections of Scandinavian mammals and birds in
their natural, ecological habitat. The vast diorama, which can be viewed from two levels, presents the different types of landscape from inland Sweden as well as from the coast. On the ground floor there are two smaller dioramas showing Spetsbergen (a cave from the Arctic Ocean) and a valley on eastern Greenland.

Entry fee 30 SEK. 3 EURO

This museum, at the foot of Skansen Open Air Museum with all its animals, show typical animal exhibitions but in a different way. It was the first ever natural history museum to use dioramas, those "natural environment" backgrounds to stuffed animals and some are painted by the famous Swedish nature painter Bruno Liljefors. You should also go here if you are interested in architecture as Agi Lindegren's wonderful building is itself a sight, based on Norwegian church architecture and with lovely wood carvings, so popular in the Nordic Romantic era when the museum was built.

This is not the best museum of Stockholm, in fact it is pretty bad. The Biologiska Museet is situated in a wooden house and inside there are lots of stuffed animals. The displays aren't very imaginative, so you hardly learn anything about the animals.