chapter 13 Time Stopped. The Open-air Museum Skansen of Artur Hazelius*

Johan Hegardt

Skansen affects everything which is noble in mankind, and awakes that which is slumbering to new life (Ludwig Passarge, 1898)

Introduction

Skansen, the assemblage of old houses and other artifacts on a small rocky elevation on Djurgården close to the city of Stockholm opened on October 11, 1891. This open-air museum is not locked in the past but keeps moving into the present over its 120 years of history. Skansen is also an icon for the Swedish summerhouse culture, a special Swedish tradition emphasizing Swedes’ rela- tionship to nature. There is a close connection between tourism, the museum, and the development of Sweden. Travelling to the exotic and “authentic” past became significant in the course of the ever growing urbanization and mod- ernization of Sweden from the late nineteenth century onwards.1 It may not be an overstatement that Skansen is one of the most significant expressions of Swedishness. It is a miniature not so much of Sweden, but more of the idea of Sweden, the dream-society and its history. The museum has been described in poems and essays as an illusion, a work of imagination, or a wonderful

* I am grateful to professors Patrick Geary and Gábor Klaniczay for letting me be a part of the focus group Medievalism, Archaic Origins and Regimes of Historicity Alternatives to Antique Tradition in the Nineteenth Century in East-Central, Southeast and Northern Europe, to the wonderful staff at the Collegium Budapest and the Wallenberg Guesthouse. I am also grateful to my fellow researchers at the Collegium for presenting papers at the seminar Medievalism Focus Group Conference in March 2009 and at the workshop in April 2008. These papers not only gave me perspectives on the historiography of Sweden, but also (and more importantly), gave me profound new insights based on thorough knowledge into the diversity of European historiography and medievalism. 1 This was emphasized by Gösta Berg, Artur Hazelius: mannen och hans verk. (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 1933).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004276819_014 288 Hegardt phantasm. Skansen represents the idea of the happy Swedish village, an imag- ined beauty existing in the past but conserved in the present and secured for the future. In the original plans it was foreseen that the museum would cover all the Nordic countries, including Finland. This never became the case, so a predominant majority of the collection at Skansen is from the present king- dom of Sweden. Skansen is important for us today not merely because it was important for people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather, we ascribe a value to today’s Skansen based on how people in the past valued it and appre- ciate the history and the narrative connected to it. If Skansen had one clear purpose a hundred years ago, it has at least two purposes today. It conserves the Swedish heritage in a nationalistic and romantic setting to both the time- bound and also to the living conception of Sweden. Instead of becoming mar- ginalized over time, Skansen has thus doubled its significance in the course of time now that Swedes have become aware of the need of preserving their heritage. Sweden did not slowly and smoothly turn into an industrialized soci- ety. The process was rather quick, beginning in the middle of the second half of the nineteenth century and peaking at the end of it. By the early twentieth cen- tury industrialization led to social unrest and the emergence and growth of the Social-Democratic Party. Their so-called Folkhem (Peoples home) movement was seen in the 1920s and 1930s as in some way kin to the ideas of Hazelius a couple of generations earlier. There are interesting connections between present-day politics, immigra- tion policies, the history of the June 6 National Day of Sweden, Artur Hazelius, and Skansen, shedding light on the complicated history and tradition in Swedish society. However interesting these relationships may be, this is not the place to discuss them. Instead I will focus on the relationship between the founder of the museum Artur Hazelius (1833–1901) and the late ninteenth- century archaeologist, museologist and liberal modernist Oscar Montelius (1843–1921). Even though Montelius became the spokesman of the ideas of Skansen after Hazelius’ death, the difference between these two scholars offers basic insights into the special character of the open-air museum.

Artur Hazelius and Skansen

Djurgården, the location of Skansen, was a royal hunting park during the sev- enteenth century and is now a royal park open to the public, protected from extensive exploitation, even though there are, besides the museums and amusement parks, some large private villas and even a small shipyard. The