Museum of Natural History — Attraction in Stockholm

I came here with my 3,5 yo daughter expecting a wonderful analog museum experience. A great thing for us to do together away from the regular everyday life. And what do we find?

Screens, screens, screens and more screens, on every floor, and at glorious child-friendly heights too so that the entire museum experience became a very tiring war of trying to keep my kid away from every screen.

A museum is supposed to be a place for learning and calm, and studies have shown that it’s harder even for adults to read and comprehend what they’ve read from a screen vs. paper, and toddlers get overstimulated from too much screen time! Yet the great minds behind centuries of animal studies have neglected this fact? The amounts of money spent on these screens and the digital platforms they run on, must cost a fortune compared to easily printable media that could have been there instead.

Each screen was also filled to the brims with text, in such small font that I became tired and overwhelmed just by glancing at them. Nowhere in the museum did I stop and read about anything it was just all too much. The dim mood lighting to create a beautiful setting for the animals also was also very hard on the eyes with every screen beaming like a lighthouse in the dark.

And there wasn’t a single piece of text or information on the walls about the Nordic animals on the top floor. Nothing!! What a disaster.

This museum was a huge let down, even though the animals and the conservation efforts throughout were magnificently on display.

Digital is NOT always better. It can be, when used in moderation and in a meaningful way. But plastering a natural history museum with 200 screens is just not good for anyone. Not the staff or the visitors.

I for one will not recommend this museum, it’s far off and just...

Well made, with good quality exhibits. I would say it’s the most suitable for middle school kids. Our 5 and 7 year olds found it relatively interesting, especially interactive parts, but I don’t think they learned that much. Upstairs rooms about human body, ocean and forrest nature exhibits were the most popular. They were simple enough, cool to look at and had some interactive elements that kids liked (not all of those worked smoothly, however). As an adult, I think the exhibit with Neanderthals and other human species was the most interesting.

I’d say worth a visit during rainy or chilly day. We arrived at around 12 in the afternoon and left a little before the closing at 17.00. It felt like more than enough time.

It was very very warm inside, so I would make sure to have a T-shirt. There’s a nice dining area with tables, chairs and a small kitchen with sink and microwaves . There were lots of people there but wasn’t too hard to find a place at about 13:30.

There’s plenty of parking even if you come later in the day. The cheapest option is by the apartment buildings, it was 50kr...

The Swedish Museum of Natural History (Swedish: Naturhistoriska riksmuseet, literally, the National Museum of Natural History), in Stockholm, is one of two major museums of natural history in Sweden, the other one being located in Gothenburg.

The museum was founded in 1819 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,[3] but goes back to the collections acquired mostly through donations by the academy since its foundation in 1739. These collections had first been made available to the public in 1786. The museum was separated from the Academy in 1965.

The present buildings for the museum in Frescati, Stockholm, was designed by the architect Axel Anderberg and completed in 1916, topped with a dome. As of 2014 it is the largest museum building in Sweden. The main campus of Stockholm University was later built next to the museum. The Swedish Museum of Natural History Side Entrance

The museum has Sweden's first purpose-built IMAX Dome cinema called Cosmonova, which opened in a dedicated annex of the museum in 1993.The cinema is also the largest...