Skansen Open-Air Museum

About Skansen

Skansen is the world’s oldest open-air museum and offers views of different parts of Sweden as well as customs, traditions and the corresponding way of life.

Skansen offers a unique historic and cultural environment in which craftsmen in traditional dress such as tanners, shoemakers, silversmiths, bakers and glass-blowers demonstrate their skills in period surroundings.

The Skansen collection includes more than 150 historical buildings and houses (from 1680-) that was bought by the founder Artur Hazelius (1833-1901) from all over the country. The houses were sent piece by piece to Stockholm and rebuilt and scattered all over this 300,000 m2 area in Djurgården, an centric island of Stockholm.

This open-air museum opened in 1891 and has since then been a model for other historic installations of this kind all in several parts of the world.

There is also an open-air zoo with Scandinavian animals, like wolfs, elks and deers.

Every year since 1903 Skansen arranges a popular Christmas market where you can by Christmas decorations, buy glögg (hot wine punch) which is a central beverage in this period of the year, early december.

Skansen at Flickr