What do you do with a naughty child who throws a tantrum when he can get what he wants?
a - take away all his toys and lock him in his room
b - feed him to the bullies at school to teach him a lesson
c - get him a fake toy to shut him up
Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm
A couple of years ago I visited the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm. It's located in the city's Old Town, Gamla stan, a place where all tourists will pass through. I hadn't planned on visiting the museum, and actually stumbled into the old town. When I saw the Nobel Prize Museum, I figured it was interesting to learn more about the much sought after Nobel Prize. The museum itself is based on the ground floor of the old stock exchange building. It's not very big and takes probably an hour or so to see everything, or less if you're not interested in reading through all the exhibits.
As soon as you step inside, you face a small front desk where you buy your tickets. Tickets cost SEK160 that's around USD18. Under 18s go free and it's SEK120 for students and seniors. The photo below shows the back of the front desk, the front is literally a few steps from the entrance. There are no barriers to stop people from going inside without buying a ticket, but of course, you won't expect anyone to do that. There's a photo train overhead. More on that in a minute.
There's an imprint of the man himself, Nobel, on the floor just in front of the front desk. I'm not a big fan of installing designs like this on the floor. It is disrespectful to step on it, unless it's of a naughty child, then I wouldn't mind. Otherwise, you have to be careful to stay off it. Not very practical, particularly in high footfall areas. Nobel photo train
I'm not sure what this is called, so I've made up a name for it. Inside the museum, you hear a constant "clack clack clack" overhead. You get used to it after a while and don't even notice it. This is the photo train I mentioned earlier, and it runs throughout the museum. There are many cards on the train, one for each of the Nobel Prize laureates (winners) over the years. The cards travel around clustered together, and when they get to certain points, they space out, allowing visitors to read the content on the card. Your neck gets tired quickly after looking up, but I think this is a nice way to pay tribute to the laureates.
To date, there have been 1026 laureates won by 990 individuals and 28 organisations. Some have won multiple times and America has the most laureates, over 400. Some people have won none, despite their constant grovelling.
Nobel categories
For those who don't know, there are 6 categories where one can win a Nobel prize. You have to do something that has conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”. This is what Nobel stated in his will in 1895 when he left most of his fortune to fund the prize. The categories are medicine, chemistry, literature, physics, peace and economics. Peace is a funny one. If you create chaos to achieve peace, have you conferred any benefit to humankind?
I went in the summer of 2024, and the details of the 2023 laureates were on display, with a short description of their achievement.
These things changed the world exhibition
This is the main exhibition in the museum. A collection of over 250 artefacts from the lauretes. They are items relating to their journey to achieving the prize. Some are objects used during the scientific discovery, personal items, books and even Einstein's manuscript from when he won the Nobel Physics prize in 1921.
Nobel Creaations
I was a little surprised to see a fashion show in the museum. The Nobel Creations is a much lighter and more abstract exhibition compared to the previous one. Fashion design students created outfits based on their interpretation of each of the Nobel prize category, where they "challenge established methods and theories, to think outside the box and to fuse different kinds of knowledge into new statements." It was a little abstract for me, but what do I know about fashion.
Bistro Nobel
It didn't take very long to tour the museum, and before I left, I stopped by for a cup of coffee at the cafe. As I was sipping away at my coffee, I noticed some chairs had a tag, like the chairs you see on display at Ikea. Some people were switching around to sit on these chairs and taking photos. What an odd thing to do.
Intrigued, I went to take a look. It turns out these chairs, or rather the tags, were signed by the laureates, like a guestbook. I'm not sure if they sat on this exact chair or not. It would be cool if they did, but I don't see how the museum could track which bum landed on here previously.
Buying a Nobel prize
I forgot to mention, the museum has a gift shop. There was a big jar of Nobel Prize chocolate coins. It would make nice gifts for people who are desperate for a prize but can't get one. I bought myself a Nobel Prize fridge magnet. I'm a Nobel winner now!!!!
You can check out all my travel posts on the Worldmappin here or click below
