A concise history of museums in Scandinavia

The common establishment of new types of museums and collections across the Scandinavian countries from the mid-seventeenth century to the end of the twentieth century will be the primary focus in the following. These commonalities will loosely be paralleled with societal changes. The use of key concepts such as “type,” “collection,” “museum,” and “societal changes” will be rooted in common sense, that is, pragmatically and without further theoretical reflections. This approach distills a “Scandinavian” history of museums in the singular, which puts focus on clusters of identical museum types – both local and nationwide, small and large – originating within delimited time spans. As the Scandinavian countries are in many ways entangled historically, such an overall and long-time perspective on the development in this part of Europe contributes to a more multifaceted understanding of the history of museums. At the end, we draw some tentative conclusions at a generic level about new museum types and societal changes.