Lund: Historiska Museet, Kulturen, and Botaniska Trädgården

I’m still based in Malmö, Sweden, but this morning I visited the very nearby city of Lund. I loved it and stayed the afternoon to visit two museums there, Historiska Museum, Kulturen, and its botanical garden, Botaniska Trädgården.

Historiska Museet

The full name of the Historiska Museet is the Lunds Universitets Historiska Museum. It’s part of Lund University.

One of my guidebooks said it’s kind of boring “unless you have a specialist interest in ecclesiastical history.” I don’t know why it said that. There’s not a lot about ecclesiastical history, although there are a couple of small rooms with old crosses and medieval religious wood sculptures.

However, I was confused. I know what you’re thinking. “But, Joel, you’re always confused.” Hey, I object to that! “Always” is a bit of an exaggeration, but, admittedly, only a bit.

Here’s what confused me. Another of my guidebooks talks about “Historiska Museet, containing Domkyrkomuseet.” I think it’s the same place. But I did a web search on “Domkyrkomuseet.” It took me to a Swedish-language website of the Church of Sweden.

The picture of the building on the website is the building I was in.

The translate feature of Chrome told me the museum is behind the Domkrykan. The museum I was in was behind the Domkyrkan. I saw some of the items pictured on the website in the museum.

But Chrome also translated some of the words on the page to, “The Cathedral Museum is under renovation and will reopen in 2024.” It’s now 2025. Did they not update the website when the renovations ended? Or did the renovations take longer than they expected, and the cathedral’s portion of the museum is still not open? I have no idea.

The English-language floor plan of the museum that the ticket seller handed me resolved my confusion when I took a closer look at it. The floor plan depicts the beginning of a bridge just off to the side of the floor plan, but not the full bridge or what’s on the other side. Before I entered the museum, I’d seen a pedestrian bridge between the museum and another building across the street.

Beside where the floor plan depicted the entrance to that bridge, were the words, “The Cathedral Museum. The exhibition is closed due to remodelling and will reopen again in a few years.” “Reopen again?” How many times is it going to reopen?

So, the boring part mentioned by my first guidebook is closed. Oh, well. And the church’s website was overly optimistic. Of course, “reopen in a few years” is a tad dubious. How often do they reprint that floor plan? Has it been a few years already? Or is the reopening always a few years away?

But never mind that. The first exhibit area of the Historiska Museum was dedicated to the history of Lund University. And a long history it has been. The university received its charter on December 19, 1666. It’s a shame they couldn’t have signed the charter a day earlier. December 18 is a very auspicious day.

Apart from 1, the prime factors that you have to multiply to get 18 are 2x3x3. And December is the 12th month. The prime factors of 12 are 2x2x3. So, December 18 is 2x2x3 2x3x3. How more auspicious can you get than that?

But never mind that. Just trust me when I say that December 18 is an auspicious day. (Others may disagree with me on that.)

All of the text in the Lund University history exhibit was in both Swedish and English.

Other exhibit areas in the Historika Museet included archaeological finds from around the world, including Stone and Bronze Age artifacts, a collection of ancient coins, the medieval religious art and crosses I mentioned above, a room with mostly plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman statues, and probably one or two other things I’ve forgotten.

Getting English text in those other rooms was hit or miss. One room displayed almost exclusively Swedish. Other rooms had the major text in both languages, but details in only Swedish. Another room provided just Swedish, but offered a QR code that took me to a webpage with English translations for some of the text.

(Oh, there’s also a “Zoological Hall” listed on the floor plan. But there’s a sign on the door saying (in English) that the animals are being moved to another museum and there’ll be another exhibit in that room sometime.)

I found Lund Historika Museet to be an interesting little museum, even if the spotty English was frustrating. Then again, this is Sweden, not an English-speaking country. Imagine the frustration of someone who can read neither Swedish nor English.

Kulturen

Nordic countries seem to have a thing for open-air museums. I was in one in Norway, the Norwegian Folk Museum, in Oslo. I visited one on this trip already in Örebro, Sweden, Wadköping. I know there’s a big one in Stockholm that I may visit while I’m there, Skansen. And now here’s Kulturen, an open-air museum in Lund.

(Kulturen is a private museum. Their website says that they also have another one in Östarp. I’d never heard of Östarp until I saw it on the Kulturen website. Apple Maps says it’s about a 40-minute drive east of Malmö.)

There are two sections to Kulturen, with a small pedestrian tunnel under a narrow road that connects the two sections. In the section where the entrance is, there’s a big building called “The White House” (no, not that White House). It contains exhibits on the history of Lund since the 1500s. It’s quite informative. The city has had an interesting history.

Behind the White House, there is another largeish, but not as large, building that contains exhibits on textiles, but also a smattering of other topics such as old-timey technologies and modern tourism. There are also some other old buildings in this section of Kulturen, but I’m not sure if they were constructed there to look like older buildings, or if they were old buildings that were moved there.

The other section of Kulturen, the one on the other side of the tunnel, is closer to the other open-air museums I’ve been to. There is a collection of old buildings from I don’t know how far afield in Sweden that were moved to Kulturen and placed there. (I assume there was considerable disassembly and reassembly involved because most are probably too big to be moved whole.)

There was one small “summer house” (basically a cute, small cottage) that, according to the sign beside it, is in situ in Kulturen.

Many of the buildings contained period pieces of furniture or items such as an old spinning wheel and an old loom.

To my taste, the most interesting and attractive building at Kulturen was an old, beautifully rustic, wooden church. The altarpiece was colourfully decorated with painted wood carvings. Frescoes had been painted on the side wood walls. And there was an organ at the back of the church.

This back section of Kulturen also had some herb plantings and a lovely little pond with waterlilies in bloom with pink flowers.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Kulturen.

Botaniska Trädgården

Lund has a botanical garden, Botaniska Trädgården, that’s run by Lund University. (The university is a really big deal in Lund.)

It’s quite a mix. There are some sections where plants are packed into little plots with very narrow paths between them. There’s a small wooded area. In one large section, they’ve let one type of purple wildflower run, well, wild, which I suppose is what wildflowers are supposed to do. But they’ve taken over that section. Then, there’s another section where a wide variety of flowers are planted in neat rows.

Lund’s Botaniska Trädgården has some greenhouses. Anyone want to guess what I thought of them? Anyone? It’s not much of a trick question.

If you’ve been following along, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. I didn’t think anything of the greenhouses because they were closed for renovations. Rather than just put up a sign saying they’re closed on account of Joel visiting, they had some workers up on the roof pretending to do work so I wouldn’t be offended about them not wanting to let me in.

What the heck is it with greenhouses in Sweden? Do they close them all at the same time for renovations? On this trip, in Gothenburg’s Botaniska Trädgården the large greenhouses they had were ripped down to make way for new greenhouses they were going to build in the same location. And in Gothenburg’s Trädgårdsföreningen park, their giant “Palm House” was closed for renovations when I was there.

Are there enough experienced greenhouse renovators and builders in Sweden to do all those projects simultaneously? Couldn’t they keep at least one open for me to visit? I usually like greenhouses. Typically, that’s where they grow the most exotic plants. Harrumph.

Nevertheless, Lund’s Botaniska Trädgården is a good one. There are myriad beautiful flowers, trees, and other vegetation. I’ll post a collage of some of the flowers here.

After I left the gardens, I headed back to the train station to catch one of the many trains that run from there to Malmö and elsewhere. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed my day in Lund. I probably could tell you if I weren’t so tired. But I am so tired.

Suffice it to say that the little bit of Lund I saw, which was restricted to the old part of the city, is fantastic.