ISS 25 (1995).pdf - The International Council of Museums

with its various departments. Thomsen's foremost preoccupaoon was me
prehistoric collection, which was the subject for discussion of a Royai
cOmmission formed in 1807, where Thomsen became the ;ecretary in 1816.
In 1820 another commission started to work with the distribution to new
specialized museums of the collections in the old Royal Cabinet of Curiosities,
to which Worm's collection had been previously added. but which was now
considered outdated. Thomsen participated in bringing the pictures to the
new National Museum of Art established in 1839. The ethnographic objects
formed the core of the Ethnographic Museum opened two years later as the
first in the world. In 1861 Thomsen became the director of the whole
National Museum complex. Like Worms, Thomsen corresponded widely with
colleagues all over Scandinavia and he was a sought for advisor on museum
issues. Thus he had a strong influence on the arrangement of the Swedish
prehistoriC collections which were now at last taken care of in a proper way.
From the century also the famous Thorvaldsen-museum (1848) and the
Carlsberg Glyptotek (1888) date.
An equally important contribution was towards the end of the century made
by Artur Hazelius in Sweden. In his university years he had eagerly
participated in the scandinavistic manifestations and at the same time his
studies of Old Norse and Swedish dialects kindled by the nationalistic
romanticism reigning in the humanistic studies of the day had made him
a.,.,=e of the swiftly disappearing traditional culture of the provinces. This
combined to inspire his project The Scandinavian Ethnographic Collections
which he brought together, arranged and opened as an exhibition in the
centre of Stockholm in 1873. This collection became the nucleus of the later
Nordiska Museet, whose completion Hazelius himself however did not live to
see. But his name is first of all linked to Skansen, the open-air museum
inaugurated 1891 in Stockholm. His idea was to create a museum, where the
objects were integrated in their proper surrounding, not only in a genuine
building, but in the complete farmstead with all buildings belonging to it
ana with the original surrounding of cultivated ground reconstructed. And
in the buildings, among the objects the visitor should have the opportunity
to meet people al horne in the culture which the farmstead represented.
Hazeliu; ha; been honoured as the inventor of the open air-museum
concept. But this is a truth which has been challenged. in the South of
Sweden, at Lund, Georg Karlin was in the same years busy with similar
plans. In Norway a number of persons had the idea to save specimens of the
extraordinary material culture both in wooden objects and timber
architecture, foremost among them Anders Sandtvig founder of Maihaugen
in Lillehamrner and Hans Jacob Aall founder of Norsk Folkemuseum. In
Denmark l3ernhard Olsen, founder of the Danish Folk Museum, inspired both
by Karlin and Haze1ius but also by a visit to the World Exhibition of 1878 in
Paris, could open his Open Air Museum in Lyngby close to Copenhagen in
1901. Although the question of original authorship may be controversial,
the open-air museum concept seems to be a genuine Scandinavian
phenomenon. In the writings of both Marc Bloch and George Henri Riviere
we can see this certified as also its importance for the later shaping of
Riviere's museological concepts.
The 19th century was permeated with nationalistic ideas. And in Finland and
Norway the nationalistic ideas kindled an opposition against the dependence
on Swedish and Danish official culture and we can witness its expression in
museum projects. As a reaction on the Royal Commission of 1807 in
Copenhagen, Norwegians began the formation of an archaeological
collection of their own began, which was located in the university recently
organised in Oslo. At the same time museum- plans were developed in Bergen
- with British Museum in London as a model. In Iceland its National museum
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