This was a large-scale operation for which entirely new techniques had to be devised, and a special dry dock had to be built to house the vessel, which is 62 m (200 ft) long. Reconstruction work is now almost complete. Numerous finds from the ship furniture, everyday objects, coins, carved ornaments, etc. are displayed in a special exhibition.
The Skansen Open-Air Museum (established 1891), extends over a large area to the E. The founder and initiator of Skansen was Artur Hazelius, who wished to save something of the older Sweden before the development of industry had irreversibly changed the country. The old buildings brought together here include a church and a manor-house, Lapp dwellings and an upland shieling (summer dairy farm), smallholders’ cottages and peasant farmhouses, and a whole quarter of a town with craftsmen’s workshops. Over the years, 150 old buildings have been assembled at Skansen, which is now ten times larger than it was when it was first established. In the various houses and workshops, visitors can see butter and cheese making, baking, weaving, basket-work, printing, wood-turning and glass-blowing.
But Skansen is a Zoological Garden as well as a museum of cultural history. Travel north Scandinavia Its spacious grounds contain specimens of the various animals that live in Sweden, with goats, hill cattle, etc. in their appropriate setting, with separate enclosures for brown and polar bears, bison, elks and reindeer. There are also non-Scandinavian animals, including monkeys, elephants, sealions and penguins, and many smaller animals and birds live wild. The zoo is open throughout the year. To the N of the park is the Bredablick lookout tower, to the S the Soliden restaurant (fine view). Here concerts, displays of folk dancing and theatrical performances are given daily in summer.
To the E of Skansen is Rosendal Castle, built by King Karl XIV in 1 823-7 and since 1 91 3 a Karl Johan Museum, furnished in the style of the period. On the opposite side of the island the promontory of Waldemarsudde was formerly the residence of the royal painter, Prince Eugen (1 865-1 947) and has a fine collection of pictures. At the E end of DjurgSrden is the Thiel Gallery (mainly 1 9th and 20th c. Swedish pictures). Nearby stands a monument of industrial archaeology, an old oil-miI I (1 785).
On the N side of Stockholm is the district of VETENSKAPSSTADEN (City of Learning), in which are the Royal Academy of Sciences and the National History Museum (Naturhistoriska Riks-museet), with an outstanding collection. To the N E, in the villa suburb of Lidingo on the island of the same name, is Millesgirden, the former home and studio ofthe Swedish sculptor Carl Milles (1 875-1 955), with an open-air museum of works by Milles and others by foreign sculptors.
