ABSTRACT
This chapter maps the history of Scandinavian museums from early collection work, the royal Kunstkammer, and cabinets in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the regional and national museums originating in the nineteenth century and further to, and within the frames of industrialization and the welfare state, new trends in the twentieth century. Our focus will primarily be on the common establishment of – within delimited time spans – new types of museums and collections across the Scandinavian countries. These commonalities will loosely be paralleled with societal changes. As the three countries are in many ways entangled historically, such an overall and long-time perspective on the development of museums in this part of Europe contributes to a more multifaceted understanding of the history of museums. At the end, we draw some tentative conclusions about new museum types and societal changes in terms of interdependence between type and change, national framing, and community.
