The Strindberg Museum in Stockholm - and Strindberg's home

Have you visited the Strindberg Museum in Stockholm and Strindberg's home? Yesterday we went on a little museum tour of Stockholm with our electric bikes. One of the museums we managed to visit was the Strindberg Museum on Drottninggatan. Surprisingly nice and interesting!

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Strindberg Museum in Stockholm

I (Helena) visited the Strindberg Museum sometime during high school, but it's been a few years since then ... I had almost forgotten about it, until we started googling for museums. We wanted to visit this museum!

The Strindberg Museum is located high up on Drottninggatan, near Tegnérlunden, in an ordinary residential building. This is where August Strindberg lived for the last four years of his life.

Basic exhibition at the Strindberg Museum

There is a basic exhibition at the Strindberg Museum, focusing on Strindberg's life, works and ideas. We really liked the timeline that greeted us when we entered - here we could see Strindberg's life from his birth in 1849 to his death in 1912.

Some exhibitions are difficult to absorb and grasp, but this one is really clear - without oversimplifying reality. On one wall you can "play" with different words that describe August Strindberg and show his often contradictory sides - sociable but reclusive, misogynist but gender debater, combative but peaceful, atheist but religious.

There were many contradictions in Strindberg's life. At the Strindberg Museum, for example, we learnt how Strindberg first expressed himself as anti-Semitic, but later immersed himself in Jewish mysticism and studied Hebrew.

He was religious in many ways, but despite this he was accused of blasphemy and put on trial when he argued in his book 'Married' that it was fraudulent to see the wine and bread in the Eucharist as the body of Jesus "because the wine was 'Högstedt's Piccadon at 65 öre a jug'.’”.

As you may know, Strindberg also had a mental crisis, which he described in his book Inferno. That he originally wrote that book in French, however, was completely new to me!

About Strindberg's works and wives at the Strindberg Museum

August Strindberg was only 63 years old, but he still managed to produce a large number of novels and plays, as well as working as a visual artist. Among his most important works are Master Olof, Hemsöborna, Miss Julie, Fadren, Giftas, Inferno, Ett drömspel, Dödsdansen, Till Damaskus and Röda rummet.

Strindberg also had three wives: the Finnish-Swedish actress Siri von Essen, the Austrian journalist Frida Uhl and the Swedish actress Harriet Bosse. With Siri he had three children (Karin, Greta and Hansel), with Frida a daughter (Kerstin) and with Harriet a daughter (Anne-Marie). Despite several marriages, he lived his last years alone in his apartment on Drottninggatan.

Strindberg's home in the Blue Tower

When you visit the Strindberg Museum in Stockholm, you can also see August Strindberg's residence in the Blue Tower, at Drottninggatan 85. This is the only one of Strindberg's 24 apartments in Stockholm that can be seen. He lived here for the last four years of his life, between 1908 and 1912. The house was almost completely new when Strindberg moved in and very modern with central heating, WC and a lift.

Most of the furniture in the apartment is original, while the wallpaper has been reconstructed. Here you can see where Strindberg sat and worked, and where he ate. He had no kitchen, but he rented the apartment from Falkner's boarding house on the fifth floor, and they provided him with food, which he ate in his apartment.

You can also see the bed where August Strindberg took his last breath in 1912, after a bout with stomach cancer. When his coffin was taken to the Northern Cemetery, the streets were lined with around 60 000 people, which at the time represented one fifth of Stockholm's population.

Don't miss the Strindberg quote on Drottninggatan.

We were pleasantly surprised after visiting the Strindberg Museum in Stockholm. Nice and interesting! When you exit the museum, you can continue your Strindberg visit by reading the quotes written in the centre along Drottninggatan.

Have you visited the Strindberg Museum in Stockholm? What is your relationship with Strindberg, have you read any of his novels or seen any of his plays?

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