Visit to Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet

The National Natural History Museum, Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, is located just north of Stockholm, close to Stockholm University.

The museum building, which I consider one of the most beautiful in Stockholm, was completed in 1916. Before then, the zoological collections had been on display at the Westmanska Palace. The Royal Society of Science had been formed in 1739, and had received a growing number of “naturalia” for some time. Some of the collections had become damaged because of insufficient storage, so the decision to create a museum was not only to display the collections for visitor, but to store it properly.

The Westmanska Palace was bought for the purpose of creating a musuem in 1828. At that time the collections included minerals, some animals, insects and plants. The late queen Lovisa Ulrika (1720-1782) had been a keen naturalist and collector, and her naturalia collection at the Royal Palace of Drottningholm was incorporated into the new museum. Lovisa Ulrika had been corresponding frequently with the The Royal Society of Science during her lifetime, and Carl von Linné (Carl Linnaeus) himself had dedicated one of his books to her.

Lovisa Ulrika in 1738, 4 years before her marriage to the Swedish King Adolf Fredrik

The National Natural History Museum, when housed in The Westmanska Palace in the 1800s

The National Natural History Museum has the largest collection of biological specimens in Sweden, and the Entomological Department, housing more than 3 million insects specimens, also receives a constant flow of donations, thus ever growing.

I was visiting the museum as I had been given permission by the head of entomology, Niklas Apelqvist, to take small wing samples of the dragonflies in their collection, for my study of migratory dragonfly movements across Europe. The museum was under, as many offices and sites, Covid-19 restrictions, and so only a very limited amount of visitors were present, and the Entomology Department was empty, except for the two of us.

At Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, the dragonflies are kept in neat wooden drawers in a high-ceiling room with one bottom floor and one, open upper level, very similar to an old-fashioned library. There are not as many dragonflies in the collection as in The National History Museum in London, and unlike the cold, dark inhospitable collection room there, this one is light, and very warm. A bit too warm actually. 2020 was an very hot August in Stockholm (I am not complaining, Cornwall, where I live, never get properly warm), and after being so cold in The National History Museum in London, I had brought too much clothing.

The dragonfly (Odonata) collection at Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet is very international, mostly collected by long-ago expeditions to places that has since acquired freedom from imperialistic states and changed their name:

Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Zambia

British East Africa, now Kenya

Belgian Congo, now Congo

or split from larger empires following the world wars: Austrian Littoral, now Croatia

I had not thought about the mind-set and smash-and-grab methods of the entomological collectors of old before, because naively, I had considered old ‘zoologists’ different from old ‘historians’ and antiquarians. The wrong-doings of the collectors of human culture and human bones are known - many of them were grave robbers and thieves, exploiting the rich cultures of other countries and people. But pre-war zoologists, they had not been that different from modern zoologists I had thought. Or, I had not thought about it.

The dragonfly collection at Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet was to teach me otherwise.

The photos above are from Prince Wilhelm’s Expedition to Central Africa in 1921. The expedition was issued by Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, and one of the main aims were to acquire gorillas from Uganda for the museum’s collection. Important to note is that the gorilla was already protected by then - but this did not stop the zoologists from Sweden. With the Swedish prince was a filmmaker and photographer, Oscar Olsson, and together they produced a documentary about the adventure: “Med prins Wilhelm på afrikanska jaktstigar” / “With Prince Wilhelm on African hunting trails”.

Movie poster for the documentary and prince Wilhelm’s book

The prince also wrote a book about the journey to Central Africa, titled: “Among pygmies and gorillas”

Searching for “Med prins Wilhelm på afrikanska jaktstigar “ on youtube will produce some clips from the documentary. But they are not to be watch by anyone sensitive to animal cruelty. Many gorillas are seen harmed in the videos.

Foremost, the book, articles and documentary about this expedition focuses on the game hunts and the traditions of the people encountered. It is all a great adventure. In a glowing review of the prince’s book, the popular science magazine ‘Fauna and Flora’ (that is still printing today) gives the modern reader great insights to the mind-set of Swedes (and probably most Europeans) of the time:

“On the other hand, the author's words fall unequivocally harshly and rightly heavy on the "white leaders", who unleashed the curses of war even in the world of blacks, to no avail to anyone, inflicting incurable damage to the rule of the white race in Africa for a long, difficult future.”

“Game hunts are referred to simply and unassumingly as befits the real hunter, who is the greatest and most honest nature lover. The author can therefore not help to make critical remarks about the deliberate shooting of large game by certain people, and in association, he demands better and more strictly enforced hunting laws. At the same time, it is emphasized that there is a strong and prominent desire for nature conservation areas to be established, within which the African big game fauna may be preserved for future times in certain parts of Central Africa.”

Me and specimens of migrant hawkers (Aeshna mixta)

A twister (Tholymis tillarga) collected during ‘Prince W’s Exp to Centr. Afr.”

This is the context in which many of the very interesting dragonfly specimens were collected. Specimens that will contribute immensely to my research.

There is no questions that museum collections, entomological ones and others, are of enormous value to science. And we have long known the troublesome background to how certain items came to be hoarded into the museums of the rich and privileged. I had not thought about the fact that this is how many animals came to be collected as well. They were perhaps not stolen from emotionally important settings, such as graves and places of worship, but sometimes their removal contributed to the endangerment of species. And perhaps they should be part of museums on site, rather than in museums far far away?

Interestingly enough, as I was looking though the drawers with migratory dragonfly species, at the largest entomological collection in Sweden, not one dragonfly was collected in Sweden. Not one.

Poster with photos from the Department of Entomology, as it looked in the beginning of the 20th century

References

Carlotta -a database for museum collections: “Prins Wilhelm”. http://collections.smvk.se/carlotta-em/web/object/1021214

Carlotta -a database for museum collections: “Svenska zoologiska expeditionen till Centralafrika (1921) : expedition, resa, upptäcktsfärd” http://collections.smvk.se/carlotta-em/web/object/3602581

Fauna & Flora 1922, volume 17, pages 286-287. Project Runeberg: http://runeberg.org/faunaflora/1922/0290.html

Youtube: “Med prins Wilhelm på afrikanska jaktstigar (1921)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TXONpdWe_Y