Norrbottens Museum is the county museum for

Norrbotten County Norrbotten County ( sv, Norrbottens län; se, Norrbottena leatna, fi, Norrbottenin lääni) is the northernmost county or '' län'' of Sweden. It is also the largest county by land area, almost a quarter of Sweden's total area. It shares border ...

, Sweden, and is located in the

Luleå Luleå ( , , locally ; smj, Luleju; fi, Luulaja) is a city on the coast of northern Sweden, and the capital of Norrbotten County, the northernmost county in Sweden. Luleå has 48,728 inhabitants in its urban core (2018) and is the seat of Lu ...

city center with an associated archive and library in

Björkskatan Björkskatan, often called Björx, is a residential area in Luleå, Sweden. It is located on the island of Hertsön Hertsön is a Swedish island in the Bothnian Bay, largely occupied by the eastern districts of the city of Luleå. Due to post-g ...

. One of Sweden's 24

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

museums, the Norrbottens Museum aims to preserve and transmit the cultural history of Norrbotten. Its collection includes archeology, ethnology, art, history, and culture. The museum covers the entire county, which covers a quarter of Sweden, and museum experts work throughout the region to help manage cultural projects, exhibitions, archaeological research and pedagogical activities. The museum was founded in 1886, and has a large collection of images and objects associated with Norrbotten. The museum's image archive contains more than 2 million images. Many of the objects and photographs from the museum's collect can also be viewed online via its Carlotta database.

History

As early as 1878, J.A. Wikström, company manager for the timber and mining company, began collecting and storing objects from Norrbotten. On 20 September 1886, city leaders in Luleå established the Norrbottens Museiförening to curate and expand the Gellivara collection into a full museum. The collection was initially housed in borrowed space, but in July 1936 the museum moved into a new dedicated building designed by the architect . Norrbottens Museum was a pioneer in pan-Scandinavian cooperation among museums, working as early as the late 1960s with the

Tromsø Museum Tromsø (, , ; se, Romsa ; fkv, Tromssa; sv, Tromsö) is a municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Tromsø. Tromsø lies in Northern Norway. The municipality is the 2 ...

in Norway and the Northern Ostrobothnia Museum in Oulu, Finland, to mount joint exhibitions and tours. This effort led to the founding in the late 1970s of the Nordkalottmuseet (Arctic Museum of the Nordic Countries) cooperative effort.

References

External links

Norrbottens Museum website
{{Authority control Museums established in 1886 Museums in Norrbotten County Norrbotten County Luleå Culture in Luleå