Nordic Museum

This guide to the Nordic Museum in Stockholm opens with schoolteacher Artur Hazelius buying an ordinary wool skirt from a farmer's wife in Dalarna in 1872, convinced that rural Swedish life was vanishing unnoticed. You'll hear how he wrote hundreds of letters begging for castoffs, earned the nickname Sweden's greatest beggar, and hired gatherers who brought back entire buildings taken apart log by log. The guide also follows architect Isak Gustaf Clason's plan for the palace meant to hold it all, and how long Hazelius chased donors to build it.