Artur Hazelius | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1833-11-30)30 November 1833 Stockholm, Sweden |
| Died | 27 May 1901(1901-05-27) (aged 67) |
| Occupations |
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| Known for | founder of theNordic Museum and theSkansen open-air museum |
Artur Immanuel Hazelius (30 November 1833 – 27 May 1901) was a Swedish teacher, scholar,folklorist and museum director. He was the founder of both theNordic Museum (Nordiska museet) and theSkansenopen-air museum inStockholm.[1][2]
Hazelius was born in Stockholm, Sweden as the son of Johan August Hazelius (1797–1871), aSwedish Army officer (with terminal rank ofmajor general), politician and publicist. He enteredUppsala University in 1854, and received his Ph.D. degree in 1860, after which he worked as a teacher, as well as participating in several school-book and language reform projects.
In 1869 Hazelius was the secretary of the Swedish section at the Scandinavianorthographic congress in Stockholm (det nordiska rättstavningsmötet), and published its proceedings in 1871. The radical reforms in Swedish spelling proposed there sparked opposition from theSwedish Academy. This gaveJohan Erik Rydqvist (1800–1877) the energy to publishSvenska Akademiens Ordlista (SAOL), the very conservative first edition of the Academy's one-volume spelling dictionary in 1874. However, many of the proposals from the congress were introduced in the sixth edition of the same dictionary in 1889 (e–ä,qv–kv) and the rest (dt,fv,hv) in a spelling reform for Swedish schools, introduced in 1906 by the minister of educationFridtjuv Berg (1851–1916). Berg acknowledged that Hazelius had laid the foundation for all following spelling reforms.[3][4]
During travels in the country, Hazelius noticed how Swedish folk culture, including architecture and other aspects of the material culture, was eroding under the influence of industrialization, migration and other processes of modernity, and in 1872 he decided to establish a museum for Swedish ethnography, originally (1873) called the Scandinavian ethnographic collection (Skandinavisk-etnografiska samlingen), from 1880 theNordic Museum (Nordiska Museum, nowNordiska museet). In 1891 he established the open-air museumSkansen, which became the model for other open-air museums in Northern Europe. He got the idea after a visit to the world's first open-air museum,Norsk Folkemuseum, established nearOslo in 1881.[1][5]
Hazelius was close friends with Swedish pathologistAxel Key, with whom he shared a number of common interests and helped found the museum. The two "won special acknowledgment at theWorld Exhibition in Paris 1878 where the museum was acclaimed worldwide."[6] Key also served as chair of the museum's board for several years.
For the Nordic museum, Hazelius bought or managed to get donations of objects – furniture, clothes, toys, etc. – from all over Sweden and the other Nordic countries; he was mainly interested in peasant culture but his successors increasingly started to collect objects reflecting bourgeois and urban lifestyles as well. For Skansen he collected entire buildings and farms.
Although the project did not initially get the government funding he had hoped, Hazelius received widespread support and donations, and by 1898 the Society for the promotion of the Nordic Museum (Samfundet för Nordiska Museets främjande) had 4,525 members. TheRiksdag allocated some money for the museums in 1891 and doubled the amount in 1900, the year before his death.
Hazelius was married to Sofia Elisabeth Grafström (1839–1874), daughter ofAnders Abraham Grafström, a historian, priest and member of theSwedish Academy
During the last few years of his life, Hazelius lived at Hazeliushuset, one of the old buildings on Skansen. He died on 27 May 1901, and on 4 February 1902, he was interred in a grave at Skansen.[7][8][9]
His only son Gunnar Hazelius (1874–1905) succeeded him ascurator of the Nordic Museum. Gunnar Hazelius's daughterGunnel Hazelius-Berg (1905–1997) was later costume and textile historian at the Nordic Museum. Her husband, Professor Gösta Berg (1903–1993) served as director of the Nordic Museum and Skansen from 1956 to 1963 and managing director of the Skansen Foundation from 1964.[10][11]
