It couldn’t have been any greyer — flat skies and a persistent thin drizzle keeping everything damp to the touch outside. But we had a destination in mind — the IKEA Museum in Almhult, Sweden — located in the original 1950s building that had been the first store in the retail empire.
The exhibits are spread out over several floors, but the entire experience moves at a sensible pace when compared to the slower-paced decision making necessary when shopping in one of their retail stores.
The museum’s purpose is to explain the origins and history behind the founding of IKEA and why the harsh economic conditions of the region, both before World War II and immediately afterwards, had contributed to the ideas that fermented inside the head of Ingvar Kamprads.
Interestingly, the museum goes back to the rural poverty of the mid-1800s, a time that saw tens of thousands of Swedes emigrating in hopes of a better life, usually to the United States of America.
Once the exhibit arrives at the pre-war years of the 1930s, it very truthfully reveals that Kamprad’s beloved grandmother was a devoted follower of Hitler and believed in his cause. Fortunately, although Kamprad himself flirted with those ideas as a young teenager, he soon proved that his destiny was to empower Swedish society as a whole through good design at a fair cost.
The exhibits that showed how the building must have looked in 1958 when it opened were particularly interesting. There was nothing there that we wouldn’t have had in our own home today.
We arrived at lunch time after I needed to sleep in a bit (chronic insomnia struck again!) and headed straight for the meatballs. Mark were the classic ones, but mine were salmon instead.
The lounge area of the cafe had a gas-effects fireplace and it was a cozy place for the informal business meetings we saw being conducted.
It’s a very pleasant museum and the historical aspects of the exhibits allow the visitor to understand the background history that eventually created the global powerhouse that is the IKEA retail empire. Highly recommended!
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©Deborah Harmes 2007-2019, ©Mark Harmes 2007-2019
©A Wanderful Life 2007-2019
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Deborah Harmes is a freelance writer, editor, and photographer and may be found at http://www.deborahharmes.com — Linkedin — Twitter — Instagram — Alamy photographic portfolio.
