What is the Spritmuseum?
Spritmuseum — the “Museum of Spirits” — is Stockholm’s museum of alcohol and drinking culture, on the island of Djurgården. It covers how Sweden has made, sold, taxed, rationed and drunk alcohol over the past few centuries, and it houses the Absolut Art Collection, works commissioned by the vodka brand Absolut from artists including Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst.
Where is it, and what building is it in?
Spritmuseum occupies a building on Djurgårdsvägen, close to the Vasa Museum and the ABBA Museum, in the cluster of museums that lines the island’s northern shore. According to Spritmuseum’s own site, the building dates to the 1850s and was originally a drill hall — a “manege” — used by the Royal Swedish Navy’s marine corps for indoor exercise and training.
The building went through various institutional uses over the following century before Spritmuseum moved into it in 2010, having previously operated at a different address. The exterior retains its 19th-century military form; inside, it has been converted entirely to gallery and exhibition space.
What does the collection actually contain?
The permanent exhibitions, as described on Spritmuseum’s own site, are built around the production and consumption of alcohol in Sweden rather than around a single artist or period, which is what separates it from a conventional art or history museum. The core threads include:
- The history of brännvin (Swedish aquavit-style spirit distilled from grain or potatoes) and its place in rural and urban drinking culture.
- The rise of the state alcohol monopoly and the systems Sweden built to control who could buy alcohol and how much.
- Advertising, branding and the export success of Absolut Vodka, produced in Åhus in southern Sweden.
- A recurring programme of temporary exhibitions on drinking rituals, cocktail culture, or specific spirits categories, which changes over time.
The museum is object-and-story driven: cabinets of bottles, ration documents, advertising material and archival photography sit alongside interactive and sensory displays rather than a single chronological hall.
What is the Absolut Art Collection?
The Absolut Art Collection is a body of artwork commissioned by the Absolut Vodka brand from the 1980s onward, as part of one of the longer-running collaborations between a consumer brand and contemporary artists. Spritmuseum’s own site states the collection includes work by Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Louise Bourgeois and Damien Hirst, among others, all originally produced for Absolut’s advertising and marketing campaigns.
Spritmuseum holds and displays a portion of this collection, framing it as a case study in how a single product built a decades-long visual identity through contemporary art rather than conventional advertising alone. Readers interested in how Stockholm’s museums handle 20th-century and contemporary art more broadly can compare this with the collection described in Moderna Museet’s own holdings.
What is the smell exhibition about?
Spritmuseum includes a sensory exhibition, described on the museum’s own site as “Lukta” (Swedish for “smell”), in which visitors can smell raw ingredients and finished spirits — juniper, aniseed, wormwood, various grains — rather than only read about them. It is built around the idea that flavour in distilled spirits starts as smell, and that most visitors have never consciously smelled the raw components of a drink they may have tasted many times.
This is one of the museum’s more hands-on sections, and it is aimed at both adults and younger visitors, since it does not involve tasting alcohol itself.
How does the museum cover Sweden’s alcohol monopoly and rationing history?
Sweden restricted individual alcohol purchases through a rationing booklet system known as the motbok, in place for much of the first half of the 20th century, and today still controls retail alcohol sales through a state monopoly, Systembolaget. Spritmuseum’s exhibitions document both the motbok system and the monopoly’s origins as durable institutional history rather than current commentary.
This part of the collection is likely to be the most useful section for residents rather than visitors passing through: it explains why Sweden’s retail alcohol system looks the way it does today, a structure that still governs where and how spirits, wine and beer above a certain strength can be bought. Readers wanting current rules on purchase, hours or online ordering should check Systembolaget’s own site, which is the operator and the only authority on current detail.
Is the Spritmuseum suitable for families?
Spritmuseum’s own site markets the museum to a general adult and family audience, not as an adults-only venue, since the sensory and historical exhibitions do not require tasting alcohol to be understood. Any tasting activities the museum runs as part of ticketed extras are subject to Swedish age-of-purchase rules for alcohol, so families should check current details on the museum’s own site before booking anything beyond general admission.
How does the Spritmuseum fit with the other Djurgården museums?
Djurgården carries the densest concentration of major museums in Stockholm, and Spritmuseum sits inside that cluster rather than apart from it. Within a short walk are the Vasa Museum, built around the recovered 17th-century warship, the ABBA Museum, the Nordiska Museet’s collections on Swedish cultural history, and Skansen, Stockholm’s open-air museum.
For a visitor planning a single day on the island, Spritmuseum is generally a shorter visit than Vasa or Skansen, which makes it a plausible second or third stop rather than the anchor of a Djurgården day. A fuller list of Stockholm’s museums and galleries, including smaller specialist collections, is kept on the Museums & Galleries hub.
What are the practical details — hours, tickets, tastings?
Spritmuseum sets its own opening hours, admission prices and any tasting-add-on charges, and these change over time, including seasonal variation and closures around public holidays. As with all Djurgården museums, hours can differ between summer and winter, and Swedish museums frequently close or run reduced hours on Mondays.
Because these figures are not durable, the reliable source is the museum itself: check current opening hours, ticket prices and any tasting or guided-tour options directly on Spritmuseum’s own site before visiting.
How do you get to the Spritmuseum?
Spritmuseum is on Djurgården, an island connected to central Stockholm by bridge and, seasonally, by ferry from Slussen and Nybroplan. It sits within walking distance of the Djurgården tram line and the bus routes that serve the island’s museum district, and it shares the same access points used for the Vasa Museum and ABBA Museum.
Djurgården has limited general parking and no metro station on the island itself, so public transport — tram, bus or the seasonal ferry — is the practical way in for most visitors, and current routes and timetables should be checked on the transport operator’s own site rather than assumed to be fixed year to year.
Access Stockholm is an independent guide written from published, checkable sources. We have not visited the places described here and we do not publish personal recommendations or invented ‘local favourites’ — where something is singled out as notable, we say who says so. Opening times, fares, closures and prices change at short notice, so treat everything here as a starting point and confirm with the museum, operator or venue directly before building a day around it. We give no advice on visas, insurance, health or safety; use your own government’s official guidance for those.
Featured image: Photo by Holger.Ellgaard, source, CC BY-SA 3.0
