A visit to the Helsinki University Museum

With the weather not so good and time on my hands I decided to visit the Arppeanum Helsinki University Museum. The museum is situated in the heart of Helsinki and at the moment in a fine old building called the Arppeanum dating back to 1869. Unfortunately this will be my last chance to visit this fine old building for the time being, as the museum will end its tenancy on the 1.6.2014 and move to the University main building, opening if all goes well on the 26.3.2015.

On entering the museum you encounter a lovely old iron stair case which takes you to the 2nd floor and a small shop selling books and souvenirs. The entrance to the museum is free and as always during my visits here you are met by friendly welcoming staff. They used to have a nice cafeteria on this floor, but I found that this had already moved out in anticipation of the museum's move.

The museum itself starts on the 3rd floor, where you can find examples of chemistry labs and find examples of dentistry, medical collections and a fine mineral collection. Above you can see one of the Chemistry labs.

On the same floor I found this cabinet which contained meteorites, some of which had fallen on Finland over the years. Whilst there a group of people joined me and I overheard one man say, that we were looking at the oldest museum cabinet in Finland.

The next couple of rooms were filled with cabinets filled with all different types of rocks and minerals. There were crystals of all shapes, sizes and colours, I went looking for a golden nugget, although I did not find one, I am sure that they have one but there was so much to see.

The next room was full of bones and fossils, this superb example of Mammoth tusks were situated right next to the door as you go in. There were cabinets full of fossils, with larger fossils on the walls.

This large fossil was hanging on the wall amongst many others. There were examples of fish and plant fossils as well as an example of real Mammoth fur.

On the top floor I found an exhibition telling about the people living in Siberia, showing and telling about their way of life from the distant past to modern times. The picture shows what kind of clothes the Siberian people wore in the winter.

Also some of their customs and beliefs were also on show, here is an example of a Shaman or tribal witch doctor, with his drum. In a cabinet next to this picture was an example of a Shaman's drum.

On leaving the museum, I found that I had spent nearly 2 hours enjoying the many artifacts on show. I hope that the new museum accommodations will be as nice as the Arppeanum and also I hope that the authorities find a public use for the building, rather than shutting it off totally from the visitors eyes.