Abba museum opens in Sweden

Celebrating the music and artistry of Sweden’s most successful band of all time, ABBA The Museum will open its doors to the public on Tuesday.

The people behind the new museum devoted to ABBA hope it will attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Swedish capital and on the eve of the opening, media was let in for a sneak-preview on Monday.

The museum, a permanent exhibition within a hall of fame of Swedish pop music, features memorabilia, like stage costumes worn by the singers, and visitors will also be able to sing along to ABBA songs alongside life-size holograms of the group.

ABBA member Bjorn Ulvaeus has been involved in setting up and financing the museum.

“You know it’s quite weird in a way to build a museum over yourself. It might come naturally to some people but it doesn’t to me and I had to overcome that because I realised I had to get involved to make this exhibition in Stockholm something that I could be very proud of,” he told a news conference.

He said he had overcome the strange feeling by placing himself on the outside looking in.

Ulvaeus also said the process of creating the museum exhibition was similar to writing a musical.

“You know in a musical you have scenes, you have an audience sitting down and you move the scenes for the audience to follow the story. Here you move the audience. That’s the big difference. You have the scenes, you move the audience. So the thinking behind the story telling here is I would say much the same as in a musical,” he said.

But the museum project does not not mean that the four members of the super group will ever reunite.

“We split up in the beginning of 1982 I think so it’s quite a lot of years now since that time and as you all know we’ve never reunited and so I take the opportunity now to say that we are not going to either,” Ulvaeus said.

ABBA, made up of Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, shot to fame when they won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Waterloo.

They went on to become one of Sweden’s biggest exports with such hit songs as Dancing Queen and Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight), having sold around 370 million records in total. Apart from clothes, records and instruments and other memorabilia, the museum also features a piano that is connected to Bjorn Ulvaeus’ private one in his home. When he plays on his piano, the visitors will be able to hear it in the museum too.

Much in the exhibition is interactive and songs and images recorded there can later be downloaded at home. Curator Ingmarie Halling said it was important that the exhibition exude warmth.

“We’ve been working out of the perspective that we will have the warmth and the personality and a lot of heart to it. More heart and feeling than anything else and I know that it works because yesterday Frida was walking around here and she had a little tear in her eye because it was very nice and she felt a good vibe from her own story and for me it’s very satisfying because, I mean it’s four living persons. You have to tread gently,” she said.

Halling knows the ABBA members well as she did the make-up and hair on a few of ABBA’s tours and remains friends with Anni-Frid.

Outside the museum, dozens of fans were waiting to catch a glimpse of an ABBA member. Most were from abroad and had come to Sweden especially for the museum opening.

ABBA fan member club Jill Perlstrom from the United Kingdom said the reason ABBA had remained successful was the timeless music that kept attracting young people.

“I think the music is timeless really and it still lives on even now and you get younger fans coming in and enjoying ABBA as well so I just think they’re going to go on and on and on,” she said.

Neill Standring, who has a ticket for Tuesday’s opening, said he had travelled from the United Kingdom to be “part of the moment”.

“It’s just so good to be part of music history really. The museum is a huge thing, it’s an acknowledgment of their achievements and them as a group and just really wanted to be here as a part of the moment.”

Three of the four ABBAs will attend an evening event at the museum, but line-up will not be complete as Agnetha is in the United Kingdom promoting her new album.