Official visitors guide
Jönköping | Huskvarna
Gränna | Visingsö
Official visitors guide
Jönköping | Huskvarna
Gränna | Visingsö
Thanks to Amalia Erikson, Gränna is Sweden's town of peppermint rocks. At Grenna Museum you will learn more about Amalia and other important people from the history of Gränna. Polarcenter at Grenna Museum has the country's largest polar history collection of objects. The crown jewel in the collections is the objects of S A Andrée's polar expedition, when three polar researchers travel in a balloon towards the North Pole. The journey has a tragic end.
Opposite the museum’s main building stands Gränna's oldest house, Franckska gården. Here you will find the local history exhibition with seven small rooms with different themes. In the museum's glass entrance there is the Gallery where you always can see temporary exhibitions with photos, sculptures or paintings.
The polar center is the collective name for the exhibitions about expeditions in Arctic and Antarctica. For the first time there is a permanent exhibition and a film about Otto Nordenskjöld's and Sweden's first expedition to Antarctica 1901-1903.
In collaboration with the Norwegian Polar Research Secretariat, there is a public computer where you can learn more about where research expeditions in Arctic and Antarctica are today and what they are researching about.
Most of the exhibition is devoted to the André expedition. With the scientific purpose of mapping the northern polar region, the engineer Salomon August Andrée, the physicist and photographer Nils Strindberg and the engineer Knut Frænkel get off in the gas balloon The eagle (Örnen). In the year 1897 they take off from Danskön at Spetsbergen with the aim set to cross the North Pole. Something goes very wrong, the men die and are found 33 years later on a deserted glacial island, White Island (Vitön), in the Arctic Ocean.
At Grenna Museum you will follow the planning and preparations of S A Andrée's polar expedition. The museum shows photos and objects from the flight, the landing, the walk across the ice, the find and the return. In a three-dimensional experience, the physician and author Bea Uusma presents her theory about what happened to the members of the expedition during the last days on the White Island.
Bea Uusma has worked for many years to solve the adventurers' mysterious death. In an investigation of André expedition's clothes, she found dark spots in the fabric in the jacket Knut Fraenkel wore when he was found on the White Island. To find out if there is blood on the fabric, samples are analyzed at The Department of Genetic Identification at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, which is leading in Europe to track old blood. If it turns out to be blood, it is an important piece of the puzzle why the members of the expedition died after a short time on the White Island. If there is a positive result, the answer will be presented in a scientific article at Grenna Museum.
Do you want to know more? Bea Uusma has released the August Prize-winning book "Expedition: My Love Story". Follow her exciting hunt for answers in the André expedition! beauusma.se
South of Gränna there is a real gem, namely the village of Röttle. During the summer the museum operates an old mill called Rasmus Mill, from the 17th century. Here you also find Jerusalem's 13th-century mill, which is one of Sweden's oldest non-ecclesiastical buildings.
On top of the hill beside Gränna you have Grännaberget (Gränna Mountain). There is an outdoor museum here with several cultural-historical buildings. You have a fantastic view over Gränna, Lake Vättern and the island of Visingsö.