The Alfred Nobel Museum

I recently returned from Finland and Sweden traveling with Crolace. We went over for a mutual friend's wedding. Many things from our trip were fun, interesting, enlightening, and meaningful. One of those things was the Alfred Nobel Museum.

It is a small, modern looking museum in the heart of Gamla Stan, the old city. The building was formerly the stock exchange! Our tour guide told us the story of Alfred Nobel. He domesticated nitroglycerin, inventing dynamite. He built factories world wide and the invention was a major contributor to construction projects undertaken worldwide. He collected 

great wealth and sadly had no family of his own to share it with. However, Nobel is more famous for his will, establishing the Nobel prizes, than dynamite. His will instructed that the interest on his fortune (which has now been proportionally added to) be given yearly as five substantial monetary prizes which "shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." The categories for the prizes are physics, chemistry, medicine or physiology, literature, and peace. (A sixth category for economics was established in 1969.) 

The museum celebrated prize winners, around 800 in all! We heard and saw some of the winners' stories. I was so impressed with them. They are passionate for their field. They are good. It is so refreshing and uplifting to hear about 800 people who have really, really made our world better. From Marie Curie to the inventor of x-ray to Jane Addams (the mother of social work) to Elie Wiesel. 

The winners are also great examples to me of taking time to meditate into creativity. Our guide told us of a scientist who was working on light or something who was observing the river in a quiet moment. He saw the water move in waves and it gave him the idea that perhaps light also might move in waves. Also, the cafe in the museum, is designed to replicate the cafes where the Nobel laureates gathered to discuss ideas and form ideas and become inspired. This is something that I sometimes feel is missing from my life -- using my time to be creative in anything. 

So when people have asked me about my trip, among the story about sauna and Drottningholm Palace, is the story of the very small Nobel museum, with it's inspiring message. There stands a neon sign in the museum which reads, "What is now proven, was once imagined."