Östermalm is the leafy district east of the center, and it takes in Djurgården, the green island where many of the city's family museums, rides and open-air days sit within walking distance of each other. This list pulls together the places and seasonal events there that we think work for kids, so you can build a whole day without crossing town.
A touring exhibition about James Cameron, the director of Titanic and Avatar, and his other life as a deep-sea explorer. Kids see props from his films, film projections, rare objects and the underwater cameras and technology he used to explore the ocean depths.
It suits kids curious about the deep sea, underwater technology or how films get made.
London's Natural History Museum runs this yearly wildlife photo competition, and this is the exhibition of the results: 100 photos picked from 65,403 entries from 121 countries. Kids get a dung beetle shot at eye level by the young winner, along with animal moments few people ever see. It is all looking and no touching, so it suits animal fans more than toddlers who need to move.
A drop-in workshop at Liljevalchs, the art gallery on Djurgården, where kids make their own mask with educators and artists on hand to guide them. The idea comes from Ylva Snöfrid's exhibition The House of the Muses, where masks are part of her rituals. The starting question: who are you, and who would you like to be? You can also try the show's Exquisite Corpse ritual.
The museum switches off the lights in its Gold Room, and kids explore the ancient treasures with a headlamp as their only light. The guide ties the objects to Viking-age tales, following Beowulf through his fights with the swamp monster Grendel and the dragon.
A good fit for kids who like myths and legends. The room is dark, though the tour itself has no scare effects.
A hands-on craft workshop at the Swedish History Museum, where kids make their own Viking-style bracelet. Vikings wore arm rings, mostly silver or bronze, and the old sagas tell of heroes swearing oaths on them or earning one as a reward for something brave.
Each kid decides what their own ring stands for, and the real ones are on show in the museum's Viking World exhibition.
Dröse & Norberg's own stage version of The Jungle Book, with Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, Kaa and Shere Kahn alongside a troop of monkeys and their King Gibbon. It mixes original songs, humor and acrobatics, played by a large cast of Swedish musical performers in big fur-and-feather costumes. The show has drawn over 200,000 people and suits kids who can sit through a full-length theater show with an intermission.
A day at the Swedish History Museum about how people have lived through climate change, from the ice ages on, and what that history can teach kids today.
Kids and adults go together: a guided look at prehistoric objects, a short talk on climate made for children, and a drawing workshop where everyone adds a picture or message about the future to a shared board.
Gröna Lund opens Lilla Området, the small-kids corner of the amusement park, for a new winter season built around Christmas. Kids ride winterized carousels, watch ice-skating shows and Gnutt performances, meet the Ice Queen, and hand their wish lists to Tomten, Tomtemor and their elves.
Made for families with younger children. Kids hoping for the big thrill rides should know only the little-kids area is open.
A Christmas market on Djurgården that has run since 1903, with stalls of crafts in textile, wood, ceramic and wool, plus marzipan, Christmas bread and hand-dipped candles.
For kids, the draw is Santa's workshop, where they make their own Christmas craft, then dancing around the tree and carols in Seglora church. Much of it is outdoors, so dress for the cold.
Pär Isberg's Nutcracker is the Royal Swedish Ballet's Christmas classic, retold with Elsa Beskow's storybook characters. Petter and Lotta live with Aunt Green, Aunt Brown and Aunt Lavender and are celebrating Christmas for the very first time.
The children want to sleep under the Christmas tree, and that night an enchanted world opens up around them. It suits kids who can sit through a full evening ballet with an intermission.
Each Advent the Royal Stables (Hovstallet) in Östermalm hosts a Christmas market, with around seventy craft makers from across Sweden selling handmade gifts in every material.
For kids, the draw is the King's horses: the stable stays open to visitors, so they can say hello to the horses trained for royal processions on state visits. It suits kids patient enough for some gift browsing between horse visits.
Babblarna, the colorful Swedish characters, star in an interactive musical set at Klonk's birthday party. There's cake, balloons, a fishing game and party hats on stage, and the kids join in: clapping the beat, babbling, pretending to drive a car and dancing along.
The cast tells the story with speech, signs, song and dance. It's made for the very youngest, so school-age siblings may find it too young.
Lucia is a Swedish holiday tradition, and Skansen offers two ways to see it. In Seglora Church, a choir gives a traditional Lucia concert. In the Temperance Hall, a 1920s-style celebration shows what Lucia could look and sound like a century ago.
It suits kids who are happy to sit and listen to a choir, and families curious about Swedish holiday traditions.
Skansen has celebrated New Year's Eve since 1893, and the midnight countdown on the Solliden stage is broadcast live on Swedish TV by SVT. Families count down together outdoors, with Stockholm as the backdrop.
It suits kids who can stay up late and cope with a crowd in the winter cold. Daytime visitors can explore the park earlier in the day; the evening is all about the countdown.
Evin and Silas are best friends who don't feel at home at school, or in their own bodies. Evin would rather be a dolphin, Silas a colorful, over-the-top bird. Then a strange person online offers to make it happen with untested, illegal DNA tech.
Mille Bostedt's play is wild, cheeky, playful and existential, about searching for your true identity and wanting to be someone else.
A sad boy and an angry girl are each playing alone when magic stirs their rooms, a chest pulls them in, and they come out in each other's place. Scared, then curious, they play, fight, make up and dance into a friendship neither expected.
Two Royal Swedish Ballet dancers perform up close, to an original symphonic score recorded by the Royal Swedish Orchestra.
Three dancers and a whole lot of cars. A little car has lost its map and circles a roundabout, a rattly old car makes strange noises and needs a tow, a tired truck can't make it up the hill, and a sports car just wants to go fast.
Classical ballet meets playful sound design in this show by dance company TUBO, made for young kids who love playing with vehicles.
Minimaran is a running race just for kids, ending with a finish at Stockholms Stadion. Children run out of Gärdet and through the Lill-Jansskogen woods before the last stretch to the stadium.
It suits kids who like to run, from first-timers to school-age runners ready for a longer course, and younger siblings get an event of their own.
Nordiska museet shows how people in Sweden and the Nordic countries have lived, from the 1500s to today. In the Children's Playhouse, kids do the chores on an 1890s farm, tend wooden animals and shop at the village store.
Staff hand out maps for two family trails in English: Mission: Vaesen, a hunt for an escaped vaesen, and Mission: The Arctic, through an iceberg in the Great Hall.
Kampementsbadet is a city-run outdoor pool on Gärdet, open since 1962. The main pool is 25 by 12.5 meters and runs from 0.9 to 1.4 meters deep, with a separate paddling pool for toddlers.
Lawns surround both pools for sunbathing and picnics, and a low entrance building holds changing rooms, showers, toilets and a kiosk.
The ice hall at Östermalms IP is an indoor hockey rink, roofed over in 2005, on a sports ground that opened in 1906 and hosted events at the 1912 Olympics. In skating season it opens for public skating, so kids can lap the ice under a roof whatever the weather.
Outside, the same grounds hold Stockholm's only oval skating track, and Djurgården plays its home bandy matches there.
An indoor climbing gym with two ways to climb: bouldering, which uses no ropes, and roped climbing. Courses suit complete beginners as well as experienced climbers, so a first-timer has a way in.
Klätterverket also runs regular courses and events for children, plus kids' birthday parties and school-holiday camps.
Stora Skuggans 4H-gård is a nonprofit farm run like an old Swedish farmstead, set in Ekoparken on Norra Djurgården. Most of the animals are Swedish heritage breeds kept in gene-bank conservation projects: mountain cows, Jämtland goats, Rya sheep and Hedemora hens, plus rabbits, cats, Icelandic horses and a Shetland pony.
Visitors walk between the paddocks to see the animals, and walking paths run through the parkland around the farm.
Rosendals Trädgård is a biodynamic market garden on Djurgården, run by a foundation. Paths lead past vegetable plots, a rose garden, an orchard, a vineyard and greenhouses, and there is a playground and an educational garden for children.
The greenhouse café cooks with the garden's own harvest, and the wood-fired bakery holds Stockholm's largest oven. From late July, kids can cut their own bouquet in the flower field.
A themed playground on the corner of the Krubban block, built around the site's history: 1600s house gables, small red cottages, a windmill, horses and an old Esso gas station.
Kids climb, slide, dig in the sandpit, spin on a carousel shaped like a giant hand and play in a pale-blue bus modeled on Östermalm's classic bus line 31. It opened in December 2019.
The playground in Tessinparken was rebuilt around the theme "The Little City", picked through a public consultation and modeled on the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition and the functionalist buildings around the park. Kids get functionalist-style playhouses, a construction crane, a tram, a slide, a sand play area and climbing frames.
A large swing area sits next to the park activity building, with mini-golf and a basketball court close by.
Humlegårdens parklek is the playground inside Humlegården, a central park that began as a royal garden where King Johan III grew fruit, spices and hops. A parklek is one of the city's staffed playgrounds, run by trained staff.
The park around it adds a skateboard ramp, open lawns, a statue of Carl Linnaeus and the National Library of Sweden.
Skansen-Akvariet is a privately run zoo and aquarium on the Skansen grounds, packing about 200 exotic species into 3,000 square meters: fish, corals, crocodiles, snakes, naked mole-rats, marmosets, lemurs, baboons and parrots.
In the Children's Rainforest, kids walk in among some of the animals, and a pet corner lets them touch a snake and a spider. The animals on show vary with the season.
Gröna Lund is Sweden's oldest amusement park, open since 1883 on the Djurgården waterfront. Its 30 rides run from big roller coasters and drop towers to bumper cars, carousels, teacups and Ferris wheels.
Younger kids head for Pettson och Findus Värld, a house built in 1720 full of nooks to hide in and buttons to press. Pentathlon game stalls, summer concerts and food stands fill the gaps between rides.
Skansen is the world's oldest open-air museum: historic houses and farmsteads from across Sweden that show how people lived and worked over the centuries. Its zoo keeps Nordic wild animals such as moose, bears and seals, plus traditional Swedish farm breeds.
Lill-Skansen, the children's zoo, has small animals and big indoor and outdoor play areas with a snake slide. The Baltic Sea Science Center shows life under the Baltic.
An interactive museum about the Swedish pop group, with original stage costumes, gold records and the Polar Studio mixing desk on show.
Kids can sing karaoke in The Audition, set up to feel like the Polar Studio, perform on stage as the fifth member alongside Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Frida, try the Tretow Mix Challenge and an ABBA quiz. The museum cinema screens films all day.
An interactive museum of the Viking Age on Djurgården, with archaeological finds, reconstructed Viking-era settings and objects kids can touch. It tells the stories of the women, children and men who lived on Scandinavian farms, not only the raiders. Guides in Viking-era clothing answer questions.
The big draw is Ragnfrid's Saga, an indoor ride through 10th-century Europe following Harald on a raid to win back his family's fortune.
The Swedish National Maritime Museum tells the story of people and the sea through ship models, figureheads and real wreckage. Straight ahead from the entrance sits the gilded stern of Amphion, Gustav III's 1778 pleasure ship, with its cabin preserved inside.
Battle Stations! shows centuries of navy ship models and parts of the submarine Ulven. Under-7s get Blubb, an underwater play room with submarines, fish and sunken treasure.
Sweden's largest cultural history museum fills an ornate 1907 building on Djurgården with over 1.5 million objects, covering everyday life in Sweden from the 1500s to today, from homes and set tables to Sami crafts.
Kids walk into the great hall under a giant painted and gilded oak statue of King Gustav Vasa by Carl Milles. Artur Hazelius, who also founded Skansen, started the museum in 1873.
Spårvägsmuseet tells the story of Stockholm's public transport inside the renovated Gasverket gasworks. Floors 1 to 3 hold 13 vehicles, from horse-drawn carriages and boats to trams and buses, plus old uniforms, tickets and T-bana art. Floor 4 walks through the history in order.
Kids can ride the mini T-bana, and those who need to burn off energy get Snabbare, a running track on floor 3.
Sweden's largest museum runs from dinosaur skeletons in Fossils and Evolution to the native animals of Nature in Sweden, set in their habitats. Polar Tracks covers the Arctic and Antarctica, and Treasures from the Earth's Interior has gemstones and crystals.
The Animal Human is the most hands-on hall, where kids test how their bodies work against other animals. The building also holds Cosmonova, an IMAX dome theater 23 meters across.
Tekniska museet, the National Museum of Science and Technology, has ten hands-on exhibitions across 12,000 square meters. In Teknoleket, the youngest visitors build marble mazes and turn cog wheels. In The Mine, kids walk the dark old mining tracks, then try drill simulators and detonate explosives. Play Beyond Play has game stations, and the Wisdome Stockholm dome runs 3D shows on space and nature.
Historiska museet holds The Viking World, billed as the largest Viking exhibition in the world, with 2,500 original objects, interactive stations and old Norse tales. Prehistories covers Stone Age tools, art and some of the first runes, and the Gold Room shows Viking Age silver pendants and Migration Period gold collars.
Free activity trails send kids through the exhibitions, and the courtyard gives them room to run.
The Police Museum tells the story of Swedish policing since 1850, and much of it is hands-on. In Polisliv, kids try on uniforms from different eras, step into a 1930s police kiosk and switch on the blue lights in a modern patrol car. Brottsspår centers on a crime scene to solve, and En större uppgift lets younger kids sit on a police motorcycle and groom a wooden horse.
Armémuseum tells Sweden's story of war and peace through the soldiers, women and children who lived it, from the 1500s to today. Full-scale scenes with life-size soldiers and original weapons fill Artillerigården, a former artillery depot whose buildings date from the 1700s.
The Trophy Chamber holds flags and spoils captured from defeated armies, and a smaller exhibit covers Raoul Wallenberg's rescue work in World War II.
The Vasa Museum is built around Vasa, a warship that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628 and was raised after 333 years on the seabed. About 98% of the ship dates from the 1600s, covered in hundreds of wooden sculptures.
Kids can follow the family trail, compare the ship with a brightly painted model, watch the film about the Vasa Piglet, and join hands-on activities with museum staff.
Junibacken is an indoor attraction built around children's books, on Djurgården. The Story Train carries visitors through handmade sets from Astrid Lindgren's stories, from Emil to Ronja, with narration in 12 languages.
The ride ends at Villa Villekulla, Pippi Longstocking's house, where the in-house ensemble puts on theater shows. A story square holds scenes from the Moomins and other picture books, and there is a children's bookstore and a restaurant.
Östermalm is the leafy district east of the center, and it takes in Djurgården, the green island where many of the city's family museums, rides and open-air days sit within walking distance of each other. This list pulls together the places and seasonal events there that we think work for kids, so you can build a whole day without crossing town.
A touring exhibition about James Cameron, the director of Titanic and Avatar, and his other life as a deep-sea explorer. Kids see props from his films, film projections, rare objects and the underwater cameras and technology he used to explore the ocean depths.
It suits kids curious about the deep sea, underwater technology or how films get made.
London's Natural History Museum runs this yearly wildlife photo competition, and this is the exhibition of the results: 100 photos picked from 65,403 entries from 121 countries. Kids get a dung beetle shot at eye level by the young winner, along with animal moments few people ever see. It is all looking and no touching, so it suits animal fans more than toddlers who need to move.
A drop-in workshop at Liljevalchs, the art gallery on Djurgården, where kids make their own mask with educators and artists on hand to guide them. The idea comes from Ylva Snöfrid's exhibition The House of the Muses, where masks are part of her rituals. The starting question: who are you, and who would you like to be? You can also try the show's Exquisite Corpse ritual.
The museum switches off the lights in its Gold Room, and kids explore the ancient treasures with a headlamp as their only light. The guide ties the objects to Viking-age tales, following Beowulf through his fights with the swamp monster Grendel and the dragon.
A good fit for kids who like myths and legends. The room is dark, though the tour itself has no scare effects.
A hands-on craft workshop at the Swedish History Museum, where kids make their own Viking-style bracelet. Vikings wore arm rings, mostly silver or bronze, and the old sagas tell of heroes swearing oaths on them or earning one as a reward for something brave.
Each kid decides what their own ring stands for, and the real ones are on show in the museum's Viking World exhibition.
Dröse & Norberg's own stage version of The Jungle Book, with Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, Kaa and Shere Kahn alongside a troop of monkeys and their King Gibbon. It mixes original songs, humor and acrobatics, played by a large cast of Swedish musical performers in big fur-and-feather costumes. The show has drawn over 200,000 people and suits kids who can sit through a full-length theater show with an intermission.
A day at the Swedish History Museum about how people have lived through climate change, from the ice ages on, and what that history can teach kids today.
Kids and adults go together: a guided look at prehistoric objects, a short talk on climate made for children, and a drawing workshop where everyone adds a picture or message about the future to a shared board.
Gröna Lund opens Lilla Området, the small-kids corner of the amusement park, for a new winter season built around Christmas. Kids ride winterized carousels, watch ice-skating shows and Gnutt performances, meet the Ice Queen, and hand their wish lists to Tomten, Tomtemor and their elves.
Made for families with younger children. Kids hoping for the big thrill rides should know only the little-kids area is open.
A Christmas market on Djurgården that has run since 1903, with stalls of crafts in textile, wood, ceramic and wool, plus marzipan, Christmas bread and hand-dipped candles.
For kids, the draw is Santa's workshop, where they make their own Christmas craft, then dancing around the tree and carols in Seglora church. Much of it is outdoors, so dress for the cold.
Pär Isberg's Nutcracker is the Royal Swedish Ballet's Christmas classic, retold with Elsa Beskow's storybook characters. Petter and Lotta live with Aunt Green, Aunt Brown and Aunt Lavender and are celebrating Christmas for the very first time.
The children want to sleep under the Christmas tree, and that night an enchanted world opens up around them. It suits kids who can sit through a full evening ballet with an intermission.
Each Advent the Royal Stables (Hovstallet) in Östermalm hosts a Christmas market, with around seventy craft makers from across Sweden selling handmade gifts in every material.
For kids, the draw is the King's horses: the stable stays open to visitors, so they can say hello to the horses trained for royal processions on state visits. It suits kids patient enough for some gift browsing between horse visits.
Babblarna, the colorful Swedish characters, star in an interactive musical set at Klonk's birthday party. There's cake, balloons, a fishing game and party hats on stage, and the kids join in: clapping the beat, babbling, pretending to drive a car and dancing along.
The cast tells the story with speech, signs, song and dance. It's made for the very youngest, so school-age siblings may find it too young.
Lucia is a Swedish holiday tradition, and Skansen offers two ways to see it. In Seglora Church, a choir gives a traditional Lucia concert. In the Temperance Hall, a 1920s-style celebration shows what Lucia could look and sound like a century ago.
It suits kids who are happy to sit and listen to a choir, and families curious about Swedish holiday traditions.
Skansen has celebrated New Year's Eve since 1893, and the midnight countdown on the Solliden stage is broadcast live on Swedish TV by SVT. Families count down together outdoors, with Stockholm as the backdrop.
It suits kids who can stay up late and cope with a crowd in the winter cold. Daytime visitors can explore the park earlier in the day; the evening is all about the countdown.
Evin and Silas are best friends who don't feel at home at school, or in their own bodies. Evin would rather be a dolphin, Silas a colorful, over-the-top bird. Then a strange person online offers to make it happen with untested, illegal DNA tech.
Mille Bostedt's play is wild, cheeky, playful and existential, about searching for your true identity and wanting to be someone else.
A sad boy and an angry girl are each playing alone when magic stirs their rooms, a chest pulls them in, and they come out in each other's place. Scared, then curious, they play, fight, make up and dance into a friendship neither expected.
Two Royal Swedish Ballet dancers perform up close, to an original symphonic score recorded by the Royal Swedish Orchestra.
Three dancers and a whole lot of cars. A little car has lost its map and circles a roundabout, a rattly old car makes strange noises and needs a tow, a tired truck can't make it up the hill, and a sports car just wants to go fast.
Classical ballet meets playful sound design in this show by dance company TUBO, made for young kids who love playing with vehicles.
Minimaran is a running race just for kids, ending with a finish at Stockholms Stadion. Children run out of Gärdet and through the Lill-Jansskogen woods before the last stretch to the stadium.
It suits kids who like to run, from first-timers to school-age runners ready for a longer course, and younger siblings get an event of their own.
Nordiska museet shows how people in Sweden and the Nordic countries have lived, from the 1500s to today. In the Children's Playhouse, kids do the chores on an 1890s farm, tend wooden animals and shop at the village store.
Staff hand out maps for two family trails in English: Mission: Vaesen, a hunt for an escaped vaesen, and Mission: The Arctic, through an iceberg in the Great Hall.
Kampementsbadet is a city-run outdoor pool on Gärdet, open since 1962. The main pool is 25 by 12.5 meters and runs from 0.9 to 1.4 meters deep, with a separate paddling pool for toddlers.
Lawns surround both pools for sunbathing and picnics, and a low entrance building holds changing rooms, showers, toilets and a kiosk.
The ice hall at Östermalms IP is an indoor hockey rink, roofed over in 2005, on a sports ground that opened in 1906 and hosted events at the 1912 Olympics. In skating season it opens for public skating, so kids can lap the ice under a roof whatever the weather.
Outside, the same grounds hold Stockholm's only oval skating track, and Djurgården plays its home bandy matches there.
An indoor climbing gym with two ways to climb: bouldering, which uses no ropes, and roped climbing. Courses suit complete beginners as well as experienced climbers, so a first-timer has a way in.
Klätterverket also runs regular courses and events for children, plus kids' birthday parties and school-holiday camps.
Stora Skuggans 4H-gård is a nonprofit farm run like an old Swedish farmstead, set in Ekoparken on Norra Djurgården. Most of the animals are Swedish heritage breeds kept in gene-bank conservation projects: mountain cows, Jämtland goats, Rya sheep and Hedemora hens, plus rabbits, cats, Icelandic horses and a Shetland pony.
Visitors walk between the paddocks to see the animals, and walking paths run through the parkland around the farm.
Rosendals Trädgård is a biodynamic market garden on Djurgården, run by a foundation. Paths lead past vegetable plots, a rose garden, an orchard, a vineyard and greenhouses, and there is a playground and an educational garden for children.
The greenhouse café cooks with the garden's own harvest, and the wood-fired bakery holds Stockholm's largest oven. From late July, kids can cut their own bouquet in the flower field.
A themed playground on the corner of the Krubban block, built around the site's history: 1600s house gables, small red cottages, a windmill, horses and an old Esso gas station.
Kids climb, slide, dig in the sandpit, spin on a carousel shaped like a giant hand and play in a pale-blue bus modeled on Östermalm's classic bus line 31. It opened in December 2019.
The playground in Tessinparken was rebuilt around the theme "The Little City", picked through a public consultation and modeled on the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition and the functionalist buildings around the park. Kids get functionalist-style playhouses, a construction crane, a tram, a slide, a sand play area and climbing frames.
A large swing area sits next to the park activity building, with mini-golf and a basketball court close by.
Humlegårdens parklek is the playground inside Humlegården, a central park that began as a royal garden where King Johan III grew fruit, spices and hops. A parklek is one of the city's staffed playgrounds, run by trained staff.
The park around it adds a skateboard ramp, open lawns, a statue of Carl Linnaeus and the National Library of Sweden.
Skansen-Akvariet is a privately run zoo and aquarium on the Skansen grounds, packing about 200 exotic species into 3,000 square meters: fish, corals, crocodiles, snakes, naked mole-rats, marmosets, lemurs, baboons and parrots.
In the Children's Rainforest, kids walk in among some of the animals, and a pet corner lets them touch a snake and a spider. The animals on show vary with the season.
Gröna Lund is Sweden's oldest amusement park, open since 1883 on the Djurgården waterfront. Its 30 rides run from big roller coasters and drop towers to bumper cars, carousels, teacups and Ferris wheels.
Younger kids head for Pettson och Findus Värld, a house built in 1720 full of nooks to hide in and buttons to press. Pentathlon game stalls, summer concerts and food stands fill the gaps between rides.
Skansen is the world's oldest open-air museum: historic houses and farmsteads from across Sweden that show how people lived and worked over the centuries. Its zoo keeps Nordic wild animals such as moose, bears and seals, plus traditional Swedish farm breeds.
Lill-Skansen, the children's zoo, has small animals and big indoor and outdoor play areas with a snake slide. The Baltic Sea Science Center shows life under the Baltic.
An interactive museum about the Swedish pop group, with original stage costumes, gold records and the Polar Studio mixing desk on show.
Kids can sing karaoke in The Audition, set up to feel like the Polar Studio, perform on stage as the fifth member alongside Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Frida, try the Tretow Mix Challenge and an ABBA quiz. The museum cinema screens films all day.
An interactive museum of the Viking Age on Djurgården, with archaeological finds, reconstructed Viking-era settings and objects kids can touch. It tells the stories of the women, children and men who lived on Scandinavian farms, not only the raiders. Guides in Viking-era clothing answer questions.
The big draw is Ragnfrid's Saga, an indoor ride through 10th-century Europe following Harald on a raid to win back his family's fortune.
The Swedish National Maritime Museum tells the story of people and the sea through ship models, figureheads and real wreckage. Straight ahead from the entrance sits the gilded stern of Amphion, Gustav III's 1778 pleasure ship, with its cabin preserved inside.
Battle Stations! shows centuries of navy ship models and parts of the submarine Ulven. Under-7s get Blubb, an underwater play room with submarines, fish and sunken treasure.
Sweden's largest cultural history museum fills an ornate 1907 building on Djurgården with over 1.5 million objects, covering everyday life in Sweden from the 1500s to today, from homes and set tables to Sami crafts.
Kids walk into the great hall under a giant painted and gilded oak statue of King Gustav Vasa by Carl Milles. Artur Hazelius, who also founded Skansen, started the museum in 1873.
Spårvägsmuseet tells the story of Stockholm's public transport inside the renovated Gasverket gasworks. Floors 1 to 3 hold 13 vehicles, from horse-drawn carriages and boats to trams and buses, plus old uniforms, tickets and T-bana art. Floor 4 walks through the history in order.
Kids can ride the mini T-bana, and those who need to burn off energy get Snabbare, a running track on floor 3.
Sweden's largest museum runs from dinosaur skeletons in Fossils and Evolution to the native animals of Nature in Sweden, set in their habitats. Polar Tracks covers the Arctic and Antarctica, and Treasures from the Earth's Interior has gemstones and crystals.
The Animal Human is the most hands-on hall, where kids test how their bodies work against other animals. The building also holds Cosmonova, an IMAX dome theater 23 meters across.
Tekniska museet, the National Museum of Science and Technology, has ten hands-on exhibitions across 12,000 square meters. In Teknoleket, the youngest visitors build marble mazes and turn cog wheels. In The Mine, kids walk the dark old mining tracks, then try drill simulators and detonate explosives. Play Beyond Play has game stations, and the Wisdome Stockholm dome runs 3D shows on space and nature.
Historiska museet holds The Viking World, billed as the largest Viking exhibition in the world, with 2,500 original objects, interactive stations and old Norse tales. Prehistories covers Stone Age tools, art and some of the first runes, and the Gold Room shows Viking Age silver pendants and Migration Period gold collars.
Free activity trails send kids through the exhibitions, and the courtyard gives them room to run.
The Police Museum tells the story of Swedish policing since 1850, and much of it is hands-on. In Polisliv, kids try on uniforms from different eras, step into a 1930s police kiosk and switch on the blue lights in a modern patrol car. Brottsspår centers on a crime scene to solve, and En större uppgift lets younger kids sit on a police motorcycle and groom a wooden horse.
Armémuseum tells Sweden's story of war and peace through the soldiers, women and children who lived it, from the 1500s to today. Full-scale scenes with life-size soldiers and original weapons fill Artillerigården, a former artillery depot whose buildings date from the 1700s.
The Trophy Chamber holds flags and spoils captured from defeated armies, and a smaller exhibit covers Raoul Wallenberg's rescue work in World War II.
The Vasa Museum is built around Vasa, a warship that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628 and was raised after 333 years on the seabed. About 98% of the ship dates from the 1600s, covered in hundreds of wooden sculptures.
Kids can follow the family trail, compare the ship with a brightly painted model, watch the film about the Vasa Piglet, and join hands-on activities with museum staff.
Junibacken is an indoor attraction built around children's books, on Djurgården. The Story Train carries visitors through handmade sets from Astrid Lindgren's stories, from Emil to Ronja, with narration in 12 languages.
The ride ends at Villa Villekulla, Pippi Longstocking's house, where the in-house ensemble puts on theater shows. A story square holds scenes from the Moomins and other picture books, and there is a children's bookstore and a restaurant.
