When I spent my first winter in Stockholm, back in 1995, I made a point of visiting the various museums around the city on Sundays (since there was very little open at the time). One of the wierder places was the the Natural History Museum (Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet). It was a popular place to go at the time because it had an impressive IMAX cinema (Cosmonova). The musuem itself was a different story – I remember a lot of tatty stuffed animals and little else. The African room was the saddest of all – most of the large exhibits had been ‘collected’ by a Swedish explorer years earler – clearly, the chap only stopped collecting when he ran out of ammunition. The musuem had a makeover in the late Nineties and has probably been improved since, but it sprang into my mind last year when I was in Clifden.
As part of a birthday treat, my girlfriend and I were staying for a night in Clifden, in a guesthouse on the quays. As we were being shown to our room, the lady of the house told us we were staying in the Africa Room. I was thinking that maybe someone had brought back a souvenir from a trip, or there was a leopard skin rug on the floor. When the door was opened, I could see that someone had been ‘collecting’.
As you can see from the pictures, the room was festooned with dead things. I thought it was pretty cool in a kitsch way but my better half (a vegetarian) was not so impressed. I was wondering if the reason for the A-Z of endangered species nailed to the wall was due to the guesthouse having an eccentric owner just back from the colonies, a la Rowley Birken, Q C or the Colonel from Fawltey Towers. Alas no – the owners had just bought a pile of the stuff in an auction, and the animals [according to the accompanying plaques] were killed a century ago.
The guesthouse, The Quay House, is a great place to stay, by the way (as long as you’re not a member of PETA or a big fan of Born Free) – the room was huge (complete with bathroom and also kitchenette, and a balcony that overlooked the quay.