Inquiry on how to preserve and make available environment below Riksplan completed

At Wednesday’s meeting of the Riksdag Board, the inquiry on how to preserve and make available to the public the unique environment below Riksplan was presented.

Extensive work is under way to renovate all of the Riksdag’s buildings and to develop the way in which they are used. The purpose is to safeguard historical values, while providing the Riksdag with good opportunities to carry out its tasks. The work will be carried out over a long period and will, at a future stage, include the Riksdag’s premises at Riksplan.

In 2024, the Riksdag Board assigned the Secretary-General of the Riksdag the task of conducting an in-depth analysis of how the historical environment below Riksplan should best be preserved and made available to the public in connection with the planned reconstruction work. Rebecka Nolmark, Senior Museum Expert, was appointed to conduct the inquiry. The inquiry, which is now completed, has been submitted to the Riksdag Board.

“The inquiry that has been presented to the Riksdag Board today is an important basis for our work with the Riksdag buildings for the future. We have a huge responsibility to preserve the historical environment and tell our story. That’s why we’ve commissioned this inquiry, and I’m the grateful recipient of this solid piece of work. I now look forward to studying the results more closely”, says the Speaker Andreas Norlén.

“The task of preserving the Riksdag buildings is extensive and will take many years. At present, buildings in the Old Town are being renovated, and in the future, work will start to renovate the West and East Wings of the Riksdag, including Riksplan. The work is being carried out in stages, and the Riksdag Board is taking several decisions on the implementation of the various parts. The inquiry that has now been presented is part of the documentation needed for future decisions”, says Andreas Norlén.

The Riksdag Administration will continue its work with the planning and preparation of documentation for continued decisions. The activities will continue so far into the future that there is not yet an established schedule for the conversion of Riksplan.

The inquiry’s summary of the report

The inquiry and all the annexes can be read in full via the link below. In the summary, inquiry chair Rebecka Nolmark writes:

“Ever since the Viking Age, Helgeandsholmen, which houses the East and West Wings of the Riksdag, Riksplan and Strömparterren, has been an important arena for events of major strategic importance in the building of the Swedish nation. It is a place with luminosity, that stirs strong emotions and great involvement. When creating an attractive and dynamic contact point between the Riksdag and the public, this is an advantage.

The knowledge about the history of Helgeandsholmen that experts have contributed to the inquiry, stresses that the place has a rich and exciting history from the Viking Age to the current day, and that there is great potential to make this available to a broader public through a museum. The location and its surroundings can help us to see and understand the development of our Swedish form of government ever since the royal power of the Middle Ages, through the gradual development of our system of government to the democratic society of today, with its base in the Riksdag. The background materials describe a number of emblematic events with examples from different thematic perspectives, over a long period of time, from the 1000s to the 1900s.

The background materials and overall analysis have led the inquiry’s proposals to broaden the subject area of a prospective museum under Riksplan from “Stockholm and Sweden’s Medieval history” to include the entire period from the 1000s to today. The long and continuous connection between Sweden’s governance and Helgeandsholmen serves as a natural point of departure for a museum, and both strengthens and deepens the story of the Riksdag’s activities, today’s democracy and the history of Sweden’s system of government.

In order to cater to the various needs – that the historical remains continue to be made available for the public while ensuring the Riksdag’s need for an extra Chamber, meeting rooms, goods reception and visitors’ centre – we propose an intelligent and adaptable spatial platform, essentially without any designated rooms for specific functions. The spatial platform is based on three interconnecting design principles: (1) a scalable room structure with flexible and largely mobile installations, furniture, display cases, etc; (2) an integrated and flexible technical infrastructure that supports and interacts with the spatial flexibility; and (3) intelligent logistics with strategically placed storage spaces from which exhibition modules, furniture and technology can easily be moved in and out. All staff should also be able to manage all solutions, without requiring specialist skills.

For the museum activities, the inquiry has drawn up a package of conceptual ideas, based on three interconnecting cornerstones: innovative and artistic expression, flexibility both in terms of the physical space and opportunities for collaboration with other actors and a meeting place – to provide a world-class arena for dialogue and co-creation between visitors, elected representatives, history, contemporary life and the society of tomorrow. The proposal also contains a conceptual visualisation in the form of a physical model that can be used as a basis for further elaborations on needs and opportunities at a possible future programme stage.

The inquiry proposes an organisational solution in the form of a combination of museum and visitors’ centre, where the Riksdag Administration continues to provide visitors’ services, while museum activities are run by a museum authority by means of an agreement between the Riksdag Administration and the authority. Helgeandsholmen, and thus the historical values below Riksplan, is of great national importance and the museum activities are a national concern. In view of this, we propose collaboration with the National Historical Museums (SHM), which already have established collaboration with the Stockholm Medieval Museum today. With this combination of proposals, it is possible to benefit from strengths where they are greatest by utilising the knowledge, skills and experience that already exists in the Riksdag Administration’s visitor activities, at the same time as a professional museum authority not only contributes with the museum design, but also with expertise from all areas of activity: from archaeology, research and collections to museum learning and reception of visitors.

The above combination model is only relevant to the parties responsible for operations, while visitors will perceive their visit as a museum visit, at the same time as they will have direct access to a full programme of activities in the Riksdag.

Further information

Contact person for the media

The Riksdag Administration Press Service + 46(0)8 786 62 00.