Prison Museum of Sweden

The Prison Museum of Sweden (Fängelsemuseet) occupies the former Gävle city prison, a well-preserved 19th-century jail that closed as an active facility in the 1990s. It is one of a small number of prison museums in Scandinavia and the only one to present Swedish incarceration history in this much depth.

The original cells, punishment rooms, guard posts, and administrative areas are all accessible. The museum covers the history of Swedish criminal justice from the early 19th century through the modern era: how attitudes to punishment changed, how prisoners lived, and the stories of individual inmates. The building itself is atmospheric — thick stone walls, iron doors, and tiny windows that make the conditions vivid without requiring much imagination. It is one of the more distinctive museums in the region and surprisingly thought-provoking.

things to do museum
A story
One of the prisoners held in the Gävle city prison was Joe Hill — born Joel Hägglund in Gävle in 1879 — before he emigrated to the United States, became a labour organiser and songwriter for the IWW, and was executed in Utah in 1915 under disputed murder charges. Hill became a martyr of the American labour movement and the subject of songs and plays. A memorial to him stands outside the prison where he was briefly held as a young man.