Museum Resources:
Digital Collection Catalogues
Joseph S. Hopkins for Mimisbrunnr.info, May 2021
Special thanks to Ross Downing, Giorgia Sottotetti, Kati Rán, Kevin French, Olle Möllervärn, Ruben Terlouw, Ben Waggoner, Eirik Storesund, & Embla A. for their assistance in compiling the present resource.
Museums throughout Europe house the most important objects studied by scholars active in Ancient Germanic studies. As of 2021, many larger museums in the region make their collections available to the public for free online. The present resource consists of a list of museum websites that contain such catalogues.
Most of the digital collections catalogues listed here are incomplete and/or lack photographs of much of their catalogue entries. Additionally, some extremely important collections–such as the Römisch-Germanisches Museum and the Museum für Archäologie Schloss Gottorf—do not make digital catalogues available to the public at the time of writing while other museums that undoubtedly administer collections important to the field, such as the National Museum of the History of Ukraine, are very difficult to approach.
Nonetheless, these collections are invaluable not only for scholars in the field but also for artists and enthusiasts interested in Ancient Germanic studies. Please note that this list is non-comprehensive and that Mimisbrunnr.info intends to expand and update it as time allows.
Denmark
National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet): Digital collections catalogue (English & Danish, example entry)
Finland
National Museum of Finland (Kansallismuseo): Digital collections catalogue (English & Finnish, example entries)
Germany
Germanisches Nationalmuseum: Digital collections catalogue (primarily German, example entry, for objects relevant to the Migration Period, for example, try searching Völkerwanderungszeit)
Iceland
National Museum of Iceland (Þjóðminjasafn Íslands): Digital collections catalogue (Icelandic, example entry)
Italy
Archeaological Museum of Milan (Il Civico Museo Archeologico di Milano): Digital collections catalogue (Italian, example entry)
Netherlands
Dutch National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden): Digital collections catalogue (primarily Dutch, example entry)
Norway
University of Oslo, Museum of Cultural History: Digital collections catalogue, direct portal link (Norwegian, example entry)
Sweden
DigitaltMuseum: Search engine for Swedish museum collections catalogues (Swedish, sample entry)
Statens Historika Museer: Digital collections catalogue (Swedish, example entry)
Swedish History Museum (Historiska museet or Statens historiska museum): Digital collections catalogue (English & Swedish, sample entry)
United Kingdom
The British Museum: Digital collections catalogue (English, example entry)
Museums Sheffield: Digital collections catalogue (English, example entry)
National Museums of Scotland: Digital collections catalogue (English, example entry)
Portable Antiquities Scheme: Digital collections catalogue (English, example entry)
United States
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Digital collections catalogue (English, example entry). For navigation, we recommend searching for phrases such as “Frankish”, “Visigothic”, or “Anglo-Saxon”.
The Morgan Library & Museum: Digital collections catalogue (English, example entry). For navigation, as above, we recommend searching for phrases such as “Frankish”, “Visigothic”, or “Anglo-Saxon”.
Other
Eitri: Digital catalogue (English). A database focused on historic depictions of Thor’s hammer. Compiled and maintained by scholar Katherine Beard.
Wikimedia Commons: Wikimedia Commons features many user-taken photographs of objects in museums. For example, see for example the category “Museums in Denmark by city”. While the quality of images within the database varies, Wikimedia Commons features a tremendous amount of material unavailable elsewhere and much of it is freely usable.