Mamma Mia! ABBA Museum to open

By Efrosini Costa

Mamma Mia! ABBA Museum to open
Stockholm is preparing to welcome fans to the world’s first ABBA museum, find out what treats await the museum's visitors …

Fans of the Swedish pop group ABBA will surely be shouting gimme, gimme, gimme this week, in the hopes of securing a ticket to the opening of what will be the first permanent museum dedicated to the iconic foursome.

After months of construction and anticipation, the modern blonde wood, Swedish-style building, a part of the new Swedish music Hall of Fame in the leafy suburb of Djugarden, is receiving its finishing touches.

As the May 7 opening day looms, sequin jumpsuits, gold records, placards, awards, and all sorts of other memorabilia are being delivered to furnish the world-first museum.

“We’re going to offer visitors a unique experience,” said museum director Mattias Hansson of the display, which will tell the story of ABBA from their breakthrough the music industry in the 1970’s to their split in 1983.

ABBA remains one of Sweden’s most successful bands of all time, having delivered worldwide hits like Voulez Vous, Dancing Queen and Waterloo, the song that helped them win the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest and saw the band become household names.

The permanent display will feature a series of recreations of recording studios and dressing rooms used by the band during their reign over the music world in the 1970s.  Fans will even be able to have their moment, performing as the fifth member of the band alongside holograms of Benny, Björn, Frida and Agnetha

More interestingly, the exhibit will also feature a room dedicated to the hit song Ring, Ring that will allow fans to talk directly with the music icons using a 1970s style telephone.

The handset will be connected to a real working phone line accessed exclusively by the ABBA stars Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, who will occasionally phone in for a chat, putting a whole new spin on the line, ‘why don’t you give me a call?’

The museum is the next in a series of attempts to revive the ABBA-mania that surrounded the band during the tenure and comes hot on the heels of the Mamma Mia musical and film of the same name as well as the success of a travelling exhibit.

So, if you’ve got no place to go, if you’re feeling down…and you’re in the neighbourhood why not pay homage to the group

A trip down memory lane will cost a reasonable 23 euros ($A29), but beware – tickets have almost sold out for the first few weeks at least, having been bought up – not surprisingly – by tourists from abroad.

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