While wandering through old Stockholm town’s cobblestone streets, it’s hard to miss the Nobel Museum and its widely advertised exhibition on Einstein that ‘‘intends to avoid the general conception of Einstein as a somewhat dotty old man who sticks out his tongue at a photographer.’’But a cubbyhole exhibit inside might distract you in search of the inventor of dynamite. Tucked away in a corner is the 110-year-old will behind the Nobel Prize and its 770 winners.As we read the then controversial testament on an electronic screen, our English tour guide rushed through snatches of the man’s life. ‘‘Sickly. childless,’’ I heard.In his hometown, Alfred Nobel — ‘‘engineer, medium height, oval face, healthy skin,’’ in his passport — lives on, a ‘‘technological optimist’’ who now lends his name to the Nobel Ice-cream that is the highlight in the menu at the museum’s cafe.There’s his death mask, a crocodile skin bag that we were told ‘‘somebody would carry for him,’’ a stick of dynamite, books from his vast personal collection, pictures of the laboratories in his homes and the many factories he personally supervised.‘‘A control freak,’’ the guide described Nobel, to our group of first-time visitors bundled uncomfortably in the little chamber. After all, what’s a marketable legacy without a dash of side stories? Elsewhere in the museum shop I browsed through prominent displays of Einstein in Love, a book on Einstein’s illegitimate daughter and magnets with Mahatma Gandhi quotes.‘‘Questions?’’ asked the guide, after pointing to a selection from Nobel’s 300-plus patents that she brushed off as being not so important. Visibly relieved that no hands went up, she shepherded us out to meet Einstein in a large, airy exhibit with oversize cushions to relax on.I left with the group, wishing I had lingered behind. But I did bump into the control freak who wanted to be a writer again, at the museum shop. Well, almost — in large Nobel medals and chocolates nicely wrapped in gold foil.
