See that girl, watch that scene at the ABBA museum

A Stockholm event consultant plans to create an ABBA museum to celebrate the achievements of one of Sweden's most popular exports.

Ulf Westman said it took two years to convince the fourmembers of the Swedish pop group Benny Andersson, Bjrn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Reuss that the museum was a good idea.

"It is nice that someone feels compelled to take on our musical history," the four members said in a joint statement.

"We think this will be a fun and swinging museum to visit."

The museum will feature several opportunities for dancing queens to relive the authentic ABBA experience, including a studio where visitors can record their own ABBA songs.

One planned "interactive" experience "will recreate the feeling of being at Wembley stadium and seeing ABBA live with 50,000 others," Westman said.

Band members donating clothing, instruments

The museum is expected to draw 500,000 visitors a year from around the world.

ABBA is one of the most commercially successful pop groups of the 1970s. Formed in 1966, the group came to international stardom in 1974 after winning the Eurovision song contest with Waterloo.

They had a string of hits, such as S.O.S., Dancing Queen and Knowing Me, Knowing You, in the 1970s. The group experienceda new flush of popularity with the creation of the 1999 musical Mamma Mia based on their songs.

Westman said the group is donating original outfits and instruments, handwritten song lyrics, a display of awards, and "all other things we can think of and find."

The idea for the museum was inspired by the Beatles museum in London, he said.

No site has yet been chosen for the museum, but it will be locatedin central Stockholm and is scheduled to open in 2008.

"As a Stockholmer, this is what you have been missing," Mayor Kristina Axen Olin said at a news conference to unveil the plan.

"We are convinced that this is important both for Stockholm citizens and for marketing the city."