Huset Aukrust (Flåklypa museet)

The Building: Two Masters Meet

Sverre Fehn, the only Norwegian to ever receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1997), approached Huset Aukrust with characteristic restraint. His stated starting point was a single line on paper — the first mark showing how the house would sit in the landscape. The building lies parallel to the old farmstead of Husantunet and the peak of Tronfjell, echoing the geometry of traditional Norwegian tun (farm yards), where no building was ever placed at an angle to another.↗↗

Fehn drew his materials from the drive between Oslo and Alvdal: the dry-stone walls around church graveyards became the slate wall you enter through; the sand of the Glomma River became the structural concrete and polished floors; the pine forests of Østerdalen became the woodwork. Glass spans everything like a transparent skin. Architecture students from Japan and New York make pilgrimages here. The museum's staff note that visitors arrive in two overlapping groups — those drawn by the building and those drawn by Aukrust's playful universe — and the experience rewards both.↗↗

A clever touch: you enter from the 'back' of the building, through a gap in the heavy slate wall, leaving the noise of National Road 3 behind. Inside, the space opens toward the valley, Tronfjell, and the cultural landscape that inspired Aukrust. The play areas and outdoor activities are on what feels like the front — a deliberate inversion that makes arrival feel like slipping into a secret.↗↗

Inside Aukrust's World

The name 'Huset' (the house) rather than 'sentret' (the centre) was Aukrust's own wish — he wanted a home with rooms, not an institution. The discovery room, library, film hall, and gallery of drawings and paintings each explore a different facet of this irrepressible polymath, who was simultaneously a writer, inventor, illustrator, and painter. None of these labels fully contain him.↗↗

Aukrust drew with a magnifying glass, so his tiny pen-and-ink illustrations conceal extraordinary detail — miniature landscapes, hidden jokes, and hundreds of tiny figures. The museum hands out magnifying glasses to families and invites everyone to put their phones away and go hunting: who finds the most of the recurring 'chianti bottles' hidden in the drawings? It's a gentle, shared activity that transforms the gallery into an adventure.↗↗

The centerpiece is perhaps the full-scale model of Il Tempo Gigante — the absurdly modified racing car that Reodor Felgen builds from scrap in Flåklypa Grand Prix. Standing before it, you immediately understand why Aukrust's fictional inventor became a national synonym for brilliant recycling and jury-rigging: the car combines Norwegian jars, toilet lids, and old planks into something magnificent. The message resonates ever more strongly today.↗↗

Solan and Ludvig Come Alive

For many families, the summer highlight is encountering Solan Gundersen (the magpie) and Ludvig (the hedgehog) as living characters — played by local teenagers in full costume who roam the museum all summer. Staff spend roughly 50,000 kroner each year repairing the costumes after the season. The philosophy is simple: no one should arrive at Huset Aukrust and not find them. These two opposite temperaments — Solan the freewheeling optimist, Ludvig the shy worrier — embody the heart of Aukrust's universe and have been part of Norwegian childhood since the 1960s and 70s.↗

Flåklypatoppen: The Moon Rocket

Outside the main building, a four-story tower called Flåklypatoppen (Flåklypa Peak) houses Reodor Felgen's moon rocket. This is not a static display. Families can enroll in a twelve-step astronaut program and actually blast off on a round-trip to the moon, a twenty-minute experience that requires parents and children to commit fully to their roles. The staff describe families who have been completely transformed by the shared pretend play — adults who drop their reserve, kids who take the lead. The rocket requires a separate entry fee.↗↗↗

Films, Chocolates and Flåklypa Tidende

The Flåklypa Hall screens the films from this universe continuously — both the original 1975 stop-motion Flåklypa Grand Prix and the newer Qvisten Animation features (Jul i Flåklypa from 2013, Herfra til Flåklypa from 2015, Månelyst i Flåklypa from 2018). You can also press your own image into a printed edition of Flåklypa Tidende, the fictional village newspaper, and taste milk chocolate made by Reodor Felgen's chocolate machine.↗↗