Midsund

Norway · NO

Nordfjord Folk Museum

On a green hillside in Sandane, in the heart of Norway's Nordfjord district, the Nordfjord Folk Museum (Nordfjord Folkemuseum, now also called the Nordfjord Museum of Cultural History) gathers the everyday world of a western Norwegian farming region under open sky. A walk through its grounds takes you past cottages, storehouses, barns, an outdoor kitchen, a schoolroom and a dye-house — roughly four dozen historic buildings rescued from farmsteads across Nordfjord and reassembled as a traditional cluster-yard farm, the region's most common settlement pattern. Together they tell the story of how people here lived, worked and survived from the 1600s right up to the present day. Founded by the Nordfjord Historical Society and opened in 1920, the museum began as a handful of buildings at Åsen before moving in the 1960s to its current, larger site at Jølet, planned with the architect Arne Berg. A fireproof administration and exhibition building added in 1995 now houses indoor displays, a café and a museum shop, while the outdoor collection keeps growing — about 25,000 objects in total, drawn from the outer coastal settlements to the innermost farming valleys of Nordfjord. It is a relaxed, family-friendly introduction to regional culture and one of the most rewarding things to do in the Gloppen area.