Maihaugen (De Sandvigske Samlinger på Maihaugen, Lillehammer) is one of the most visited tourist attractions in Lillehammer, Norway. Maihaugen, with close to 200 buildings, is one of Northern Europe's largest open-air museums and one of the largest cultural facilities in Norway. [1]
The founder, Anders Sandvig, collected from old houses and farmyards within Gudbrandsdalen to provide a sample of Norwegian culture and history in a museum. He first started in his backyard, but when his collection grew, in 1901, the town council offered him a permanent site for the museum. In 1904, the city of Lillehammer set aside an area already known as Maihaugen and bought Sandvig's collection and established the Sandvig Collections (Sandvigske Samlinger), the formal name for Maihaugen. Sandvig was at first hired as an unpaid curator but was later appointed the museum's first director. The new site of the museum had been used as a picnic and meeting place for the townspeople. People had met here to celebrate the Norwegian Constitution Day and to light bonfires for Midsummer eve. [2]
Maihaugen tells the history of how people have been living in the Gudbrandsdalen from the Middle Ages until today. Social institutions such as a church, school, post office, railway station, shops, prisons and military facilities are all represented at the museum. The museum has a rich collection of artifacts, furniture, tools and ornaments, ranging in age from the Middle Ages. [3]
Garmo Stave Church is one of the main attractions. In 1882, the church was disassembled and sold to Anders Sandvig, who brought it to Lillehammer, where it was re-erected at Maihaugen in 1920–1921. [4]
Maihaugen also includes a large photography archive and an indoor museum. Constructed in 1959, they were extended in preparation for the 1994 Winter Olympics held in Lillehammer. Maihaugsalen concert hall, with over 700 seats and a large exhibition space, was opened in September 1967. [5]
The open-air museum is divided into three primary sections, the Rural Collection, Historic Town, and the Residential Area.
The following additional institutions are also under the administration of De Sandvigske Samlinger:
Sigrid Undset was a Danish-born Norwegian novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.
Lillehammer is a municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Gudbrandsdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Lillehammer. Some of the more notable villages in the municipality include Fåberg, Hunderfossen, Jørstadmoen, Vingnes, and Vingrom.
Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit". The first Norwegian Nobel laureate, he was a prolific polemicist and extremely influential in Norwegian public life and Scandinavian cultural debate. Bjørnson is considered to be one of the four great Norwegian writers, alongside Ibsen, Lie, and Kielland. He is also celebrated for his lyrics to the Norwegian national anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet". The composer Fredrikke Waaler based a composition for voice and piano on a text by Bjørnson, as did Anna Teichmüller.
Gudbrandsdalen is a valley and traditional district in the Norwegian county of Innlandet. The valley is oriented in a north-westerly direction from Lillehammer and the lake of Mjøsa, extending 230 kilometers (140 mi) toward the Romsdalen valley. The river Gudbrandsdalslågen (Lågen) flows through the valley, starting from the lake Lesjaskogsvatnet and ending at the lake Mjøsa. The Otta river which flows through Otta valley is a major tributary to the main river Lågen. The valleys of the tributary rivers such as Otta and Gausa (Gausdal) are usually regarded as part of Gudbrandsdalen. The total area of the valley is calculated from the areas of the related municipalities. Gudbrandsdalen is the main valley in a web of smaller valleys. On the western side there are long adjacent valleys: Ottadalen stretches 100 kilometers (62 mi) from Otta village, Gausdal some 50 kilometers (31 mi) from Lillehammer and Heidal some 40 kilometers (25 mi) from Sjoa. Gudbrandsdalen runs between the major mountain ranges of Norway including Jotunheimen and Dovrefjell–Rondane.
Norwegian romantic nationalism was a movement in Norway between 1840 and 1867 in art, literature, and popular culture that emphasized the aesthetics of Norwegian nature and the uniqueness of the Norwegian national identity. A subject of much study and debate in Norway, it was characterized by nostalgia.
Garmo Stave Church is a stave church situated at the Maihaugen museum at Lillehammer in Innlandet, Norway. Garmo Stave Church at Maihaugen is one of the most visited stave churches in Norway.
Anders Sandvig was a Norwegian dentist most noted for having founded Maihaugen, an innovative regional ethnological and architectural museum in Lillehammer, documenting the vernacular architecture of Gudbrandsdalen.
The Norwegian Festival of Literature is the biggest non commercial literary festival in the Nordic countries taking place in May/June in Lillehammer every year since 1995.
Nan Helene Bentzen Skille founder of The Sigrid Undset Society (1997) and author of the first biography in English of the Nobel Prize Laureate (1928) Sigrid Undset (1882–1949). Skille has a Masters in English Literature. She has been active as a promoter of the Norwegian author and Nobel Prize Laureate Sigrid Undset for many years, both through The Sigrid Undset Society, which she led for five years from its founding in 1997, as editor for the periodical Gymnadnia (1997–2003) and as member of the council for the Norwegian Festival of Literature.
Tancred Ibsen Jr. was a Norwegian diplomat.
Christopher Arndt Bruun was a Norwegian priest and educator.
Matias Skard was a Norwegian philologist, educator, psalmist, essayist and translator.
Sigurd Jebsen Grieg was a Norwegian museologist and archeologist. He was director of the Sandvig Collections at Maihaugen in Lillehammer. He is most associated with the excavation of Raknehaugen, a prehistoric burial barrow located at Ullensaker in Akershus, Norway.
Fartein Valen-Sendstad was a Norwegian historian and museologist. He served as Director of Maihaugen in Lillehammer, Norway.
Haakon Thallaug was a Norwegian barrister.
Aulestad is a farm and writer's house museum in Follebu in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located along County Road Fv255 (Bjørnsonvegen) between Vinstra and Hovemoen.
Hustad Church is a parish church of the Church of Norway in Hustadvika Municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is located in the village of Hustad along the Hustadvika coast. It is the church for the Hustad parish which is part of the Molde domprosti (arch-deanery) in the Diocese of Møre. The white, wooden church was built in a long church design in 1874 using plans drawn up by the architect Jacob Wilhelm Nordan. The church seats about 400 people.
The Bjørgan parsonage is a museum and former parsonage in Kvikne in the northern part of the municipality of Tynset in Innlandet county, Norway. It is where the writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910) was born and lived during his early childhood, from 1832 to 1837, while his father was the parish priest at Kvikne (1831–1837).
Anders Uchermann-Sandvig was a Norwegian newspaper editor.
