Girls and boys always listen when grandfather begins a tale with, “When
I was a boy.” But many times the girls and boys who listen to
grandfather’s tales find it hard to make pictures in their minds of the
houses grandfather tells about, of the games he played, or of the dances
he and grandmother danced. And it is much, much harder to understand
when grandfather and grandmother tell the tales that their grandfathers
and grandmothers have told them!
Many Swedish children go to a museum each year to see how their
great-great-great-grandparents actually lived. For in that northern
country—and in Norway too—people have built museums which are
different from America’s big buildings with their many showcases filled
with things of long ago. They have built what they call open-air
museums.
A Swedish man got the idea for such a museum. One day more than sixty
years ago that man, a doctor, was far out in the country districts of
Sweden. There he saw old, old buildings with furniture like the
furniture used long, long ago. He saw people dressed in costumes like
those worn by their great-great-great-grandparents. The doctor said to
himself, “Why not buy some of those old, old houses, their furnishings,
and the costumes of the people, and put them where many people can see
them?”
Very soon after, the doctor began carrying out his idea. Other people
helped him. What a big task it was! They brought together old houses,
old churches, old schoolhouses, old windmills, and other farm buildings
from all over Sweden. On a large piece of wooded land outside Stockholm
they rebuilt homes and constructed whole farms as nearly as possible
like homes and farms of the long, long ago. That is the way they made an
open-air museum.
One day a class of Swedish school children visited an open-air museum.
Very soon after they entered the gate they saw a group of buildings. The
buildings were made of rude logs which have turned dark brown with age
in the sun and rain. The teacher said that the group of houses belonged
to one family. The pupils asked, “Why did a family build a group of
houses so close together like this?”
The teacher told them that in the early days a family in Sweden usually
had several houses. They had a house with thick walls and thick roofs
where they lived in the winter. They had another house with lighter
walls and roofs where they lived in the summer. They had a storehouse in
which to keep their food and fuel. They also had a guest house, for in
those days the people in Sweden gave their guests a whole house to
themselves.
[Illustration: A ROOM IN AN OPEN-AIR MUSEUM]
The pupils went inside one old, old house which had been built about
seven hundred years ago. It is a one-story house with a sod roof. Inside
the children found furniture placed about the rooms as it had been
placed in those early days. But, of course, there was little furniture.
And strangest of all there were no windows in the house. The light the
people could get from the sun came into the living room through a hole
in the roof above the center of the room. That hole was just above an
open fireplace. Through it the smoke from the fire could escape. A long
pole hung from the hole into the room below. On that pole was a thin
skin which could be pulled into place over the hole when the rains came.
But the children saw other houses more like those in which their
grandfathers and grandmothers had lived. In those houses the fireplace
was built in the corner of the room. They saw some fireplaces with
kettles hanging just as they had hung in the days when a fire had blazed
on the fireplace. In the room were rude chairs cut from large tree
trunks. On the ceilings pictures had been carved and painted. The
children knew the stories which those pictures told, for the stories
were Bible stories which they had read many times.
[Illustration: ANOTHER ROOM IN AN OPEN-AIR MUSEUM]
Some of the boys found an old bed which amused them very much. It had
three stories. The first story stood out into the room about a foot
farther than the second story, and the second story stood out about a
foot farther than the top story. In that way there were two steps up to
the upper bed. The girls and boys laughed, then the teacher lifted the
lid into the lowest bed and said, “This is where the cats and dogs
slept.” Then he showed them the inside of the middle bed and said, “This
is where the children slept.” The children then guessed that the top bed
was for the mother and father.
[Illustration: FOLK DANCING AT A MUSEUM]
That afternoon the pupils went to see the folk-dances. Some of their
older brothers and sisters were in the dances. They wore costumes such
as Swedish people long ago wore, they danced the dances that were danced
in those days.
When the school children got back to their school the next day, they
wanted to dance some of the old Swedish dances. The gymnasium teacher
helped them learn the steps, and the sewing teacher helped them make
their costumes. Then one day they danced for their mothers and fathers
and their grandmothers and grandfathers.
When the teacher of those children told them about the man who had made
the gift of the museum to Sweden, the pupils agreed that the man who
built the open-air museum was a citizen of whom Sweden may be proud.