Visiting the Sunnmøre Open Air Museum

In parts of Northern Europe, there is a tradition of creating living, outdoor museums. The idea is that they illustrate what life was like in the past; a way to preserve a time that has otherwise been obliterated. One of these is the Sunnmøre Museum, about a half-hour drive from Ålesund.

We wanted to check it out and learned we could take a local bus and walk into the museum. It was raining goats and sheep, but the desk clerk at the hotel pointed us to the bus station a couple of blocks away and we boarded using the credit card on our iPhone. Everything in Scandinavia is paid for with a phone (assuming you have your credit card(s) attached). We almost never used cash or a physical credit card.

On the bus we swung through the rain and Ålesund's small suburbs; mostly wooden, one story homes with small yards and the occasional garage. The land was green and rocky as we skirted the coast and made our way to the Sunnmøre Open Air Museum.

It was exactly as advertised. Most people don't realize how poor Norway was for most of its existence. For centuries Norwegians eked out livings as fishermen and farmers. Life from one generation to the next seldom changed and life was mostly a matter of surviving the brutal winters and making hay during the short springs and summers.

That changed when Norwegian crude oil was found, utterly re-arranging the country's economy. The irony is that while Norway's oil has enriched it, Norway itself uses none of it. It is a nearly carbon neutral country and one of the most environmentally responsible nations on the planet.

Sunnmøre harkens back to the Norway of the past. It's the site of the old Borgundkaupangen trading centre which was active from the 11th to 16th centuries. We walked through the indoor museum first which showed off nice little touches from the past: a wooden chest, examples of clothing the tough Norwegian weather required when working by ship or in the fields, a handmade chair for children built to change as they grow.

It was still raining when we began to walk among the more than 50 traditional buildings that have been relocated throughout the area's rolling hills, pond and docks (there is also an adjacent Boathall that features 40 different kinds of fishing boats used in Norway).

The farther we walked the more we seemed to step back in time. Suddenly the clouds lifted and the sun burst across the rich green hill and we were in a different place. There was a Great Grandma's Garden, a shoemaker's workshop; fisherman Ole Dyb's house that survived the 1904 fire that destroyed most of Ålesund; the Flydal Smithy; a schoolhouse built in 1743 (complete with books and handheld chalkboards); and a large farmhouse called Sletterreitstova.

Everyone of these buildings is authentic and every stick of them was moved and then carefully positioned on the museum's open land to provide the feel of a town that rarely exists today. I'll let the pictures of these beautiful grounds do most of the talking.

Afterward we visited the Boathall, the clouds returned and the rains fell again. We threw up our hoods and walked to the road where, in time, a bus arrived and took us back to downtown Ålesund where we settled into our hotel and prepared to make out way farther North to the Norwegian town of Trondheim.

Ålesund and Sunnmøore Recommendations

Traveling to Ålesund or the Sunnmøre district? Consider some of these options or look for more Norway ideas in our Travel Recommendations.