Maihaugen

Maihaugen Review

Europe's largest open-air museum, Maihaugen was founded in 1887. This massive collection of folk life artifacts comes from Anders Sandvig, an itinerant dentist who accepted odds and ends—and eventually entire buildings—from the people of Gudbrandsdalen in exchange for his services. Eventually Sandvig turned the collection over to the city of Lillehammer, which provided land for the museum. The exhibit "We Won the Land" is an inventive meander through Norway's history. It begins in 10,000 BC. After walking past life-size, blue-hued mannequins representing periods like the Black Death and the 400 years of Danish rule, you reach unsettling exhibits about the 20th century.