The Open Air Museum “Frilandsmuseet” is located north of Copenhagen. It is one of the world’s oldest as well as largest open air museums. The museum houses more than 50 farms, mills and houses from the period 1650-1950 representing virtually all regions of Denmark.

Visitors are invited to go into the smallholder's cottage, the water mill and the manor house. All houses are equipped with original furniture, utensils and textiles. You may bump into people in period costumes, tending their daily chores. Original livestock and other animals complete the picture.

The Open Air Museum “Frilandsmuseet”

The Old Town “Den Gamle By” in Århus, Jutland, brings history to life in the fully functioning workshops which offer a living and breathing experience of what it was like to live and work in a Danish market town as it was in the old days. The museum covers the period from the rise of the market town in the early middle ages to the nineteen hundreds when the market towns were gradually replaced by industrial urban communities.

Enjoy 75 historical houses, gardens, exhibitions, shops, and workshops. The majority of the houses are furnished with original interiors consisting of 34 workshops, 10 trade stalls and shops as well as 27 private rooms, a chemist's shop, post office, school, custom house and a theater.

From Easter to 30th December it is possible to experience Living History to a varied extent. Have a chat with the shoemaker's wife or let the boatswain ferry you across the harbor in the ferry. Come and meet the organ grinder, shop-apprentice, the town drummer and the many other characters of yesteryear's market towns.
 
Drop in on the kitchen maid boiling up a soup over the open hearth in the Merchant's House and pay a visit to the housewife in Havbogade roasting pork in her wrought iron-stove. Come in and have a taste! End the day with a pint in the Beer Cellar or enjoy a cup of coffee and a cake in the tea garden.

The Old Town "Den Gamle By"

In the Funen Village open-air museum - with rural structures from the 18th and 19th century - a complete village environment has been recreated, with half-timbered buildings, fences and farm animals, village pond and a village street. The entire village is surrounded by cultivated land. The museum tells the story of life in the country around the 1850s.

Agriculture is practiced using traditional methods - with many activities and living history during the summer time. You can meet the master of the household and the farmhand in the field, you can watch the young girl helping the mistress in the kitchen, and hear the sound of the blacksmith’s hammer in the village street. Rare breed animals graze in the pens, adding their characteristic odor to the smell of brewing beer to help create the correct ambience of the Funen village of bygone times.

The Funen Village

Hjerl Hede (Hjerl Heath) in Northwest Jutland carried out the first living-history event ever in 1932. The museum has a long tradition of exhibiting old village crafts. Hjerl Hede shows the development of the Danish village from the year 1500 up to about 1900 with a forge, an inn, mills, a school, a vicarage, a dairy, a grocer’s shop, and farms. You can see how country people lived and worked in the old days. The old Danish breeds of livestock graze in the fields.

Every afternoon from the end of June to the middle of August the museum comes alive with more than 100 people dressed in old costumes. You can go shopping in the old grocer's shop, in the clog maker's workshop and in the coach builder's and cooper's workshops or at the printing house. During three weekends before Christmas you can see how the villagers made preparations for Christmas.

Hjerl Hede

The Co-operative Village Nyvang (”Andelslandsbyen Nyvang”) in Holbæk, Zealand, covers the period from 1870 to 1950. Those were the years that the Danish co-operative movement had its heyday. The co-operative movement is an integral part of Denmark and Danish history and mentality.

Study everyday life in the co-operative village of Nyvang. Eat in the village café at a moderate cost or enjoy the 130 acre land museum from a horse drawn carriage. Enjoy coffee with Rich’s substitute in the state smallholding of 1927. Watch the butter and cheese production in the dairy from 1892. Do your shopping the old-fashioned way in the co-operative shop of 1940. Visit places: the old blacksmith, the bicycle and radio repair shop, post delivery point, Zone-rescue service, sawmill, house of domestic industry, the old steamrollers and the many changing exhibitions.

The Co-operative Village Nyvang

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