Frilandsmuseet

Why it is renowned

Opened in 1897 and spread over 40 hectares, Frilandsmuseet is one of the largest and oldest open-air museums in the world.¹ Its buildings come not only from every region of Denmark but from the Faroe Islands and from the former Danish lands of Southern Schleswig, Scania and Halland, so it shows how rural building adapted to local conditions and materials.¹ It is part of the National Museum of Denmark and of its research into farming history.¹²

The story

The museum opened in 1897 and moved to its present site on Kongevejen in Lyngby in 1901.¹ Its more than 100 buildings date from 1650 to 1950; each was taken down where it stood and rebuilt at the museum, save one windmill that stands on its own ground.¹² They range from a manor house to a poorhouse, with farms, mills and workshops, among them a Læsø farmhouse roofed with eelgrass and the haubarg Rothelau, built in the 1650s on the Eiderstedt peninsula under a 12-metre pyramid roof.¹³ Six mills, including a post mill from 1662, stand on the grounds, some still worked by volunteers, alongside 25 historic gardens and old Danish breeds of livestock.¹

What to know it by

• Dethsgård, LæsøFarm from Læsø with a roof of eelgrass
• RothelauHaubarg farm from Eiderstedt with a 12-metre roof
• Østergård, FjellerupWealthy farm with remnants of wall paintings
• The post mill1662The oldest of the museum's six mills