Open Air Museums as Monuments of Nationalism
Studies in nationalism during the last twenty years are as a phenomenon also a symbol of the academic possibility to recognize an epoch in history – an epoch normally placed in the time span from the last quarter of the 18th century to the last quarter of the 20th century. Moreover it seems reasonable to see the climax of the epoch of nationalism in Europe located to the decades just around the year 1900. In the period from c. 1890 to c. 1920 the now rather old 15 open-air museums were created in Scandinavia. Until the First World War there were only created this new kind of museums in Scandinavia and it seems not unreasonable to interpret that fact as if the open-air museums were especially suited to deliver whatever was needed for the Scandinavian countries.
In this article a thesis about the reasons for the building of open-air museums is created and analysed. The openair museums are regarded as arenas for informal learning processes and as such especially designed for learning attitudes. Nationalism was the overall ideology, which around the year 1900 could serve as an explanatory force for ordinary people. Society in Western Europe and not least in Scandinavia was in the midst of industrialization, capitalization and migration. Church defined Christianity was replaced by a variety of ideologies in the search for answers on what is good and bad. Nationalism became the major system of thinking which was found useful by most mainstream ideologies. The open-air museums were ideal arenas for creating thoughts about mutual roots in the traditional agricultural society for all the members of the nation.
The open-air museums created special views for the public. Houses and whole environments were moved to the new museum sites. But it was of course not done without thoughts about how the final result would become in the open-air museum. Inspiration was gathered from the national romantic paintings of the middle of the 19th century, and the new environments in the open-air museums established new cultural landscapes, which in form and in their history are today unique. Later changes in the open-air museums in Scandinavia have very often disturbed the original national romantic impression. Therefore this article also advocates for serious consideration about preservation of at least some of the original sites.
