Museum Centennial Year
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Sunnfjord Museum is celebrating 100 years of cultural history curation and engagement. This work is deeply rooted. There are many stories to tell.
Sunnfjord Museum was founded in 1926 to present the cultural history of the Sunnfjord region, which includes the municipalities of Askvoll, Bremanger, Fjaler, Hyllestad, Kinn (Flora) and Sunnfjord. The museum began as a small living history exhibit called Sunnfjordtunet (the Sunnfjord farm) along the Jølstra River in downtown Førde. Sunnfjordtunet was comprised of three buildings: the Østenstad cabin and the storehouses from Myklebust and Rørvik. These are still among the first buildings you meet when you enter the museum grounds. Around 500 artefacts were collected. A museum for the Sunnfjord region was born.
In 1951, Sunnfjord Museum moved to its present location at Movika. Movika was a tenant farm, and the buildings from that farm are preserved here still. More buildings were moved here to present a klyngetun, a traditional communal farm where several families lived together. A schoolhouse was added, and in 2004 a traditional mountain farm was constructed. This year we are opening a country store and a shoemaker’s workshop, as part of the centennial celebration.
In its first few decades, the museum was run by volunteers from the local history society Sunnfjord Sogelag. In the 1970s and 1980s, the museum hired a director and a carpenter. Conservator and educator positions were added in the 1990s and 2000s. In 2009, Sunnfjord Museum became part of the Museums of Sogn og Fjordane – a consortium of thirteen museums which preserve and present the cultural heritage and art of the former province of Sogn og Fjordane.
Today, Sunnfjord Museum has seven core staff members who preserve historic buildings, create new exhibits, conduct research and design visitor experiences. Our aim is to develop the museum in such a way that we continue to be a relevant cultural institution which contributes to community building and belonging.
Roots in Motion: 100 years at Sunnfjord Museum
In the centennial exhibition “Roots in Motion”, you can get a glimpse into the museum’s history from the establishment of the local history society Sunnfjord Sogelag in 1910 through to the opening of the newly restored Løsetloftet building in 2026. The exhibit places particular emphasis on how the museum has been part of passing on living cultural heritage through its work restoring historic buildings, preserving traditional folk costumes, and presenting folklife education for people of all ages. The exhibit also invites you to participate in a conversation about what identity and heritage mean for us now. How will we preserve and present our stories over the next 100 years?
The Løset Cabin (Løsetloftet)
Enter a guest house with a royal bed!
Since 2023, the museum’s carpenters have been working on restoring Løsetloftet, a building from Løset in Jølster, built around 1640. Løsetloftet became a part of the museum collection in 1953 and has received the preservation designation of freda, the highest degree of protection which a building can receive from the Norwegian Directorate of Cultural Heritage. Consequently, the restoration of Løsetlofet has been a meticulous process, ensuring that the work follows the strictest preservation guidelines.
Løsetloftet has an exciting legend! King Christian IV of Denmark-Norway is said to have stayed in Løsetloftet, which served as a guesthouse, during a trip through the area about 400 years ago. The museum’s carpenters have created a reproduction of the bed which he slept in so that you can experience Løsetloftet as the king might have.
Movika Country Store and Shoemaker’s Workshop (the Yellow House)
Visit Movika Country Store and Shoemaker’s Workshop and immerse yourself in the smells of candy, spices, and leather!
This house is an outbuilding from Vikja in Gaular and is known by the nickname “the Yellow House” at the museum. The Yellow House joined the museum’s collection in 1952 and was originally used as an exhibition and storage space for museum artefacts. Now the building is getting a new identity as an exhibit in its own right, presenting two trades that were important in Sunnfjord in the past: shopkeeping and shoemaking.
In the country store, you can open drawers, touch the products, and experience an era when shopping took place over a store counter. In the shoemaker’s workshop you can see an exhibition of artefacts from a workshop once located at Litlevika farm in Flekke, Fjaler municipality. On certain activity days, you can also join in handcraft demonstrations here.
The Yellow House has a ramp and is accessible for people who use wheelchairs or walkers. The house is also accessible for those who are blind or visually impaired and is equipped with good lighting and exhibit texts in braille. (Braille exhibit available in Norwegian only at this time.)