Map of the Area

In this small, yellow building you can play the entrance fee to the museum village. Here you can get a map of the area and today’s programme. During the summer season’s opening hours you’ll find someone from Stundars’ staff here if you have questions.

The Stundar’s Playground is designed with the aid of the local kindergarten children. You don not need to pay the entrance fee to the museum village to play here.

This building was the childhood home of the poet Jarl Hemmer when it still stood in Vaasa. Today, there is a restaurant that is open only on reservation here. There is also a Memorial Room and a conference room where an art exhibition is held every year.

This outhouse belonged to the tailor and hat-maker Gros in Vasa, but nowadays it houses, Stundars’ office, Lyckans café (Lyckans means “the happiness´”) and atelier for our artist in residence-programme. The building also houses the guide’s dressingroom and museum pedagogy storage.

In this house, that once was a laundry in Vasa, the old newsroom, composing room and printing room of the newspaper Vasabladet. On the second floor, there is a nice cigar room the editors once used to relax in. Please contact us for a guided tour.

In the Crafts’ house there are a small but well-equipped, modern carpentry. On the second floor there are meeting rooms, restrooms and a kitchen.

In this small house there is a handicap toilette, where you also can change diapers and breastfeed away from the wind and the cold. Next to it is Stundars’ laundry.

In this cottage, there is a cosy meeting room, historically decorated and with a traditional fireplace. The room is furnished with a long table and a screen, and there is a small kitchen and toilette. On the second floor, there are offices for Stundars’ staff.

This building has treshing barns in both ends, where harvested rye or barley was dried using big stone ovens to heat the space. Then you hit the straws to get the grains out, collected them and took them to the windmill to grind into flour.

During markets and Artisan’s days, this is where you can buy soup, coffee or our famous sugar pastries called “jam pigs”. The building itself is a part of a row of outhouses that once stood in Vaasa and that was used to store grains in.

Today, this small hay barn or hay shed is used to store firewood in for Stundars’ many fireplaces. Small sheds like this were used as storage for a lot of things, usually hay or firewood.

This is the Ostrobothnian version of a mountain dairy farm. Here they were placed in glens in the woods, or on the sea shore, and used by milkmaids during the summer to stay the night between milkings. Today, this one is used by Stundar’s Tin-smith as his workshop.

In summertime, the cows grazed in the woods or along the shores, but came here to the temporary cow barn to get milked in the evening. Today, it is the tractor lawnmower that keeps the grass short in the museum village, and now it is stored here instead of cattle.

In Ostrobothnia, many men became sailors and sailed the seven seas. When he came ashore, the porcelain dogs in his window faced towards the single room in his cottage, and when he went to sea again, they faced out to look out for him.

This is what all buildings looked like on the Ostrobothnian countryside still in the end of the 19^th century, gray and weathered. The trend to paint our buildings red came from northern Sweden. Today, there is a shower and restroom in here for people renting the Smoke Sauna.

There is no chimney in the smoke sauna, it is the warm smoke itself that warms up the space. That’s why the interior is black, but the warmth is simply wonderful. The smoke sauna can be rented by groups through Hemmer’s Restaurant.

In older times, every village had to provide one or more soldiers for the King’s Army. To be able to support himself, the village let him use the least wanted parts of the village commons, some ways off from the other houses. This house is one of our oldest, from the early 1700’s.

The brass-smith cast some of the fancier items for a household, like bells, handles and cups. The smith who built this house was also a clockmaker, copper-smith and painter. It is rare that a workshop like this have been preserved for future generations to see.

The tools and other objects in our brass foundry comes from several real copper-smith’s workshops. Our most common brass items at Stundars are the coffee pots.

Most artisans in the countryside were poor and didn’t own land. They were allowed to build their small, grey cottages on the village commons. The cottages usually had only one room. Here, we have an exhibition of how women used to wash clothes and other textiles.

This cottage have one bedroom and a entry room, the most typichal building in the northern parts of Ostrobothnia. In the bedroom, we exhibit bed textiles like they were arranged in bunkbeds and extendable sofas during colder nights.

This building began as a fisherman’s cabin on a small island, used when the boat trip and road home was too long. Now it houses the pottery with a kiln and potter’s wheels, but also the apprentice’s small bedroom.

The landless people often built their cottages and outhouses huddled up against each other in a jumbled heap on top of some low, rocky hill. In the middle part of this elongated outhouse we have a small exhibition about farm animals.

All stone foundations you can see under the cottages are made by the stonecutter. More skilled stonemasons could build the grandest of cathedrals, but the village stonecutter stuck to millstones and the like. In summertime we usually have a small art exhibition in here.

This is the summer home for goats, rabbits and chicken, and sometimes we get visits by horses or ponies too. The goat was actually called “the poor man’s cow” and was a common pet for the landless people, that didn’t own meadows.

The wise women were healers and advisers when the nearest doctor lived in the city. They could serve as midwifes and perform cupping that was used as a remedy for most illnesses. Her cottage has just one room, and what’s called a “poor man’s porch”.

Every larger cottage or farm had a sauna, just like today. That was where you washed, but also smoked meat, delivered babies, washed corpses and performed cupping. The really old saunas didn’t have chimney but were heated by the hot smoke from the stone owen.

In Ostrobothnia, every farm owned a windmill, or part of one, and grind their own flour. Bigger villages could have a millner that took care of the grinding for several farms. There are very few water mills in Ostrobothnia since the landscape is so very flat.

This is the very first building that the young Solf Museum Association, later on the Stundars Association, bought in 1938. It took three decades until it got company, when the Millner’s cottage was moved here.

In older times, people cut hay and grass out on meadows and let it dry in the sun. Then it was gathered into airy hay sheds like this, and during the winter, the farmer could load it on a horse-drawn sleigh and drive it home. These sheds were a very common sight in Ostrobothnian fields.

This small cottage has ironically been called The Castle as well as The Mouse Trap. The shoemaker’s shop is situated in the tiniest of rooms, even though the shoemaker himself usually went from farm to farm to mend shoes, carrying his tools in a sack on his back.

This outhouse has been made during a practical course for carpenters in 2002. In one part, we have a small exhibition of Torsten Lundmark’s wooden figurines. Wooden roofs like this has to be remade every 20-25 years.

The whole cottage is dominated by a carpenter’s workbench and all his tools. This particular cottage was built by Erik Sassi, who emigrated to America in 1886 – but died only 8 days after his arrival. He left his wife Johanna widowed with several children.

To the small group of buildings belongs a food shed with a hole in the door for the cat. Here we have made a small exhibition of the food a poor, Ostrobothnian family could afford, and dedicated it to Johanna Sassi. The food isn’t real, its made from hobby clay, wool, fabrics and gravel.

Every farm wanted to have a windmill of its own. The millstones are in the lower part of this kind of mill, in Swedish named after the magpies tail, and the upper part could be turned to suit the direction of the wind.

In this shed Margit used to store everything between bags of salt to washing barrels. Today its used by Stundars staff for all the props we need when, for example, having an old-time laundry day with schoolchildren. Margit used to work as a guide at Stundars for several decades.

Usually, the village farmers owned a smithy together. The smiths were a prominent occupational group, and their most important task was to make the iron tools for the farming. The forge and the anvil were the smiths’ most important tools.

Usually, the village farmers owned a smithy together. The smiths were a prominent occupational group, and their most important task was to make the iron tools for the farming. The forge and the anvil were the smiths’ most important tools.

During the summer, all the girls on the farm slept in lofts and sheds instead. The Girl’s shed also doubled as an exhibition of the girl’s hope chest and therefor was decorated with the finest garments she owned. In the Saturday evening, suitors might come by.

In the tiny backroom, the tin-smith’s tools and tin products are displayed. Many of the ordinary household items were made in tin: sconces, flasks, jugs, lanterns and toys. The neighbouring municipality of Vähäkyrö is known for their skilled tin-smiths.

For every cottage, there was a small shed to keep the firewood in. The fireplace was the only heat-source for hundreds of years. The landless people didn’t have the right to get wood from the forests, and hade to exchange work for firewood with the farmers.

In older days, all men were skilled carpenters compared to nowadays. You made almost everything yourself, everything from wagons to barrels. Today, all children visiting Stundars have a chance to try their hands on carpentry in this specially built workshop.

This type of windmill for grinding grain into flour has gotten its Swedish name, mamsellkvarn, by its likeness to a lady’s billowing skirt. The force from the wind could also be harnessed for cutting wooden roof shingles.

All farms hade sheds like these to store different things in. One of these was used for storing milk products in, like cheese, sour milk and cream, and the other was more meant for cereals and flour from mainly rye and barley.

On an Ostrobothnian farm, the buildings most often formed one square, with gates and fences in between. The enclosure was traditionally meant to protect the livestock from wolves. The lofts could be used for summer sleeping quarters, now it houses a small kitchen.

This was the old wagon garage, where all kinds of sleds and sleighs also could be stored. Nowadays, there are visitor restrooms here, and our own small Play Farmhouse where children inspired by the real farmhouse get to play freely.

This was the old cow shed, where sheep and chicken also could be housed during the cold, long winters. Nowadays it is used as a space for art exhibitions and our pedagogical activities, as well as a small café during our larger events.

To be able to make gun powder for the King’s Army, the farmers were ordered to boil urine-drenched dirt from the cow shed into saltpetre in sheds like this. Because of the fire hazard and the smell, they were usually placed some ways off from the rest of the farm.

To be able to make gun powder for the King’s Army, the farmers were ordered to boil urine-drenched dirt from the cow shed into saltpetre in sheds like this. Because of the fire hazard and the smell, they were usually placed some ways off from the rest of the farm.

As part of the farmyard square, there was usually a cottage too. It could house the older generation after they had given over the farm to their oldest son. Sometimes, the cottage was used for baking instead, and nowadays this is where our famous sugar pastries are made.

The Ostrobothnian farmstead is the grandest building around, but even though it was two storeys high, only the first floor was used as living quarters. Grandmother or grandfather could live in the small bedroom, and one room we have made into hands-on textile exhibition.

Our small village school is from the end of the 19^th century, but many of the objects inside are older than that. Here children of different ages were taught their ABC:s, and the teacher lived in the small room at the back. The pupils had to clean and heat the school room, though.

In this building there is an old country shop as well as a post office. The shop sold almost everything the villagers could ever need, except – in the era of subsistence economy – fresh produce. The shopkeeper lived in the other part of the house and stood a bit higher on the social ladder.

In this small, timbered building we have placed our Play Store, where children and those with playful minds can buy and sell different products. In older time, the most sold products were coffee and sugar, but also fabrics, spices and soap.