The Jubilee Year of 2020 at Lofotr Viking Museum

Abstract

After several years of archaeological excavations at Borg in Lofoten in the 1980s, Lofotr Viking Museum was established in 1995. The excavations uncovered an 83-meter longhouse dated to the Viking age. A copy of this longhouse, together with a copy of the Gokstad Viking ship, were built to make the core of the new museum above the arctic circle. Lofotr Viking Museum grew bigger as the years went by – both regarding building area, outdoor and indoor activities as well as visitor numbers. 2019 gave us about 105,000 visitors – all time high! - and we were looking forward to celebrating our 25 year jubilee in 2020 with lots of different, new events for a large audience. Then came the 12th of March, and all cultural activities were shut down due to the pandemic. Our visitor number dropped to 45.000 in 2020. Even so, we are optimists on behalf of all outdoor museums.

Keywords

• archaeological open-air museum
• viking age
• norway