National Nordic Museum

The National Nordic Museum is an internationally recognized museum and cultural center where people of all backgrounds are welcomed to be inspired by the values, traditions, art, and spirit of the Nordic peoples. Dedicated to collecting, preserving, and educating since its founding in 1980, the Nordic Museum is the largest museum in the United States to honor the legacy of immigrants from the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

Exhibits

Core Exhibition: Nordic Journeys expands the Museum’s classic immigration story to include a broader understanding of Nordic life and culture as it has evolved over the last twelve thousand years. This exhibition encompasses five distinct galleries and will feature not only beloved and important artifacts from our own permanent collection, but also more than 100 objects that have been offered as loans from museums throughout the United States and the National Museums of all five Nordic countries—including stone axes and tools that are more than four thousand years old; Viking-era rune stones, swords, keys, and jewelry; religious objects from the seventeenth century; and examples of twentieth-century modern design.

The special exhibition "Across the West and Toward the North: Norwegian and American Landscape Photography" is currently on view in the Barbro Osher Gallery. Admission to this exhibition is included in ticket. At the present time of devastating climate change and political conflicts about the environment and energy consumption, this exhibition considers a historical moment when once remote wildernesses were first surveyed, developed, and photographed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Drawing from the collections of Ron Perisho, the Picture Collection at the University of Bergen Library, and the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, the exhibition investigates how two countries responded to the tourism influx, infrastructure changes, exploitation of natural resources, and the resulting effects of mapping and exploration.

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