A trip down memory lane

Visiting Give-Egnens Museum is like stepping into a time warp. The museum has kept an impressive amount of materials showing how life used to be over 100 years ago, which makes it an authentic and child-friendly experience.

Step inside a peasant’s farm to see how a family had to use whatever they had at their disposal in order to make a living, or pay the local grocer, butcher and shoemaker a visit and see what a small village looked like in the 19th century. If you are a school class, you can even be taught in an authentic classroom from the 1930s, where rote learning and strict discipline were part of the schedule.

“It’s important to understand whose shoulders we are standing on today. We serve as a collective memory of how things used to be around here in the area, and in Denmark in general, many years ago. It wasn’t always easy to cultivate the soil, and the locals had to be very frugal to make it work,” explains curator at Give-Egnens Museum, Lars Froberg Mortensen, adding: “The materialistic culture at the museum is enormous, and guests are more than welcome to touch all the original objects from back then.”

A special year

Both locally and nationally, this is an exciting year for the museum. It is the 100th anniversary of the Schleswig plebiscites, where a large northern zone in Germany voted to join Denmark after having belonged to Germany since the war in 1864.

2020 is also a big anniversary for the museum itself, as it was inaugurated 50 years ago. “We are planning several events later on this year to mark the date and, as always, we’ll try to come up with something with a both local and national angle. In general, we are a very active house, with lectures and concerts, as well. As we are located in idyllic surroundings, it’s ideal for families to spend a day here, as you can walk around in the nearby forest or use the playground,” says Mortensen.

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