Innlandet – where stories live on

From Hamar and up through Gudbrandsdalen lies a landscape rich in history and culture. Here the journey is as much about the stories as it is about the places. You’ll find traces of the Middle Ages, poets and everyday life – a living storytelling tradition visible in landscape and cultural life.

Photo: Ian Brodie – Aulestad

In the landscape of authors

Innlandet has given voice to some of Norway’s most famous authors. Sigrid Undset brought medieval Gudbrandsdal to life in a way that still touches us with her Kristin Lavransdatter. Her home, Bjerkebæk, is located in Lillehammer and is now a museum that provides an intimate glimpse into her life and the thoughts behind her works. Undset received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928, and is a pillar in Norwegian literary history. The garden at Bjerkebæk is very beautiful with perennial beds, orchard, herb garden, stone steps, walls and gravel paths, and is actually part of an exclusive, international network of literary parks.

In Gausdal (20 minutes from Lillehammer) famous author Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and his wife Karoline lived at the farm Aulestad. Bjørnson towered as an author and social debater. He had great international significance and engaged in important political and social issues. The house is lavishly furnished and remains as it was when Bjørnstjerne and Karoline Bjørnson lived here. Around the home is a beautiful historic garden, which has developed continuously since Karoline and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson moved in.

Every spring, readers, authors and culture enthusiasts gather for the Norwegian Literature Festival in Lillehammer – the largest of its kind in the Nordic region. The festival offers conversations, readings and debates, and shows that literature and storytelling still have a central place in the region’s identity.

Museums that bring stories to life

Along the travel route you’ll find several museums that communicate history and culture in an engaging way. At Anno Domkirkeodden in Hamar lie the ruins of a medieval cathedral, a mighty structure that is now enclosed by a modern glass construction. Here past and present meet in a building that both preserves and highlights the old stone church.

The museum contains much more than just ruins. Here you can wander among the folk museum’s historic buildings, see Sverre Fehn’s legendary architecture and exhibitions about urban development and religious life in the old bishop’s fortress, and hear Gregorian chant in the atmospheric surroundings. You can visit the herb garden and learn how the plants were used by monastery brothers and the town’s inhabitants in earlier times.

Anno Norwegian Emigration Museum can be found at Ottestad, just outside Hamar. This is a unique place for those who want to broaden their horizons and understand what it meant to leave Norway and start over in America. It’s fascinating to see this history in connection with migration in today’s society. In the open-air museum you’ll find buildings erected by Norwegian emigrants in the USA, almost like a small village, with school, church and residential and farmhouses. Together with the new main exhibition “Unknown Landscape” they convey a different type of story. Not just the big, national ones, but the small and personal: letters home, daily life, longing and hope. Then and now. One country’s emigrant is another country’s immigrant.

In Lillehammer lies Maihaugen, Norway’s largest open-air museum. Here you can walk from manor farms and mountain dairies to post-war housing and up to the present day. The museum provides insight into how Norwegian society has developed, and each building contains small stories about people and period-typical everyday life. This is a living museum, a place that engages both children and adults. At Maihaugen you’ll also find Norway’s Olympic Museum, where you can experience the highlights from Norwegian Olympic history. The museum gives you a unique insight into Norway’s rich Olympic traditions.

Photo: Munch Trail