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March 2017 exchange to Jamtli, Sweden

Marsli Owen, 17 July 2017

Back in March, four of us were lucky to have the opportunity to visit a town in central Sweden called Östersund to visit Jamtli, an open air museum, as part of the Erasmus+ program called ‘Sharing and Learning’. The programme’s aim is for staff from both museums to shadow each other, sharing skills and information.

Arriving in Östersund

Visiting Östersund itself was an experience. There was a thick blanket of snow everywhere, and the lake was frozen solid! So frozen that there were ice skaters, skiers and even people carrying their shopping on a direct short cut straight across! I don’t know what the poor legendary lake monster felt about the situation, but they do say he has a tunnel all the way to Scotland!

Jamtli

We spent three days at the Museum shadowing its staff. The Museum itself is a wooden building with a huge underground permanent exhibition (reachable by a slide in the shape of the aforementioned monster!). The permanent exhibitions include the Vikings and the famous tapestry from the period, daily life through the ages and the Sami, the indigenous population from northern Scandinavia.

Outside, there are acers of historical buildings from several different periods. There’s a village square complete with a shop and bank. It was quite a different shop to Gwalia Stores, although the triple decker brown paper roll holder could have potentially been the envy of the shop assistants! It was a working shop, as the Museum tries to bring the buildings to life and use them as much as possible. During the winter and the Swedish 'sports holiday' (like our half term) most of the buildingd were closed but the staff were ind enough to show us around.

I was shadowing different staff from the learning department, taking part in a couple of activities too like leading the reindeers on the ‘ride’ like the Sami would when moving camp from the mountains to the lower lands between the summer and winter and learning how to throw a lasso! Mark Smith and David Davies were with Mats Maloff, a carpenter, carrying out some maintenance work on the historical buildings, they became pretty good friends over the week! Rhian Morris shadowed the front of house staff, meeting some of the visitors like the little girl excited to have a chance to practice her English!

Like Joe, our favourite building was a house from the 1970s where we even had a game of table tennis! The farmhouse from the 1940s was also striking in its detail and how it really felt isolated. A lot of the buildings were wooden and elaborately painted, with several houses from 1895. An important year for Östersund because this is when the railway came to town.

We all came back having had an amazing experience. It was great to get the opportunity to meet and spend time with staff, seeing behind the curtains and feeling like part of the team. It would be great to come back in the summer season when more of the buildings are open, with Historieland in full swing and the children’s TV set putting on shows! The visit was inspiring for us all, and we’ve all come back full of stories and ideas.

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