Because there’s not much to say about the Swedish performance at the Olympics (Ara Abrahamian’s hissy fit resulting in his bronze medal being revoked and Carolina Klüft’s dismal results so far, and that’s it in a nutshell) I’m going to continue talking about the wonders of Norrland instead.

But first things first.

Did you know that an open-air museum was a Scandinavian concept? The first one was actually organized in 1881 in Norway, and ten years later, an inspired guy by the name of Artur Hazelius set up the famous Skansen in Stockholm. The rest is history. The word “skansen” became synonymous with an open-air museum, and the idea was copied all over Europe and beyond. And of course, all over Sweden, too. These days almost every town and village of any standing has its very own open-air museum. In English they’re known as “folk museums”, “living history museums”, “museums of buildings”, etc. and generally mean a place full of old buildings where the poor staff is forced to prance around in period costumes.

In Swedish they’re known as “friluftmuseum” or “hembygdsgård”, and believe it or not, there are more than 1 300 of them in this country. That’s one open-air museum for every 7 thousand Swedes (including babies and really old people). See? I tell you, this stuff is big over here. Really big.

Some of them, like Stockholm’s Skansen are truly superb, some are OK, and some need to serve free waffles during summer weekends to get enough visitors. I admit, I’m a totally sucker for open-air museums. I love them all, the dinkier the better. Last year while driving to Kiruna, I made my poor friend stop at every single one along the way. She finally drew the line at an outdoor tractor museum somewhere outside of Luleå, and I still haven’t quite forgiven her for that.

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