4. A day at Nordlandsmuseet and Bodøsjøen

Ane Rodrigo

The last day of this course we went to visit the “Nordlandsmuseet” or the “Nordland Museum” in Bodø. This museum is one of the oldest buildings in the town, because after the bombing of Bodø in 1940, almost all the buildings were destroyed. This building was built in 1903.

First of all, we saw an exhibition that was focused on Sami population from Northern Salten. The Sami people used to use the nature as a source to obtain food and materials for objects or buildings, before 1940. The main resource was the sea (fishing). After de Second World War, this changed and the Sami people started to use an economy based on money.

For me, the best object of this exhibition was the imitation of a typical Sami hut (“Gamme”), made by using natural materials such as turf and birch bark. This hut really impressed me because its difficult to imagine how they managed to live so much people in such a small place.    

Secondly, we saw an exhibition of silver treasure from the Viking Age. The silver treasure was found in 1919. It is a very big brooch, so we guess that they didn´t use it as a normal brooch. The archeologists think that it was most probably used as a status symbol. After this, we entered to an exhibition about Bodø called “our town”. At the start of the exhibition, we had to pass trough an entrance that was decorated as if it would be a bombarded place. I liked a lot that idea of doing such an entrance because it makes the spectator to change the way they are going to see the exhibition since it enables to connect with the sensation of being in a war. I found this exhibition very interesting because I didn´t know that Bodø had been bombarded in 1940. Moreover, we saw a shot film called “our town” in which we also saw the evolution of the town and the attack. This film helped me to understand better the story of Bodø. It was very stunning to see how has Bodø changed during the years and after that tragedy. At first, in 1865, there were few houses, but during the years the town growth significantly. Unfortunately, the 27^th of May of 1940, the Germans attacked Bodø. We don´t know exactly which was the reason for this attack, but it may have been because of the airport or as a tactic to frighten people. Apart from that, we also saw some objects from those times such as children games and some medical objects.

After visiting the museum, me went to see the cultural center of Bodø. There, we saw the room of Louis-Philippe that has the oldest interior furnishing of Norway. It has been restored by some specialists and students. They started the restauration process in 2009 and now it is finished. After this, we went to see the jekt Anna Karoline, which was amazingly huge and incredible. To finish, we also went to see fantastic a wall paint. I liked a lot because it was a critical painting that made me think how the new generations of children are growing. Instead of going outside and play with others, a lot of children spend their time playing video games. But it is not only a problem with children, adults lost a lot of time in the internet and sometimes it makes us to loose the track of time and forget about the real word. Moreover, I like a lot the “feminist” view of this painting, as we can see there are girls as warriors for example, and they are also the protagonists of this painting, together with men.