Exhibitions and Collections
With 16 historic buildings in its main complex, which occupies most of a square block in downtown Decorah, Iowa, and two
National Register sites just outside the city, Vesterheim is the largest, most comprehensive museum in the United States dedicated to a single immigrant
group. The museum houses over 24,000 artifacts, which include large samplings from the fine, decorative, and folk arts, and the tools and machinery of early
agriculture, lumbering, and other immigrant industries.
Inside
Vesterheim’s main building, visitors read the entire history of a proud, courageous people in the beauty of Norwegian textiles and traditional dress;
in the lovely, sometimes fantastical decorative painting called rosemaling; in the Spartan furniture and housewares of early pioneer life; and the impressive
fine art that Norwegian-American culture eventually fostered.
In addition to the main
building, there's a restored stone mill, dating from 1851, filled with the wonderful, often startling, tools and machines that helped build a new home in a
new world. There are also a house and grist mill from Valdres, Norway; two pioneer log houses; a log parochial school; a blacksmith shop; a stabbur, or
Norwegian storage building; a shed for drying hops; an early Decorah house of unusual stovewood construction; and a prairie house and a Lutheran church, both
moved over 400 miles, from North Dakota to the museum grounds.