Hjerl Hede Open Air Museum has a long tradition of “bringing the past alive”.

The very first live display to be hosted by a museum took place at Hjerl Hede in 1932 under the theme “One Day a Hundred Years Ago”. Local tradesmen and private people moved into the Museum to demonstrate an ordinary working day in a Danish village 100 years earlier.

The concept developed gradually from there, and the Museum now has the most extensive live display of any museum. More than 100 active participants man the museum’s farms, tool shops, mills etc. for seven weeks each year, showing how our great-great-grandparents lived and worked in rural Denmark.

This method of disseminating our cultural heritage has made Hjerl Hede known far and wide internationally, and it has attracted about 200,000 patrons every year, not only the typical patrons of Danish museums, but also families with children, many foreign tourists, and also people who would not normally go to visit a museum, but whose visit to Hjerl Hede may have provided the incentive to visit other museums.

Hjerl Hede Open Air Museum plans to expand its live display over the next few years and will focus in particular on rural trades and the rural tradesman’s role and importance in the village.