Museum A-Ö » Rural life and craft » Öjskogsparken

The Öjskogsparken museum area resembles a condensed agricultural community. There are over 20 historical buildings on the area from a peasant house and school to a pharmacy and a country store. Here you don’t only get to see, what life used to be like, you also get to experience it and much much more!

There are over 20 historical buildings and museum spaces on the area. Here you can see an 18th century peasant house, a 19th century school cottage, a wartime pharmacy and a hundred years old country store. The buildings, the tools, the furniture, the clothes and the pillboxes – everything has been preserved in its nearly original state. The artefacts represent old time rustic life.

Bengtsgården is a typical Ostrobothnian 19th century country house. The artist Carl Bengts grew up here. He worked as the assistant of famous graphic artist and painter Akseli Gallèn-Kallela from time to time. The interior of the cabin is roughly the same as it was, when the house was inhabited in the 19th century, and you can almost see, how people sat down around the table. All the utensils required at that time can be found here. In one of the chambers is displayed a wedding dress with the crown that goes with it, and in the attic is for instance a toy exhibition.

Among the pearls of the museum is a well-equipped museum pharmacy with its laboratory and preparation room, where plants used in the making of medicines were dried. The dried plants were first crushed in herb barrels and after that fined in large mortars. In the pharmacy is even lemonade, which was made and sold in pharmacies in the old times.

In the country store from the year 1895 are over 700 products, most of which originate from the period before the Second World War. The sugarloaves, the candy machine but also the rationing cards used after the war generate nostalgic feelings. Agriculture was an important source of livelihood in Närpes, and in the agrarian museum the visitor can get acquainted with old time farm work and life with the help of diverse agriculture and forestry as well as fishing equipment.

Närpes is known for its tomato cultivation and therefore a greenhouse museum is very well suited in Öjskogsparken. There you can during the growing season see traditional tomato cultivating and familiarize yourself with the photographs and tools representing the early days of tomato cultivation.

A homestead and emigrant festival, sing-along occasions and storytelling cafés are organized during the summer. One of the highpoints of the summer is a revue performed for the rotating auditorium on the museum area.