Have you ever been in an open-air museum? In a folk musem? In a true Skansen? Well I lived there for four days and I wish I could have stayed longer, for the rest of the summer and the beginning of autumn. And maybe for a part of winter. Oh, god damn it, I think I could live there alone for a year...
What is that? Originally it's a Skandinavian thing. The name Skansen comes from the world's oldest Swedish open-air museum displaying traditional Swedish architecture. It's on an island called Djurgården. The next place on my 'I would like to visit' list. Somebody take me there.
The one I have visited is located in Bialowieża in Podlaskie Voivodeship. It's on the border with Belarus. I come from Białystok, so it's like 1,5h journey for me to get there. It's a private museum. A group of people who love tradition and folklore collected these buildings and things from all over the region. Piece by piece. This Skansen shows how people called Ruthenians lived. It’s a ethnonym used for the East Slavic peoples.
Luckily for me, my best friend's step-father is one of the owners. She worked there for a month as a guide. I just came to hang around. You can’t pay and rent a room there so it was really nice to stay there as a guest.
I fell in love with this old and beautiful in its simplicity wooden architecture. With the rawness of the interiors, clothes, materials and existence of people who lived there one hundred years ago. Maybe it’s so impressive because the life they were living was so different from mine. They didn’t have so many choices. It was easier to choose back then. They were so much closer to the basics of existence. They were probably far happier than people nowadays.
You can see more pictures I took in Białowieża at Mad Alice Photography. All below were taken by me. Enjoy.
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