Red Deer museum teaching Albertans about Norwegian history, culture

The Norwegian Laft Hus Society in Red Deer has been educating people about Norwegian culture for 35 years.

The house mother, or hus mor, of Red Deer’s Norwegian Laft Hus museum calls it the city’s “best-kept secret.”

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“We’ve been trying to change that,” Julie McRae, who also sits on the museum’s board of directors, told CTV News Edmonton in a recent interview.

The museum, which mimics an 18th-century Norwegian farmhouse, is located in the green space between the recreation centre, tennis club and Pioneer Lodge.

A summer student says most visitors accidentally stumble upon it as they’re passing through the park or searching for a cafe.

“They’re always kind of shocked when they do walk in to see what is here,” McRae said.

The farmhouse was originally built in the 1970s on an acreage outside of Red Deer. A founding member of the cultural group dreamed of an international village one day being built. The first and only building of this village, the Norwegian Laft Hus, was moved to Red Deer and opened to the public in 1987.

The museum provides tours every day except Mondays in June and August, plus Wednesdays for the rest of the year. In the slow season, it hosts folk art classes like rosemaling and spoon carving. It also houses a library and produces a monthly newsletter about the museum’s artifacts.

“My mother was German and my father was Norwegian, so I didn’t know how to make any of the Norwegian dishes. So that’s why I originally joined,” McRae explained. “The first day I was here, they taught me how to make lefse.”

She added, “That’s what’s special to me: is to be able to teach other people about our different Norwegian crafts.”

In the 2021 census, 4,470 Red Deer residents reported being of Norwegian ethnic or cultural origin, while the province’s entire Norwegian population numbered more than 154,500.

Second-year summer student Elaura Fraser says she has fallen in love with the museum and its guests.

“A lot of Norwegians that have visited us have said a lot of our artifacts (are) something they would find in their great grandparents’ house,” she said.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Miriam Valdes-Carletti