School

This schoolhouse from western Norway is typical of the earliest schools – a fairly small building with one room for teaching, a hall and a chamber, and a gallery along its back wall. 

The building was used as a school as late as the 1960s. The now restored schoolhouse looks the same as when it was built, with a red-painted exterior and a sod roof. 

The school­room is furnished as former pupils have described it. Maria Skaug, who attended the school between 1898 and 1906, provided much information. She remembers the rows of desks on each side of a middle aisle, boys to the left and girls to the right. The writing equipment of the day, slate pencils and split pen-points, are gone. But the ink bottles, little slates and the large blackboard have been preserved. The spittoon is also in place on the floor beside the teacher’s desk, once much used by both pupils and teachers spit­ting snuff.