In 2026, the Østlandstunet area at the museum will become The Living Crafts Yard. Many visitors have already tried wood carving and blacksmithing at the museum. In summer 2026, we are expanding the activities, and visitors will also be able to try weaving, spinning, and traditional wood and building crafts.
Among the historic buildings of Østlandstunet, a brand-new building has been constructed. It has been built using traditional techniques, locally sourced materials, and reused materials. The building is called TradLab Wood and includes a bench workshop, a carving workshop, and rooms for painting and window restoration.
In addition to being open to visitors, the workshops will be used to teach traditional building techniques, crafts, and Sámi duodji to school classes, course participants, craftspeople, and students.
The workshops will also be used by the museum’s building-conservation crafts specialists in their daily work. This means that visitors passing by may be able to watch—and perhaps even join in—splitting wooden roof shingles, mixing paint, or planing roof boards together with them.
TradLab Wood
TradLab Wood has been financed with generous support from Sparebankstiftelsen. The term TradLab is short for Traditional Crafts Laboratory and is the name used for Norsk Folkemuseum’s interdisciplinary projects that promote and highlight intangible cultural heritage.
A large portion of the building materials comes from a reused barn from Nedre Sem in Asker. Strong, old wooden beams from the barn have become part of the building’s structure, and leftover pieces of the beams have been used as “kubb” in the walls—an old technique where the timber framework is filled with short wood blocks and mortar mixed with clay from the building site.
Other materials come from trees felled on the neighboring site where the new Viking Age Museum is being built. The rest were harvested in Nordmarka, partly near Ullevålseter and some near Sognsvann. The timber was taken using selective logging to ensure the best possible quality while preserving the old forest. Some of the logs were even transported the traditional way—by horse.
To learn from the building process, the museum’s craft specialists collaborated with students, external craftspeople, and technical advisors.