The Funen Village

Den Fynske Landby (The Funen Village) is a Skansen-style open air museum in Denmark’s second city which displays about thirty buildings from Funen and nearby islands, ranging in date from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Displays are particularly concerned with the ways in which village life changed in the lifetime of Hans Christian Anderson (1805-75). Visitors can take tours by river from Munkenmose near Anderson’s childhood home to Fruen Bøge near the museum.

Industrial buildings in the museum include a large watermill, a Dutch-style windmill, a weaver’s house, a horse gin and a kiln of 1889 from a traditional brickworks at Bladstrup north of Odense, the only survivor of hundreds of similar single-chamber intermittent kilns that once worked throughout Denmark. Visitors can also see a village gaol, almshouses, a pigeon house, a village pond and various types of garden. A blacksmith works in the village and beer is brewed there.