MUSEUM GROUNDS

1. Main Building

The main building blends into the surrounding environment in a natural way and is built to mimic a large peat house.

2. The Bear’s Den

The museum area includes an idyllic small village of cottages that Pentti built between 1956 and 1983. All the cottages are old demolition objects from the area that have been rebuilt.

3. Peat House

The Peat House is the traditional way to build houses in northern Greenland. The style has been used by hunter-gatherer groups for thousands of years. Pentti Kronqvist stayed in a peat house like this in the abandoned hunting village of Etah, during his expedition from northern Greenland to Canada in 1976. In northern Greenland, Western-style houses began to be built as late as the 1950s.

4. Goichman’s Gallery

Nanoq has the world’s largest collections of Professor Wladimir Goichman’s paintings. Goichman (1903-2001) was an artist, arctic explorer, and neurosurgeon who was Pentti’s dear friend. During Goichman’s travels in the Arctic, he drew beautiful sketches of his surroundings which he later painted into beautiful oil paintings. 111 of them are now situated at Nanoq, some are in Goichman’s Gallery and some in the main building.

Goichman’s Gallery is available to rent

5. Rudi’s Hunting Cabin

This small catch cabin is a copy of Norwegian Henry Rudi’s hunting cabin on Spitsbergen, Svalbard. Rudi mainly hunted polar bears, and was nicknamed “the Polar Bear King” after catching a total of 713 polar bears.

6. Commander’s Bunker

This cottage is a model of a command bunker from the Finnish Winter War 1939-1940. The Winter War was fought between Finland and the USSR at the beginning of World War II. The war lasted 105 days and took place in one of the coldest winters in Finnish history. Here you can learn about how the soldiers fought in the cold, what strategies were used and how little Finland managed to stop the Soviet offensive.

The Commander’s Bunker is available to rent.

7. Hunting Shed

In this cottage, you can get acquainted with equipment and utensils that have been used in the Ostrobothnian coastal areas in both hunting and fishing. In Ostrobothnia, seals have been hunted for our people for hundreds of years.

8. Gold Washing Camp

The gold washing camp shows how people lived and what tools were used for gold washing in Lappland, northern Finland, in the latter half of the 1800 century. At that time a kind of gold rush arose in the area of Ivalo River.

9. Church – Avannaata Ulloria

The church is a copy of one of the world’s northernmost churches, which was built in the northwest of Greenland in 1909. It is an Evangelical Lutheran church, where church ordinances such as baptisms, marriages and burials can be held.

The church is available to rent for Christian ceremonies.

10. Nyholm’s Shed

In 2015, Dr Erik S. Nyholm donated part of his research equipment to Nanoq. Nyholm was a Finnish predator researcher and writer. He made several research trips to the island of Kinnvika at Spitsbergen, where he studied polar bears.

11. Smoke sauna

Sauna bathing is an important part of Finnish culture, and the sauna has been around for hundreds of years in Finnish homes. A smoke sauna is an early form of sauna because it lacks a chimney, chimneys were connected to the Finnish sauna first in the 19th century.

The smoke sauna is available to rent.

12.  Big Cabin

The big cabin comes from Larsmo and illustrates what a typical farmhouse could look like around the turn of the 20th century in Finland. The large cottage is part of a cottage village with a total of eight cabins in the museum area. All the cottages are in Finnish country style.

The big cabin is available to rent.