Vesterheim: The World's Largest Norwegian Museum Outside Norway

Decorah, Iowa sits in the bluffs of the Upper Iowa River and is home to the largest Norwegian American museum in the world, and the largest collection of Norwegian folk objects outside of Norway itself. Vesterheim, whose name means "western home" in Norwegian, was founded in eighteen seventy-seven as a department of nearby Luther College, when Norwegian immigration to America was peaking and locals began collecting objects to document the immigrant experience. It became an independent nonprofit in nineteen sixty-five.

Today the museum holds more than thirty-three thousand artifacts across twelve historic buildings, documents the rosemaling folk-painting tradition, and runs a folk art school that teaches traditional Norwegian crafts to students from around the country. The Decorah area remains one of the most concentrated pockets of Scandinavian American culture anywhere in the Midwest.