102 RURAL DENMARK 



for the making of highly scientific and accurate experi- 

 ments in the comparative values of different varieties 

 of grain, clover, roots, &c, and I understand that the 

 results obtained have proved most valuable to Danish 

 agriculture. 



Near by also is the famous Dansk Folkemuseum, 

 or Open-air Museum, an institution unlike any that I 

 have seen in other lands. In its grounds are set up 

 ancient farmhouses that have been removed to this 

 place from different parts of Denmark. One of these, 

 built largely of huge oak beams, is extraordinarily 

 primitive and interesting. Originally it consisted of 

 a single large room with places for the cows on each 

 side and a living space at its end. Here were four 

 beds in recesses and a hearth without a chimney. 

 Later, as refinement increased, two other rooms had 

 been built on behind, so that the owners of the place 

 were no longer forced to eat and sleep with the farm 

 stock. 



Some of the other houses were equally primitive, 

 and reminded me much of the sod-roofed dwellings 

 that I have seen in the remoter parts of Iceland. 



Besides these farm premises of past days there are 

 galleries filled with curious old furniture, carriages, 

 hearses that belonged to guilds, adorned with melan- 

 choly plumes and trappings, and other mementoes of 

 the past. Also there is an agricultural museum with a 

 splendid collection of ancient ploughs, waggons, and 

 other farm implements. The walls of this building 

 are hung with cartoons portraying old rural customs. 

 Among these, those of the harvest-home of long ago 

 and of the symbolical pouring of rye over a new-born 

 boy laid in a corn-basket, while the mother watches 

 the ceremony from her bed, are especially worthy of 



