The open-air museum Skansen in Stockholm was founded by Arthur Hazelius in 1891. This prompted influential men of science close to the Finnish National Museum to consider constructing the same or similar. Axel Olai Heikel was the man to do this. Heikel’s academic work was relegated to the margins of this great new plot, an open-air museum.

The acquisition of buildings began in 1906 with a ‘byre’, or cowshed, although it was relocated only later. With the beginnings of an electrified tramway network, the site chosen for Finland’s first open-air museum was just on the northwest fringes of Helsinki’s central peninsula, on Seurasaari island. The museum actually opened when the Niemelä torppa, or crofter’s cottage, was moved from Konginkangas in central Finland in 1909. An important figure in this first deal was the artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela, illustrator of the Finnish National epic Kalevala.

Heikel’s aim in setting up the open-air museum was to display traditional Finnish building and habitation culture for inhabitants of the capital city. Indeed the idea was to bring together as extensive as possible a collection of typical buildings from the various regions of Finland.

Heikel was appointed the supervisor of the Seurasaari open-air museum in 1917, the year of Finland’s Declaration of Independence. During his curation, the museum acquired the 17th century Karuna church from southwest Finland, the museum’s oldest structure. The whole project was very dear to Heikel. He was completely engrossed in its development, and followed closely the building work as it progressed. And whatever his scholarly merits, Heikel is justly celebrated as the founder of Seurasaari. The museum was Axel Olai Heikel’s life’s work, and according to his wishes he was buried in the vicinity of the Karuna church.

Sources (in Finnish):

• Juhani Lehtonen, ‘Heikel, Axel Olai (1851–1924). Kansatieteilijä, Seurasaaren ulkomuseon perustaja, professori’, National Biography of Finland online. Accessed September 3, 2015.
• A. O. Heikel. Kansatieteilijä, Cultural museums’ ”Kaukaa haettua”(‘Far-fetched’) website. Accessed March 9, 2015.
• Seurasaaren ulkomuseo, National Board of Antiquities website. Accessed March 9, 2015.
• Wikipedia, Axel Olai Heikel, Accessed March 9, 2015.