Kroktorps Hembygdsgård

Kroktorps Hembygdsgård is located on a small hill, with a beautiful view of forests and mountains.

From the late 1500s and throughout the first half of the 1600s, parts of the Scandinavian coniferous forest region were colonized by forest Finns who practiced slash-and-burn agriculture. In Vansbro Municipality's Finnmark, Nås is the oldest settlement, where colonization began as early as the 1620s. A few decades later, the forest Finns arrived in Äppelbo and Järna Finnmark. They brought with them their own culture, including language, building traditions, and culinary customs. Traces of their presence can still be seen today in the form of forest Finnish names on maps, abandoned villages, smoke cabins (rökpörten), smoke saunas (rökbastur), and drying barns (torkrior), as well as in oral traditions and food customs like motti throughout the various forest Finnish areas. The local heritage farm in the village of Kroktorp in Järna Finnmark was inaugurated in 1952 and consists of relocated buildings from nearby villages. It is unique of its kind, being the only one in Sweden that features all three characteristic forest Finnish buildings: a smoke cabin (rökpörte), a smoke sauna (rökbastu), and a drying barn (torkria). The farmstead also includes a storehouse on stilts (stolpbod), a soldier’s cottage (soldattorp), and a fireplace hut (eldpallkoja).