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The public is invited to kick off the holiday season with a Norwegian Christmas celebration at Vesterheim, the National Norwegian-American Museum and Folk Art School, from 10-4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7. Admission to the museum building will be free for youth under age 18. Free activities will also be held throughout Heritage Park and the Commons Building.
Goats from the Lost Pine Farm in Decorah will be outside in Heritage Park, and visitors may take a picture by the giant wooden nisse. Hot drinks, Scandinavian s’mores and lefse will be served on the commons’ patio, and face painting will be available weather permitting.
Julebukker — costumed folk who roam the museum campus scaring away evil spirits — and young julenisse — or Christmas elves — will be on site. The elves will visit at 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. during juletrefest — a Norwegian party during which participants sing around a decorated tree — in the commons building.
There will be four free live music performances in the museum’s Bethania Church. Decorah Chorale will sing at 11 a.m., Northern Lights will perform at noon, Luren Singing Society will follow at 1 p.m. and a special Hardanger fiddle concert and demonstration by Eden Ehm and Karen Rebholz will take place at 2 p.m. In addition, the Decorah High School Madrigal Singers will perform at 11:45 a.m. in the ship gallery of the museum building, and A Touch of Brass will perform at 12:15 p.m. in the commons.
Storytime for youth is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. with Sharon Rossman reading Jan Brett’s “Christmas Trolls” in the Norway House inside the museum building.
Visitors will have a chance to craft their own decorations at stations throughout the museum building and the first floor of the commons, including Scandinavian heart baskets, yarn nisse dolls, julenek straw wheat ornaments and paper crafts. Sally Stromseth, Ruth Green, and Lia Vestecka will demonstrate rosemaling. Kim Glock will demonstrate green woodworking. Beverly Schrandt will be making straw wheat ornaments, and Renee Thoreson and Lynette Aanonson will show Hardangersøm embroidery. Oneota Weavers Guild members will demonstrate weaving and spinning, and Mary Lake will teach visitors how to make lucet braids.
Many of the folk-art demonstrators will also be selling items.
The Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation will sell julenek — sheaves of wheat — grown from Borlaug wheat, which was developed in the 1960s by Howard County’s Norman Borlaug in an effort to address world hunger. In Norway on Christmas Eve, julenek are hung outside to feed the birds. NBHF uses the proceeds of the julenek sales to support their food program, which packages meals for people in areas of the world experiencing food scarcity.
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