An open-air museum (or open air museum) is a museum that exhibits collections of buildings and artifacts out-of-doors. It is also frequently known as a museum of buildings or a folk museum. Definition Open air is “the unconfined atmosphere…outside buildings...” In the loosest sense, an open-air museum is any institution that includes one or more buildings in its collections, including farm museums, historic house museums, and archaeological open-air museums. Mostly, 'open-air museum is applied to a museum that specializes in the collection and re-erection of multiple old buildings at large outdoor sites, usually in settings of recreated landscapes of the past, and often include living history. They may, therefore, be described as building museums. European open-air museums tended to be sited originally in regions where wooden architecture prevailed, as wooden structures may be translocated without substantial loss of authenticity. Common to all open-air museums, including the earliest ones of the 19th century, is the teaching of the history of everyday living by people from all segments of society. Origins The idea of the open-air museum dates to the 1790s. The first proponent of the idea was the Swiss thinker Charles de Bonstetten, and was based on a visit to an exhibit of sculptures of Norwegian peasants in native costumes in the park of Fredensborg Palace in Denmark,"Valley of the Norsemen". He believed that traditional peasant houses should be preserved against modernity, but failed to attract support for the idea. The first major steps towards the creation of open-air museums was taken in Norway in 1881, when King Oscar II transferred four historic farm buildings and the stave church from Gol to the royal manor at Bygdøy near Oslo (Christiania) for public viewing. This, in turn, in 1884 and 1885 inspired Artur Hazelius, founder of the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, to establish his own open-air museum Skansen, adjacent to the Nordic Museum. Skansen, opened to the public in 1891, was a more ambitious undertaking, including farm buildings from across Sweden, folk costumes, live animals, folk music, and demonstrations of folk crafts. The second open-air museum in the world to open its doors was also in Sweden: Kulturen in Lund in 1892. In 1894 the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History (Norsk Folkemuseum) was founded in Oslo by Hans Aall, inspired by Skansen. Aall bought a large tract of land adjacent to King Oscar's royal collections, probably with a merger between them in