Photo: Camilla Damgård/Maihaugen
Stykkebakken
A historic tenant farm at Maihaugen
Stykkebakken was a tenant farm under the main farm, Nedre Bø, which is now part of the Maihaugen open-air museum. In 1985, the farm consisted of three buildings: a farmhouse with two rooms, a two-part barn, and an outhouse. Only the foundation remained of the original cowshed, but neighbors from the nearby farm, Bergli, donated their cowshed to Maihaugen. This cowshed matched Stykkebakken's cowshed in both type and size.
The Interior of Stykkebakken
Stykkebakken has been preserved as it was after the last resident, Asmund Bakken, who lived there until his death in 1985. The farmhouse consists of a kitchen, a small bedroom (kammers), and a cellar. The kitchen shows how the house adapted to modern times, with both a wood stove and an electric stove placed next to the fireplace. A television set and a radio, important items in everyday life in the 1900s, are also present. In the kitchen, there is a hatch leading to a potato cellar, and there is an external entrance to the cellar under the bedroom.
Who Lived at Stykkebakken?
Benedikte Bakken and her youngest son, Asmund, were the last residents of Stykkebakken. Asmund worked as a day laborer, while Benedikte was known in the village for baking lefse and flatbread. The small bedroom served as a sleeping area, and during the interwar period, some forestry workers rented the attic above the kitchen, accessing it via the bedroom.
The Buildings at Stykkebakken
The barn is made of log-built spruce with a wooden shingle roof, and underneath the barn, there was storage space for tools, fence posts, and timber. The cowshed, also made of log-built spruce, has a turf roof and could house one cow, a couple of goats, and a few sheep. Water for the animals had to be carried from a nearby stream. In 1875, the farm had eight goats.
The land below the farmhouse and behind the barn was used to grow potatoes and a small amount of barley. Between the barn and the cowshed grew lilacs, red and black currant bushes, and near the farmhouse wall, chives and marigolds.
