Melleruds Museum o släktforskningsarkiv

Experience history in the making

**At Melleruds Museum and genealogy archive you can experience the wings of history. The living environments on floors 2 and 3 show what Sweden was like in different eras. You can also experience history in the world of the archive. On the third floor there is a genealogy archive with opportunities to search for your roots.

**The museum

On May 11, 1985, Mellerud's Museum was inaugurated, which since 1984, through diligent work, has been built by members of the newly formed Mellerud-Holm-Järns hembygdsförening in the second floor of the courthouse. Hembygdsföreningen i Mellerud, Holm och Järn shows living and working environments in several rooms in the old courthouse. The genealogical archive is extensive with church books, maps, etc. Already from the 1920s, folk collections have been stored in the attic of the courthouse, but it is only now that these have come into their own in the various room environments of the new museum.

• On the first floor there is a cottage where the poor lived, often large families in a single room.
• The workers' dwelling with kitchen and rooms dates from the 1920s and 1930s. Here the husband sits and reads the newspaper while the wife works at her knitting machine and the old mother grinds coffee.
• The farmer's kitchen is used for baking and weaving. The black ceiling shows smoke from the stove and from the knitting machine in the chandelier.
• The fine room in the museum's high-class environment reflects the conditions of the wealthy, which are noticeably different from those of the backwoods people.
• On the next floor is Craft Street, where you can visit a blacksmith, tailor, shoemaker, ironworker and many other old trades.
• Inside the barn are the threshing machines with their flails and in the barns on both sides there are chickens with chicks and the maid and the farmhand are wading in the hay.
• In the Dalaborg Room there is a reconstruction model of the medieval castle Dalaborg, which was built in 1304 on the shores of Lake Vänern and burnt down during Engelbrekt's revolt in 1434.
• Around the small square is a market stall with everything that used to be in a shop in the old days. The photographer's salon and telephone exchange are also located here.
• In the school, with its traditional posters and old textbooks, sits the stern schoolmaster with his pointing stick in his hand.

**The courthouse in Mellerud

Built in 1909 and used as a courthouse until 1996. The building is made of brick and is three storeys high. The top two floors are used by the Mellerud-Holm-Järns local history society. Mellerud Municipality, which owns the building, uses the lower floor for meetings and conferences.