The Clay County Historical and Cultural Society will not miss the anniversary without giving up.
To date, they have raised nearly $ 100,000 of the $ 150,000 needed to renovate and modernize the ship’s exhibition gallery with the help of a museum exhibition design firm.
The central point of the Hjemkomst center, one of the main tourist attractions of the metro and a reminder of Scandinavian heritage in the Red River Valley, will undergo a series of interior changes.
Historic Society Executive Director Maureen Kelly Jonason may be baffled by anything people want to know about the ship that has been on display at the museum since the center was built in 1986. She said the “brilliant new exhibit” will include new panels telling the story of the ship and the voyage, a new rotating exhibition of rarely seen artifacts from the transatlantic voyage, a Nordic color scheme and technological improvements.
The new technology will include computerized kiosks spread across the ship’s gallery that will give visitors the opportunity to listen to an oral travel record recorded by the ship’s crew and ham radio transmissions. There will also be a kiosk offering a virtual reality experience of what it was like on the boat and another that takes a look at the global attention the adventure received from people and the media.
The renovation project will include updates to the exhibition surrounding the entrance to the large-scale replica built in 1998 from the 12th-century Hopperstad staff church in Vik, Norway.
The interior of the church, which can be seen during the guided tours, should remain closed for three winter months when it freezes. Kelly Jonason said they will add another technology update to this exhibit with a computerized virtual tour experience for year-round viewing.
Kelly Jonason said just over a year ago it would have been the 40th anniversary of the time Moorhead school counselor Robert Asp was able to see his replica of the Gokstad Viking ship become navigable in port. of Duluth.
Asp and volunteers built the ship in a warehouse in Hawley from 1974.
A few months after the ship first touched the water in 1980, Asp, who had been diagnosed with leukemia years earlier, died knowing that the replica of a ship discovered in Norway in 1880 was alive.
Two years later, four of Asp’s seven children and a crew of sailors, including Norwegian Captain Erik Rudstrom, made the voyage across the Great Lakes and across the Atlantic a success, disembarking in Bergen and then in Oslo. Norway.
The ship remained in Norway for about a year and returned to America on the deck of a cargo ship. It was then stored on the grounds of the Rollag’s Western Steam Threshers Reunion meeting before being taken to the Hjemkomst with the back wall and ceiling placed after it was in place.
Kelly Jonason said there have only been small additions to the ship’s exhibit area, but a major renovation is now possible with the help of a grant from the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, the Fargo-Moorhead Convention and Visitors Bureau and private donations.
Many of the exhibit’s upgrades will be built off-site, so the gallery is likely to close in just a month or so next summer, as new panels and kiosks will be installed before the anniversary. of the ship’s arrival in Norway on July 23, 2022, she said.
Meanwhile, Kelly Jonason and construction director Holly Heitkamp said they are “adjusting” to other new changes to the building.
With the Fargo Moorhead Community Theater in the historic society’s 7,000-square-foot showroom for its new small theater performances after its long home in Island Park developed structural problems, the historic group has moved his other exhibits on the lower level of the center.
“It’s working really well,” Kelly Jonason said after the “early shock ran out.”
As the theater prepares for its first show with its newly installed stage, seats and lighting, Kelly Jonason said they will offer some unique exhibits in their new space with the 150th anniversary of the county’s official formation. of Clay, which will also take place next year. as a traveling exhibition on the global refugee crisis.
Starting October 5, there will be another exhibition called “Warriors of the North” with artwork by military veterans.
There are also news for the Hjemkomst center where meetings of the City Council and other cities are held in the centre’s auditorium equipped with digital equipment for viewing and recording meetings.
Heiktamp said the equipment is better than the analog equipment found in the auditorium of the old town hall meeting room. He said the Hjemkomst Center is also more wheelchair accessible than the City Hall.