Before becoming the museum center SIIDA, the Sámi Museum in Inari was an open-air museum. This outdoor museum, which supplements the indoor exhibitions of SIIDA, is still open in summer. The typical dwellings and hunting and fishing methods of the Sámi - both Reindeer-Herding, Fishing and Skolt Sámi - are displayed in the seven-hectare museum area situated on Lake Inari. This open-air museum was restored in summer 2000. The repairs were financed by the European Regional Development Fund, the Finnish Ministry of Education, and the Sámi Museum Foundation.

HISTORY OF THE OPEN-AIR MUSEUM

The first buildings of the open-air museum - two houses and four storerooms - were moved to the premises from the Tirro community on the Vaskojoki River in 1960. Today, Tirro lies by the road to Angeli, but at the time there was no road to the farm, and the logs of the buildings had to be transported to the museum premises with the help of reindeer.

In addition to the farmyard with its buildings, there are Fishing-Sámi, Skolt-Sámi and Reindeer-Herding Sámi structures, dwellings and traps and a court house in the museum area. There are almost 50 sites of interest in the open-air museum - all either original buildings and structures or careful reconstructions.

According to today's research, the open-air premises and the shore of the small bay belonging to the area are the oldest site in Northern Lapland that people have inhabited. In the exhibitions of SIIDA, we display some archaeological findings from the area that date from 9,000 years ago. We know that people have lived in the museum area as early as the prehistoric times, the Stone Age and the Early Metal Age, about 6,000 - 2,000 years ago. In excavations, we have found remains and made findings that tell about the life of a hunting and fishing population; we have also found sites of dwellings and open hearths as well as different kinds of tools and ceramics. The area is protected under the Antiquities Act.