Faded ad on 3rd Street northbound.


All the rest of the photos will be in the Scandinavian Heritage Park, the most interesting feature in Minot, at Broadway and 11th Avenue.


This is one of the most interesting visitor centers you will find, but it's unrelated to any of the features of the part. It's just designed to resemble Scandinavian architecture.


Every Scandinavian country has at least one representation around the park. Finland gets just the stereotypical sauna that probably doesn't even work while Norway has quite a few, starting with an actual, 230 year-old house transplanted from Sigdal, reconstructed here with all of the original materials.


Norway also gets a replica of a 1775 stabbur from Telemark. Stabbur is a moss-roofed personal storehouse; families would store clothes and valuables upstairs to protect them from thieves and food on the lower level. Traditionally, though clearly not here, stabbur was built on stilts and with a gap between the bottom step and the ground to discourage rodent invaders. Norwegian legend holds that Christmas gnomes live in the family stabbur, playing Santa Claus roles.


Sweden is represented by a dala horse, a traditional toy from Dalarna that now is symbolic of the region and country, and its shiny white butt.


Three statues, three countries: Sondre Norheim (Telemark, Norway, pioneered many elements now used in modern "Telemark" skiing and later moved to Norway), Leif Erikson (Iceland, their only representation), and Hans Christian Andersen (Denmark).


You saw this windmill from the road in the first photo. It's the other Danish representative here, an actual functional windmill built by a Danish family in Powers Lake, ND in 1928 and used for water pumping and wheat grinding for decades.


Everyone gets a turn at Plaza Scandinavia.


Next to the plaza, this is billed as a 48" spinning marble globe fountain. It was neither spinning nor fountaining this day.


I saved the best for last. Proving that Minot favors Norway, it gets yet another cool building, a replica of a 1250 stave church from Gol, Hallingdal district. Too bad they couldn't go a little older and get a Viking cult house reproduced.

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