Foteviken Museum

About

The Foteviken Museum (Swedish: Fotevikens Museum) is an archaeological open-air museum on the Höllviken peninsula in southern Skåne, Sweden. It contains a reconstruction of a large Viking Age settlement and a "viking reservation", and visitors participate in living history reenactments; it also performs research and functions as the municipal museum of Vellinge Municipality and part of Fotevikens Kulturcenter, a group of cultural facilities on the peninsula.

History: The museum grew out of the archaeological investigation of sunken viking ships in Foteviken Bay and local interest in the Battle of Fotevik, which was fought there on 4 June 1134. A group headed by Björn M. Buttler Jakobsen formed a foundation called SVEG (Scandinavian Viking Explorer Group) in 1987. In 1993, the foundation started planning to open a maritime museum; in 1995, after changing their focus towards Viking Age living history, they opened Foteviken Museum, with Jakobsen as its director. At the Cog Museum in Malmö, the group built two replica viking cogs; in 2014 the city sold these and the harbour site where they are located is now a medieval-themed tourist area called Medeltidsriket Malmöya.