One of those random inclinations
Jul. 17th, 2010 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tilly_stratfordWe visited the Museum of Leprosy today.
I've mentioned before how I think it's a pity that the trend in the history education is making it more and more about The Bigger Picture and less about, well, people. People are interesting - not just the monarchs and the great innovators, but all of them. The Museum of Leprosy is all about people in a way, both the ones who lived there (the St. Jørgen Hospital) and the ones outside.
As a strict museum it's quite lacking - there are about a dozens posters (in Norwegian only) explaining what leprosy is, the search for the cause of it, and how the hospital was run. I learned a lot of things didn't know, but it was really the building itself that held my attention - just walking around in this preserved hospital from the 1700s with its dark corners and cramped rooms. I'm always grateful when historical buildings take care not to overlight (or even worse, use "artistic lighting") indoors.
The hospital chapel, which was mostly naturally illuminated by its narrow windows, had me awed. Wooden and crude, but with pews and pews where countless of diseased people, both children and adults, had still prayed to a God they believed had punished them with an affliction like that. I can't wrap my head around it. Maria said the place creeped her out but I'd rather have stayed.
I've mentioned before how I think it's a pity that the trend in the history education is making it more and more about The Bigger Picture and less about, well, people. People are interesting - not just the monarchs and the great innovators, but all of them. The Museum of Leprosy is all about people in a way, both the ones who lived there (the St. Jørgen Hospital) and the ones outside.
As a strict museum it's quite lacking - there are about a dozens posters (in Norwegian only) explaining what leprosy is, the search for the cause of it, and how the hospital was run. I learned a lot of things didn't know, but it was really the building itself that held my attention - just walking around in this preserved hospital from the 1700s with its dark corners and cramped rooms. I'm always grateful when historical buildings take care not to overlight (or even worse, use "artistic lighting") indoors.
The hospital chapel, which was mostly naturally illuminated by its narrow windows, had me awed. Wooden and crude, but with pews and pews where countless of diseased people, both children and adults, had still prayed to a God they believed had punished them with an affliction like that. I can't wrap my head around it. Maria said the place creeped her out but I'd rather have stayed.
