Geography and the founding of open-air museums in Wales and Northern Ireland since 1948

Abstract

Skansen built by A.Hazelius in 1891 is the first open air-museum on the earth. His ideas which show people’s everyday life by vernacular houses, church and shops were diffused in Europe, US and Japan. We should not forget the fact that animals and plants in Sweden are also exhibited. Wales and Northern Ireland have an open-air museum respectively. Those founders were geographers who had graduated from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. This paper focuses their ideas and concepts from a viewpoint of historical geography.