Pien-Toijola open air museum

Pien-Toijola offers a rare opportunity to explore a 19th-century farmhouse that has been preserved almost intact. The farmyard with its log buildings has been preserved very much as it was by the 1950s. In total there are 28 buildings from the 17th and 19th centuries, which form an exceptionally well-preserved ensemble.

The farm has been in the Toijonen family since 1672. The main building was built in 1803 and renovated in 1880. All the museum buildings are in their original locations, and all the exhibits on display were used by the farm itself. The oldest barns and smokehouse date from the 1700s. The museum is a rare monument, as it gives you an insight into the way people lived in the past. The Pien-Toijola Peasant Museum has been selected as a nationally significant built heritage site. Many Finnish films have been shot in the Pien-Toijola yard.

Geology of the area

The buildings in the yard of the Pien-Toijola open air museum are built on rock area consisting of veined gneiss. The rock area is exposed in many places and from them you can search and view special structures of the bedrock, inclusions. They appear on rock surfaces as differently shaped round bodies that have formed in the bedrock formation process more than a billion years ago.

The rock type of the bedrock, the veined gneiss, was formed billions of years ago from sand and clay on the ancient seabed. These ancient sediments were transformed into mica gneiss through mountain folding, deep in the Earth’s crust. Partial melting and re-crystallisation occurred during and after the mountain-folding process took place in the mica gneiss. Structures formed through partial melting can be seen in the rock as light granitic stripes and veins. From that stripy appearance becomes the rock type name of veined gneiss. Partial melting and recrystallization also resulted in inclusions of various shapes. The weathered parts of the inclusions contained layers and patches of calcium, carbon and sulphur, which are weaker than the mica gneiss and therefore worn away.

Image: Emmi Eronen, 2013, Mikkeli museums

Source: Etelä-Savo museums