Olender Ethnographic Park, Part One: Housebarns!

We were exploring Mennonite stuff in Poland. We had just visited the former Obernessau Mennonite Church in Mala Neiszawka, and were now driving to the Olender Ethnographic Park (Olenderski Park Etnograficzny) in Wiekla Neiszawka (a three-minute drive apart down route 273, a very interesting drive!) near Torun.

It’s located on Mennonitow – that is the street name!

The street name is in blue, and it’s getting a little difficult to read:

So, what is an ethnographic park? An open-air museum-farm! And this one is all about Mennonites! A museum about Mennonites in Poland, what??? YES.

In Poland, “Olender” means Hollander which means Dutch which often means Mennonites.

I’m not sure how much you know about all this. Here’s an all-too-brief overview:

Settlers from The Netherlands began to arrive in the 1500s, in their effort to escape persecution (I need to get more into this sometime with the gigantic copy of Martyrs Mirror that Andrew gave me for Christmas in 2020 but I digress). Being from Holland, Polish people referred to these people, Mennonites, as Olenders.

One panel within the first building of the museum explains it thusly:

“The reason for their settlement was the desire to increase profit for the landowners by benefiting from barren lands. With time, the term olender/oleder (Hollander) has lost its ethnic meaning and started to be used about other settlers – Germans (Protestants) and Poles (Catholics) who enjoyed the privileges based on the law system introduced originally for the settlers from the Netherlands.”

Why were the lands barren? Flooding. Landowners wanted them drained effectively so they could benefit from these lands economically. Up until this point, drainage had not been effective, to devastating results. The Dutch Mennonites were very good at flood control and essentially reclaimed this massive swamp.

I had never expected to discover or learn about the Mennonite experience in Poland, at a museum like this. But only lately when we’ve been paying attention to Mennonite history in Poland did we learn that this museum not only has a housebarn and Mennonite cemetery and grows Turkey Red Wheat, but it also actively hosts events delving into Mennonite history. In fact, the week before our visit, they’d hosted a big Mennonite educational event – we had seen pictures of it on the museum’s Facebook page! (You could also learn more about the museum by visiting their website here.)

By 2:12pm I was taking a picture of the sign:

I hope you can sense the excitement I felt as I took this terrible picture from my passenger seat within the Opel as we veered into the parking lot!

Immediately from the parking lot, you see inviting wooden gates that are open with a wide walkway leading into a thatched roof housebarn, which is where you purchase admission and it also contains a small gift shop.

Ahhhhh we’re walking up to the museum! It looks SO CHARMING! And, IT’S A HOUSEBARN!

Stepping from the ticket desk/gift shop and into the next room, your museum experience begins. I was immediately taken with this door.

Inspecting further, I learned that it’s the door of a Mennonite prayer house from 1618 (restyled in 1773) from Sosnowka in the Grudziadz municipality. 1618!!!! That’s definitely when my ancestors were in Poland. Like, a LOT of my ancestors. (I should attempt the math sometime. Like, how many ancestors are we talking about here? It’ll be mind-boggling, I think.) It’s possible some of them walked through this door. Just thinking that thought gives me pause.

Also… a picture of the church we had just visited, a 3-minute drive away:

See it? It’s the middle picture, which was taken in 1906.

At 2:26pm I stepped outside the first building, and before me was the cemetery! It’s a real Mennonite cemetery, but also has a small lapidarium. (On this trip I learned what a lapidarium is: a place where stone monuments and fragments are exhibited. Why have I never encountered this name before? Because of my interests, it seems I am frequently drawn to lapidariums in addition to cemeteries.) But I resisted the cemetery. We had to get to the housebarn in the distance, where a museum employee was waiting for us, so they could interpret its interior to us.

Our first view of the first housebarn. Its steep roof caught my eye, but at this view you cannot see the amazing detail we were about to step into!
Here you can see the house portion on the left and barn portion on the right. Manitoba housebarns have a walkway between the two, and very different rooflines, but here we saw many housebarns that were one continuous roofline.
This scene immediately caught my eye upon setting foot inside — drying herbs.
Interior bake oven in the heart of the home is reminiscent to me of the housebarns in Neubergthal and at the MHV in Steinbach. It was in Poland that Mennonites picked up this method of building.
Patterns painted on the walls reminded me of the floor patterns Margruite Krahn has been unearthing and recreating.
Same red geraniums you’ll see in the windows of housebarns at the MHV in Steinbach. I love the resonance. (Yet our guide had never heard of the MHV, nor Steinbach. Fascinating!)

It felt pretty familiar. Yet…

I very much did not want to be that person who runs around a museum braying about how I already know about the stuff I’m seeing. Because, I don’t think that I do know everything. Just because I’ve become familiar with the housebarns of Steinbach’s Mennonite Heritage Village and the Neubergthal Heritage Foundation, does not mean that I know what is at this specific museum in Poland that I have never been to before, in a land I have never visited before, and honestly barely know anything about. (Nor do I know everything about the MHV or Neubergthal, for that matter. Not even close.) I came here to learn. And also discover what they know, and allow them to share of that knowledge, without irrelevant interruption. That is how I think.

HOWEVER. I have found out that people who work at museums are a trillion times more graceful than I. When people tell them what they know about pieces they are seeing, and attach their own stories and meaning to those pieces (however awkwardly) and tell a museum worker what they think of that or what it means to them or what it reminds them of – museum workers love that! It means people are connecting with their exhibits, and the work that they do. (And thus, I continue to have much personal growth work ahead of me.)

And now, brace yourself for a pictorial onslaught.

Fantastical view of the housebarn we had just been in!
Its amazing garden!
See the road beyond the garden? Our next step was to wander that road.
That sign denotes Turkey Red Wheat.
OH. MY. GOODNESS. A Mennonite village yard!
Andrew approaching the grand arcaded housebarn!
I think this was modelled after Mennonites who lived here in the 1920s? They were very well off.
Sweet little Granny Suite!
Discovering upstairs.
Where wheat was stored.
Discovering the barn.
That thatch!
Another barn.
Upstairs in the other barn.
A different view of the farmyard. Andrew’s parents resting on a bench in the distance.
An inviting path!
I will follow it. But first pose for this picture, as Andrew instructed.
A dyke, dug to manage drainage.
I turned around for one last look at the arcaded housebarn.
Gorgeous wheat.
Andrew and his parents, heading back to the first building we had visited.
Full circle. Now it’s time to explore the cemetery, which is on the left under the trees.

Next post, the cemetery! It may be at an ethnographic park… but it’s very real.

Mennotoba is on Facebook and Instagram. I have many more pics to share so I’ll put them on IG.

Also: I lost Mennotoba’s email subscriber list and am very sorry about that. Those of you who had emailed me in response to posts you’d received via email, I’ve added back. Hope that was the right thing to do!