The Lofoten Museum at Storvågan covers the history of fishing and settlement in the archipelago from the Stone Age to the 20th century. The outdoor section includes several original rorbu (fishermen's cabins) and boathouses that give a tangible sense of what the Lofoten winter fisheries actually looked like when tens of thousands of men arrived from across northern Norway to fish for cod each January.
The indoor exhibits trace the development of the fishing industry through tools, boats, and personal effects, with particular attention to the social history: who owned the rorbu, who had to rent them, what the power relationships were between rorbu owners, merchants, and the itinerant fishermen who supplied the entire Arctic cod trade. It is a social history museum as much as a fishing museum, and it puts the landscape you see into useful context.
The museum sits within a few metres of the Espolin Gallery and the aquarium, all three facing the same small bay in Storvågan.