Villages
There are architecturally and culturally authentic village sites (Finnish, French, German, Norwegian, Russian, and Spanish) located near Bemidji, Minnesota on Turtle River Lake. There are also leased sites throughout Minnesota, as well as abroad in Switzerland and China.
The road connecting the permanent villages at Turtle River Lake to the county road was purposefully constructed to be winding, to simulate the long trip to the target cultures represented at the villages. The original plans for these villages included a train to link all of the villages. Although this idea was scrapped, aspects of it still remain in several buildings. The German village's four-story administration building resembles a German train station and is called the Bahnhof ("train station"). The dining hall at Salolampi, the Finnish language village, is modeled after a famous Finnish train station. Additionally, the Turtle River Lake site has a World Inc. Peace Site with peace poles in the village languages at its heart, near the Norwegian village, Skogfjorden and the Bemidji and Turtle River Lake sites have European road signs in kilometers per hour (imported from Germany, not replications).
Several immigrant buildings have been moved to the permanent sites to show villagers what life was like for early European immigrants. The immigrant cabins at the Norwegian village are original to the site. The German "Haus Sonnenaufgang" was first moved from New Ulm, Minnesota to sit next to the Norwegian ones, but was moved sometime in the early 1990s to the German village near Bemidji, Minnesota.
CLV consists of 15 villages:
- German: Waldsee (est. 1961)
- French: Lac du Bois or Les Voyageurs (est. 1962)
- Spanish: El Lago del Bosque (est. 1963)
- Norwegian: Skogfjorden (est. 1963)
- Russian: Lesnoe Ozero (Лесное озеро) (est. 1966)
- Swedish: Sjölunden (est. 1975)
- Finnish: Salolampi (est. 1978)
- Danish: Skovsøen (est. 1982)
- Chinese: Sen Lin Hu (森林湖) (est. 1984)
- Japanese: Mori no Ike (森の池) (est. 1988)
- English: Hometown, USA or Hometown, Europe (est. 1999)
- Korean: Sup sogǔi Hosu (숲 속의 호수) (est. 1999)
- Italian: Lago del Bosco (est. 2003)
- Arabic: Al-Wāḥa (الواحة) (est. 2006)
- Portuguese: Mar E Floresta (est. 2008)
Each village is named "Lake of the Woods" in its language, with the exception of the English villages Hometown, USA and Hometown, Europe, the Portuguese village Mar E Floresta (Sea and Forest), and the Arabic village al-Wāḥa ("the oasis").
Read more about this topic: Concordia Language Villages
Famous quotes containing the word villages:
“Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own.”
—W.E. (William Ewart)
“Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Ezra Pound still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village and people keep explaining things when they live in a village.... I have come not to mind if certain people live in villages and some of my friends still appear to live in villages and a village can be cozy as well as intuitive but must one really keep perpetually explaining and elucidating?”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)