Stiftsmuseet Maribo (Stiftsmuseum Maribo)

A museum in the heart of Maribo’s story

Stiftsmuseet Maribo sits just beside the railway station, in a solid late‑19th‑century building that once symbolised civic pride in this small cathedral town. Today, it serves as the main cultural-historical museum for Lolland-Falster, weaving together archaeology, religion, daily life and the forces of nature that have shaped Denmark’s “South Sea Islands”. High ceilings, generous windows and wooden floors give the interior a calm, slightly old-fashioned charm that contrasts with the very contemporary approach to storytelling. The museum’s mission is simple but ambitious: to condense around 10,000 years of human presence on Lolland and Falster into a sequence of exhibitions that feel both approachable and surprising. As you move from room to room, objects from peat bogs, churches and farmsteads appear in carefully lit displays, each used as a starting point for wider tales about belief, survival and identity at the edge of the Baltic.

Lola and the deep past of Lolland

On the ground floor you step straight into the world of “Lola”, a Stone Age girl whose existence was revealed through DNA extracted from a piece of birch-bark chewing gum found during local excavations. Here, archaeology is turned into an intimate encounter: reconstructed faces, sounds of birdsong and water, and everyday tools help you imagine life on the shores and wetlands some 5700 years ago. Rather than focusing only on spectacular artefacts, the exhibition lingers on small, tactile details: the texture of worked flint, the traces of meals, the evidence of how people moved across a landscape of forests, inlets and shallow seas. It is both scientific and atmospheric, showing how a single fragment of “chewing gum” can unlock an entire community’s story.

Faith, art and the OMG gallery

Sharing the ground floor is OMG – short for “Oh My God” – an exhibition devoted to medieval Christianity and church art from Lolland-Falster. Here you encounter finely carved crucifixes, painted panels and fragments of frescoes once hidden high in village churches. Subtle lighting and darkened walls draw attention to expressive wooden faces and the patina of centuries-old paint. The gallery also explores how churches were built and decorated in the region, using models, digital projections and original stones to illustrate techniques. Symbols familiar from European medieval art appear alongside local quirks, showing how global religious ideas filtered through the hands of craftsmen working in small island parishes. The result is both a crash course in iconography and a quiet space to contemplate how belief has shaped the islands’ visual culture.

Rune stones, storm surges and fragile coasts

In the foyer stand two rune stones, Sædingestenen and Skovlængestenen, impressive granite monuments incised with Viking Age inscriptions. Here, brief translations and background texts situate them within Denmark’s runic tradition, while their sheer weight and weathering speak of a millennium spent outdoors before they were brought under cover. Elsewhere in the building, newer exhibitions examine the drama of the Baltic coastline. A darkened room with films and sound traces historic storm surges that flooded low-lying land, reminding visitors that Lolland-Falster’s fertile fields exist in constant negotiation with the sea. Through maps, eyewitness accounts and objects recovered after extreme weather, the museum links distant prehistory with very current questions of climate and vulnerability.

Visiting, atmosphere and accessibility

Stiftsmuseet is currently operating with limited opening periods, so visiting is concentrated into a defined season, when special family activities and guided tours often bring added life to the galleries. Despite the modest size of the building, there is enough material for a richly layered visit, especially if you take time to read the bilingual texts and watch the short films. Because the museum occupies an older three‑storey structure, full accessibility is only possible on the ground floor, where a ramp gives wheelchair users access to the shop, tourist information point and the OMG exhibition. Upper floors are reached by wide staircases with handrails. Facilities such as restrooms and a small shop make it easy to pause between sections, while the location next to the station and town centre invites you to combine a visit with a stroll around Maribo’s lakes and cathedral quarter.

Part of a wider museum family

Stiftsmuseet forms one of several sites under the Museum Lolland-Falster umbrella, alongside the open-air “Old Houses”, Museum Obscurum and other attractions around Maribo and Nykøbing. A season or annual pass can cover multiple venues, encouraging travellers to explore how themes begun here – Stone Age life, coastal change, regional craftsmanship – play out in different settings. Within this network, Stiftsmuseet stands out as the place where strands of archaeology, religious art and environmental history are drawn together. For anyone curious about how a small island region at the fringe of Denmark connects to bigger European stories, it offers a compact but insightful introduction.