A haven for traditional northern crafts

The brightly painted clapboard buildings that make up the North House Folk School campus only hint at the remarkable work going on inside. Even the fresh scent of wood chips that hangs in the air doesn't tell the whole tale. The classes offered at the school, located on the harbor in Grand Marais, not only provide hands-on learning for students of all ages, but also, importantly, preserve traditions that run through the cultural landscape of Minnesota and other northern places.

Visitors can build their own birch bark canoe, Inuit kayak or portable wood-burning stove. They can learn to knit Norwegian-style selbuvotter mittens, weave a cedar-bark basket and even fashion their own wooden casket. Photography, sailing and gardening are also on the list of about 350 courses offered throughout the year.

"The school is about touching lives, inspiring lifelong learning and teaching traditional northern crafts," said the school's exective director, Greg Wright.

It has been doing so for nearly 14 years. When locals started the school in 1997, it drew a little more than 200 students. Last year, 1,500 signed up for the simple pleasure of working with their hands under the guidance of skilled craftspeople.

Including those students, a whopping 13,000 visitors stopped by the campus -- to shop at the gift store, board the school's schooner for one of its summertime sunset cruises or just to take it all in: the view of the lake, the handmade cross-country skis leaning against a classroom wall, the quiet calm that comes from a gathering of students focused on their creations.