Kisa Emigrantmuseum is in a 1700s cultural building at Storgatan 10, Kisa. The house once held pharmacist Sundius’s emigration office, which the museum’s website identifies as the place where the area’s emigration story began. The museum’s exhibitions and sound installations explain the causes and effects of emigration, with a focus on individual emigrants. They include photographs, letters, documents and objects collected from the area by librarian Curt von Wachenfeldt, who founded the museum in 1979. The exhibitions were renewed in 2019.

In May 1845, farmer and builder Peter Cassel led 21 people from the area to North America. They founded New Sweden in Iowa, described by the museum as the first Swedish colony. Cassel’s positive letters to Sundius circulated locally and helped start a larger wave of emigration. More than 6,000 people left Kinda between 1845 and 1920.

The museum’s collection includes around 1,600 letters from Kinda municipality, scanned and available to read digitally. Café Columbia is also in the building. Swedish-American Dorothéa Florén opened it in 1921.