It was founded in 1961 by the Danish artist Asger Jorn, Peter Glob and Werner Jacobsen from the National Museum of Denmark and Holger Arbman of the University of Lund, Sweden.
The stated purpose of the institute was to throw new light upon the Scandinavian culture in the age of migrations and Vikings.
For several years, Jorn toured around Scandinavia and Europe with photographer Gérard Franceschi, former photographer for French writer and onetime culture minister André Malraux on his Musée imaginaire project, photographing ancient, Romanesque, Scandinavian, and Gothic figurative and decorative motifs in order to trace the connections between Scandinavian and European motifs.
In 1965, the Silkeborg municipal government provided a building to store over 20,000 photographs taken by Jorn, Gerard Franceschi and Ulrik Ross.
[2] The Institute remained as a sort of imaginary museum, now housed in the Silkeborg Kunstmuseum, home of Jorn's art collection and archives.