Exploring Oslo Museums (Day 5)

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With a plan for all the places we wanted to see today, we set off in the rain towards Bygdoy Where there are a number of museums very close togethe. The number 30 bus took us straight there. We purchased a 24 hour Oslo pass from the Maritime Museum. The pass gives you access to all attractions, train, bus and ferry.

First was the Norway Maritime Museum showing some of Norway's coast culture and maritime history include boat models, fishing, marine archeology, marine paintings, ship building, and shipping. The Arctic ship Gjoe was on display. Gjoe was the first vessel to transit the Northwest Passage in a 1903-06 expedition of Roald Amundsen.

Followed this up with the Fram Museum which honours polar Norwegian polar exploration in general and three great Norwegian explorers in particular Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup and Roald Amundsen. The original interior of the Flam is intact and you can go inside to see it.

Across the road is the Kon-Tiki exhibition about Thor Heyerdahl crossing of the Pacific on a balsawood boat. Heyerdahl was also responsible for important archeological excavations on the Galapagos Islands and Easter Islands . The original Kon-Tiki raft is on display as well as artifacts from Easter Island.

Then back on the bus to the Viking Ship Museum. The early Vikings covered a lot of sea in their time. On display are a number of ships and artefacts from boat graves around Oslo fjord. The ships had been used for sea voyages before beng hauled ashore for a royal ship burial. There is some amazing carvings on the artefacts found.

Across the road and down a little is the Folk Museum. This shows Norway's culture and the history or Norway's many regions and cities. This is one of the world's oldest and largest open-air museums, with 155 traditional houses from all parts of Norway and a stave church from th year 1200.

From here we went to the Holocaust Museum. At the beginnng of WWII, there were 1200 Jews in Oslo. In 1942, over 700 were rounded up and taken to Auschwitz. Only 43 survived. Most of the rest escaped to other countries such as Switzerland.

We then caught the bus back to the Maritime Museum so we could catch the ferry back to Oslo Central. We stopped at a pub to recover and catch our breath and sat outside and although it was 19 degrees and they had the outside heaters on. Go figure.

Then out to Vigeland Park to see the statues. (Sunset was at 10:41 so plenty of time) The Vigeland Park is the world's largest sculpture park made by a single artist, and is one of Norway's most popular tourist attraction.

The park is Gustav Vigeland's life work with more than 200 sculptures in bronze, granite and wrought iron. It was completed between 1939 and 1949.

On the way back had a late kebab and then back to the apartment. All this and only 47 floors and 26,957 steps

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Comments

[Lorinda]

Remember seeing some of these places you mentioned in 75. So David and I will need to go and visit them sometime.