(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

There is more to Oslo than the sporting thrills described in my previous post.  We found a lot of cultural sights as well, many of them located on the Bygdøy peninsula.  While we took a bus to get back from Bygdøy to downtown Oslo afterwards, it was more fun to take a ferry there and feel like we were escaping urban life.

Our first stop was the Norwegian Folk Museum (Norsk Folkemuseum) a 35-acre outdoor complex including more than 150 buildings brought from all over Norway.   From grass-roofed farm buildings and old stave churches to cobblestoned villages and recreations of 20th century apartments, every conceivable aspect of Norwegian life over the past 1000 years was on display here.   There were costumed guides and farm animals too – I’ve included the pig photo as they just looked so happy!

We found the more recent displays on 20th century living to be especially interesting, as they were just modern enough to look familiar but still different enough to show how much things have changed in a relatively short period of time.  Although we could have spent the entire day here, there were more Bygdøy sights to be seen.  First up was the Viking Ship Museum (Vikingskiphuset).

The Viking Ship Museum is not huge, nor does it have very many items on display.  However, the well-preserved pair of ships from the 9th and 10th centuries are extremely impressive.  Seeing these elegant but nonetheless lightweight boats, particularly after our experience sailing off the northern coast of Iceland, reinforced our immense respect for the bravery of the maritime Vikings.

From the Viking Ship Museum, it was a short walk to the Maritime Museum, the Fram Museum and the Kon-Tiki Museum, all focusing on Norway’s seafaring history.  We skipped the Maritime Museum but were glad that we had enough time to visit the other two.

The Fram Museum (Frammuseet) is essentially just a shell hosting the 125-foot Fram boat used by famous Norwegian explorers Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen to travel farther into the Arctic and Antarctic oceans than anyone else had done.   We could climb and explore all over this famous ship; while fascinating (they had a piano!), it also reinforced how lonely, cold and confined these journeys must have been.  Indeed, it was difficult to take any worthwhile photos, given the cramped quarters inside.

Claustrophobia was the least of Thor Heyerdahl’s worries when he sailed the Kon-Tiki raft from Peru to Polynesia in 1947.  Built entirely out of materials that would have been available to early South Americans (and using only tools and techniques available to them), the idea was to show that these ancient people could have settled Polynesia.  As with the Viking ships from more than 1000 years ago, you will have immense respect for Mr. Heyerdahl and his crew once you see the lightness of the balsa-wood raft…even if the ancient Peruvians probably didn’t make such a journey themselves.

We ended our cultural day with a walk around Oslo’s Frogner Park, a 75-acre city park whose 192 sculpture groups represent the “life statement” of Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland.   The photo at the top of this post shows the centrepiece of the park, including the writhing Monolith that you see just above this paragraph.  While visitor impressions of the sculptures (especially the Monolith) range from fascination to being totally creeped out, the park remains a massive and well-used safe place in the heart of the city.

Hopefully, this account of one day in Oslo gives an idea of how many cultural sights there are in Oslo…and I haven’t even talked about “The Scream” yet!