Wednesday February 28
We arrived in Oslo early this morning, at around 5:45am. The overnight bus, although a good idea, and a great time saver is probably not something we would be excited to try again. We thought that if it arrived just a couple of hours later, maybe around 8am or so then maybe it would have been better. As it was, we were stuck waiting at the bus station until the stores and restaurants opened up for the morning.
After waiting around for a bit, we decided to leave our bags in a locker for the day and pick them up on our way to the Airbnb later that afternoon. We then found some breakfast, a tourist information centre and decided on our plan for the day. Since it was pretty chilly, and we were all fairly tired, we decided to spend the day at some museums. Oslo has this one peninsula that has four or five museums on it that all looked very interesting. The city also has a deal called the “Olso Card” which, if you buy it, gives you a free pass on all public transport in the city, and free entrance at almost all of the museums and attractions. We found that Oslo was much more spread out that Copenhagen, so getting the card seemed like the best choice. It also made it really easy to visit only the things we wanted to see – we could just pop into one museum for an exhibit and then head on to the next one.
We started our museum tour at the Norwegian Maritime Museum, where we learned about the history of the boating industry in Norway as well as the Norwegian contributions during the world wars. As three Canadians on the trip, none of us knew anything about the history of Norway, let alone their involvement in the wars, and so it was pretty interesting to learn about a new side history.
The next museum, Kon-Tiki, was also really interesting. It told the story of the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who wanted to prove that Polynesia could have been settled by South Americans. If you don’t know the history of the story, I’ll give a really brief recap: Polynesia is a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, and for a long time most scientists thought that it must have been inhabited by people from Asia. When researching, however, Heyerdahl noticed a lot of similarities between artefacts, buildings and lifestyle of people in Polynesia and people from South America. So, to prove that these islands could have been populated by South America, he designed a boat, called Kon-Tiki, in exactly the way that the ancient South Americans would have built it. Most people thought that Heyerdahl would not succeed because of the crazy currents that he would encounter, but he ended up making it to the islands and proving his theory.
I watched a movie about Kon-Tiki last year that I liked a lot, and it was so amazing to be able to see the actualy raft used by Heyrdahl and learn more about his expedition. If you haven’t seen the movie, I would definitely recommend it!
We went to the Fram museum after Kon-Tiki and got to explore the inside of a huge wooden polar vessel. Fram is a symbol of Norway’s “participation in the age of exploration.” This museum was pretty cool, because it was built around the actual ship, and as visitors we got to climb on board and check it out for ourselves.
The last museum we went to was probably the coolest out of all of them: the Viking ship museum. This museum was really cool because it has ships and artefacts that were found in archeological digs from the early 1900s. What is so cool is that the ships are really well preserved. Both of the ships served as burial vessels for significant figures of the time, and all of the people were buried with tons of burial gifts as well. This not only let archeologists know about the daily life/use of tools but also told them a lot about the Viking belief in the afterlife, and what they believed people would take with them to the next world.
I think all of us were struck by the size of the ships. When I think of Vikings, I think of huge, sturdy ships that can withstand storms and waves. While the ships were pretty big, they were also fairly shallow, and well decorated and definitely don’t look like something I would sail into battle or into the ocean with! I didn’t manage to get many good pictures of the boats, unfortunately, but even if I had, they wouldn’t be nearly as cool as the real thing.
After seeing all these museums, we were all pretty exhausted and decided to pick up our bags and head to the Airbnb. Once we got there, we were pretty much done for the night and other than getting some groceries for dinner we spent the evening in the apartment, relaxing.
Thursday March 1
We woke up fairly early this morning, and after breakfast headed right out into the city to see some more sights. Franziska and I decided to head to the Edvard Munch gallery, which was about ten minutes from the Airbnb. We had heard that Munch’s famous painting, “The Scream” was kept in this gallery, and we were both interested in seeing it. It wasn’t until we got through the entire gallery that we realized it wasn’t actually there, but at another gallery downtown Oslo! But we enjoyed the artwork anyway.
Afterwards, we walked through the city, and into the downtown core, where most of the big, historic buildings are. We passed the parliament, the national theatre and the royal palace and stopped to take pictures at most of them.
Once we had some lunch, Franziska and I decided to use our Oslo Cards, and head up to the Holmenkollen Ski Jump Tower. This tower is located above a museum about the history of skiing and offers really incredible views of the city. We had to take a subway to get there, and then walk all the way up the ski hill, but the views were definitely worth the hike. I love seeing cities from above because it really gives you an idea of how big the area really is. The skies were clear, too, which made it even better.
On our way back from the ski jump, we went to Oslo’s famous statue park. The Vigeland Park has more than two hundred statues, all made by the same artist. It is definitely a really neat place to visit and wasn’t just a tourist attraction – there were tons of people walking their dogs or jogging through the park. The theme of the statues is the exploration of human form, and so all the statues are of people. The most famous one, that we saw on postcards and souvenirs is the crying baby sculpture, which we made sure to find and see. Personally, I didn’t think it was the most striking or most impressive statue in the park, but it was still cool to see.
Franziska really wanted to see the Oslo Opera House after the sculpture park. I hadn’t really heard anything about it, but it was definitely worth the trip. The whole building is designed to the roof comes all the way to the ground, and you can walk right up to the top. We got there right as the sun was setting, so it made for some really beautiful pictures and views right along the Oslo harbour.
To finish off our busy day, we had just enough time left to visit the National Gallery and accomplish our first goal of the day: seeing Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” All in all, it was a spectacular way to end another day of this amazing trip!
As always, thank you for reading! I’ve been getting some really nice emails from you guys, and it makes me so so happy to know that you’re all keeping up with my adventures :)
