The Oseberg ship, a Viking vessel from about 800 A.D., is one of three ships on display at the Viking Ship Museum, just up the road from the Fram and Kon-Tiki museums in Oslo. (Photos by Patrick Dickson/Stars and Stripes)
The Oseberg ship, a Viking vessel from about 800 A.D., is one of three ships on display at the Viking Ship Museum, just up the road from the Fram and Kon-Tiki museums in Oslo. (Photos by Patrick Dickson/Stars and Stripes)
A close-up shows detailed carvings on the ship’s prow. ()
A bell from the Fram, a 127-foot Viking schooner, is one of the exhibits at the Fram Museum. ()
The Fram is on display in tight quarters of in the Fram Museum in Oslo. The ship, built in 1892, carried three of Norway’s bravest explorers to uncharted polar regions, both north and south. Today visitors are free to wander though the ship. ()
Oslo’s young at heart spend a January evening at the skating rink in the center of the city. The National Theater is in the background. ()
RELATED STORY:Oslo's Nobel Peace Museum highlights King, Obama
My wife and I had a sudden craving for some authentic Viking food, so we decided to spend a weekend in Oslo.
Don’t think that because we did that we’re jet-setting, comfort-travel types, able to dash anywhere on a whim. It’s a two-hour flight on RyanAir out of Frankfurt-Hahn Airport, the erstwhile U.S. Air Force base in Germany that caters to budget travelers. Our tickets, bought at the last minute, were just 65 euros each.
I felt pretty good about the spontaneity of the whole thing. We felt like explorers, setting out for places unknown. The Norwegian capital celebrates such intrepid souls with its Fram Museum, Kon-Tiki Museum and Viking Ship Museum.
By far, the best of the three — all on the island of Bygdoy, a 15-minute bus trip from downtown — is the Fram Museum. It celebrates polar explorers and is essentially an enormous garage for the Fram itself — a 127-foot schooner with a 31½-inch-thick hull, shaped at the bottom to withstand and be lifted out of the enormous pressures of pack ice it would encounter on its voyages.
The Fram’s first captain, Fridtjof Nansen, hypothesized that the polar currents would take pack ice across the Arctic Ocean from eastern Russia to Greenland. In 1893 he took his first journey, a three-year odyssey that took the ship to a latitude of 84 degrees, 4 minutes north (the Arctic Circle is about 66 degrees). There he disembarked for a dog-sled run at the pole itself, stopping at 86 degrees, 14’, then the highest latitude ever visited by man. Nansen later was awarded a Nobel Peace prize for helping starving Russians after World War I.
The museum allows you to wander through the ship at your own pace. You can imagine yourself spending literally endless nights in the cramped sleeping quarters, wondering if those ghostly creaking sounds would at some point be the splintering of the ship’s hull, letting in icy death.
Around the ship are three floors of fascinating photographs, and displays of its instruments and the curios of three years at the top of the world, including a woolly mammoth tusk from epochs past, and the weapons needed to hunt the day’s meal — often walrus or polar bear. A different era, a different sensibility: "We catch penguins where we can. Their meat tastes excellent, like steak, and looks a bit like beef" reads one photo caption.
The museum is a great experience. You have to see the photos and maps and read the accounts of men crossing the frozen wastelands with primitive instruments to understand what an accomplishment each of the ship’s three journeys was. It’s 60 Norwegian kroner to get in — about $11. A bit steep, but a bargain in a city with $30 burgers.
Across the street is the Kon-Tiki Museum. The book of Thor Heyerdahl’s Pacific adventure was required reading when I was in school (and Nixon was president); I don’t know if it is anymore, but it should be.
Heyerdahl had a theory that ancient cultures had interacted long before the great explorers had stepped on distant shores and planted flags. To prove this theory, he constructed the Kon-Tiki, a raft made of balsa wood and other native materials, and with six others, sailed 4,300 miles from Peru to Polynesia.
The raft is in the museum, along with the Ra II, in which Heyerdahl and crew crossed the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados. But the visit is something of a letdown; whether it suffers from a lack of funding, I don’t know, but it seems a poor tribute to a great adventurer and teacher.
The third museum is the Viking Ship Museum. The three ships on display date from the ninth century and are almost whole. While in and of itself a fairly sterile experience — the ships are great to see, but there is little accompanying educational material to bring the museum to life — it completes the picture of the Norwegian soul: a people who have always looked to the sea and did more than wonder what lay beyond.
It’s probably an odd choice to visit a city when the sun doesn’t come up until 9 a.m., where the footing on sidewalks never cleared of snow is like running on a beach and where signs warn pedestrians of ice avalanches coming off the buildings.
But while the city has an affection for explorers and other hearty types, it is also ideal for a quiet evening stroll. The city center is a pedestrian boulevard where residents can walk from parliament to the National Theater or rent skates and spend an hour gliding around Spikersuppa ("nail soup"), a pond in the city center during summer.
And one needn’t get by on reindeer jerky and whale blubber. Americans who visit and decide they want a taste of home don’t have to rely on the $30 burger my hotel served; they have all the familiar burger joints (one friendly Norwegian called McDonald’s "the American Embassy"), plus Hard Rock Café and a passel of others.
Know and Go• The Fram Museum is open daily except Dec. 24-25. Hours vary with time of year, but it normally opens at 10 a.m. and closes between 3 and 6 p.m. Admission is 60 Norwegian kroner (about $10) for adults, 25 kroner for ages 7-15, students and seniors; group discounts are available. For additional details, see www.fram.museum.no/en/.
• The Kon-Tiki Museum is open daily except for Dec. 24-25, Dec. 31-Jan. 1 and May 17. Opening hours vary with the season, but the museum generally opens between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. and closes between 3:30 and 5 p.m. Admission is 60 Norwegian kroner for adults, 40 kroner for students and senior citizens, 25 kroner for children and 140 kroner for a family ticket. Group discounts are available. For more details, see www.kon-tiki.no/e_aapning.php.
• The Viking Ship Museum is open daily except Dec. 24-26, Dec. 31-Jan. 1, Good Friday, Easter Eve, Easter Sunday. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 1 through April 30, and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. the rest of the year. Admission is 60 Norwegian kroner for adults, 30 kroner for ages 7-16, 35 kroner for students and seniors, and 140 kroner for families. Group discounts are available. For more details, see www.khm.uio.no/vikingskipshuset/index_eng.html or e-mail entre-vsh@khm.uio.no.
• The Noble Peace Center is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, closed on Monday. Admission is 80 kroner for adults, 65 kroners for students and seniors, free for under 16. Tours are conducted in English at 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. More information, including a list of events, is available at www.nobelpeacecenter.org.
