Oslo, Norway

We had a wonderful train ride from Stockholm, Sweden to Olso, Norway. We arrived in Oslo at 10:00 p.m., found our hotel (the Perminalen), settled in, got a good night's sleep, and took off to tour the city. First we rode the bus to the southwest part of the city to go through three museums - the Kontiki, the Viking Ships, and the Norway Folk Museum. The narrative and photos below are of Oslo and those museums.
As you know, Oslo is the capital of Norway and is situated at the north end of the Oslo fjord. This photo was in the later afternoon looking down the fjord. I am standing on the wall of an old fortress.
This is looking across one portion of the fjord toward the fortress. This harbor area is very pretty. How do you like the seagull?
Another harbor photo in Oslo.
Do you get the impression that shipping is important to Oslo?
You can see that the Oslo harbor is quite busy. The large ship is some type of naval vessel.
Looking from the fortress away from the fjord, you get this view of central Olso. We liked Oslo, but it does not have the beauty that Stockholm has. And, everything in this city was terribly, terribly expensive!! So, we passed up a $3.00, one-scoop ice-cream cone.
If you look from the harbor back toward the city, this is one of the scenes. The buildings in Oslo were not as spectacular as those in Stockholm. The city seemed older (which it is) and not as clean.
Like other cities, Oslo does have some pretty squares. This is one of them. If you look carefully, you can see piles of snow that had not yet melted.
This is the Oslo Theater.
This is the Oslo train station. Oslo was made up of a mixture of buildings, some very new and some very old.
Southwest of the city center, along the coast, are three museums. This photo was taken adjacent to the Kontiki Museum. The fog is just lifting off the water.
One of the most interesting museums in Oslo is the Kontiki Museum shown on the left. In this museum, you can actually see THE Kontiki and THE Ra II - both constructed to sail/float across the Pacific and Atlantic, respectively, by Thor Hyerdahl. Below you will see both in a series of photos.
The Kontiki experience was to demonstrate that South American natives could have traveled to Polynesia. It occurred in the 1960s. This photo shows the front of the raft.
The crew used this hut on the raft to get out of the sun, wind, rain, and to sleep.
The Kontiki viewed from the rear of the raft. You can see the hut and the sail.
The entrance to the hut is shown here.
A level area was constructed just in front of the sail. The platform is shown here.
This is the sail of the Kontiki. If you have not read Kontiki by Thor Hyerdahl, you should. It is a wonderful adventure story.
Also found in the Kontiki Museum, is the reed boat called Ra II. If you haven't read the Ra Expeditions, you should. It is also a great adventure tale. You can see part of the boat here. It was used to float from western Africa to the West Indies to demonstrate how early seafaring people may have traveled to the Americas long before Columbus.
These are the living quarters on the Ra. The boat was made entirely out of reeds. Again, if you know the story, Ra I sank, so Hyerdahl reconstructed the boat based on drawing found in South American and Africa, and called it Ra II. It sailed right on across the Atlantic.
Although this is a little dark, it shows the entire Ra II boat.
Here is another view of Ra II. I never dreamed I would see Ra II or Kontiki and here they were under one roof!
Of course, southern Sweden, southern Norway, and most of Denmark, were the homeland of the Vikings. Just up the road a short distance from the Kontiki Museum, was the Viking Ships Museum. These are the types of ships that the Vikings used to ravage much of Europe between 850 and 1050.
The Vikings were mainly Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. When they went on there war expeditions, they referred to that as going "viking." So a Viking, is nothing more than a pillager and a plunderer who happened to live in what became Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Denmark was the focus. Their ships enabled them to travel up rivers and sack cities such as Paris, London, and many others. It was a Viking descended from the Danes - William the Conqueror - who attached England in 1066.
Right around the corner from the Viking Ships Museum was the Norsk Fold Museum. It is an outdoor museum which contains buildings from around Norway which were built during the 1700's and later. This is the entrance. The next few photographs show some of the buildings.
Stave churches, like the one shown here, were essentially Viking churches after they had been converted to Christianity. See the large pile of snow in front. This style remained popular until stone and brick began to be used to build such structures.
Many of the buildings in this museum portrayed the log construction style so famous in Norway. Also, many of the buildings had turf roofs like this one. Look, there goes Kathleen! Kathleen's grandmother Ada Johnson Allen's family came from Norway. Look at all of the snow.
I liked this building because it reminded me of a dogtrot house commonly found in pioneer Arkansas. You can see a drive way through the building. In Arkansas that was not a driveway, but a breeze way to help cool the house.
This small house has the shape of a cape cod house, but I don't think there is any relationship. Look at the snow!
This is an old Norwegian sawmill powered by a water wheel. I include this because my dad operated a sawmill and loved being around timber and freshly cut lumber.
Some of the log buildings were quite large like this one. You can see that many of them were also built on log pilings to raise them off the ground. Look at the snow!

Part of the folk museum represented a typical Norwegian town. This is a half timber building in that part of the museum.

Well, there you have Oslo and a taste of Norway.

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