Museum Overload

Back to being clear and sunny. Bought an Oslo Pass for the day which gave us free admission to a range of museums, and free public transport. Started by taking the bus to a cluster of museums down by the water in Bygdøy. First up was the Viking Ship Museum. Quite austere and actually operated by the university, it had three large viking ships excavated from burial sites. It seems that important people were buried in their boat, and they aren't dinghies! Interesting, and they were actually real ocean going viking ships from about 1000AD which was rather mind blowing.

Then down to the Kon-Tiki museum where we saw the Kon-Tiki raft that Thor Heyerdahl drifted across the Pacific in, and the Ra that he rowed across the Atlantic in. Incredible adventurer. Even though the rafts were a few quantums up from the viking ships, he still had no GPS, radios or phone to ask for help. They occasionally let off weather balloons to alert people to their position.

Next was the FRAM museum. The FRAM is a wooden ship built around 1900 that did 3 attempts to the North Pole and one to the South with Roald Amundsen, Nansen and others aboard. They deliberately got stuck in the polar ice in the hope of drifting close to the North Pole, and took several years to get home. It's gone further north and further south than any other wooden ship, and was built with a flat bottom so it would pop out of the polar ice rather than get crushed.

Lastly to the Norwegian Maritime Museum, which was rather tame and lacked a focus after the other three. Caught the bus back up the road to the Museum of Cultural History which Mandy had visited in the seventies. An outdoor historical museum with lots of old style Norwegian buildings and farms, including the famous wooden Stave Church - an original from 1200AD.

Had a bit of lunch, then caught the bus back into town, then two more buses in lieu of the expected train to get out to Holmenkollen to see the Olympic Ski Jump. It was used in the Winter Olympics in 1952, and is being rebuilt for the upcoming 2011 World Ski Championships, so we couldn't get into everything, or up to the top of the ski jump like we did in Innsbruck, but the museum was good, and the views still fabulous. The complex also includes the biathlon course.

Found another Australian couple from Wheelers Hill in the common room. They are basically doing our trip in reverse, though not Russia, and we swapped stories over dinner. After tea we made use of our transport passes, and had a look at some suburbs on the trams.