The museums on our hit list were: Viking Ship Museum, the Folk Museum, and the Castle if we had time. Part of the motivation for this was that it was Saturday, and we figured most things would be closed on Sunday, but we figured we would do the mini-cruise that day.
We took the bus pretty much everywhere. We got to the Viking Ship museum almost at opening. I LOVED that museum! The have three almost completely built Viking ships from 800 AD or so. They were dug up after having been used as burial sites for 1000 years! And the wood was all still good! It was very impressive as you could see how they were built. They also have LOTS of artifacts from the Viking era. Incredibly detailed and well engineered works. Vikings were clearly master carpenters and craftsman. It made me wish I had Viking blood.
Yep, that's a real ship behind us!
That's Norwegian pride if I ever saw any!
Complete with original star board. (yep, I intended that space there)
For those interested in some light reading...
If you'd rather go small.
The only known Viking wagon in existence...
This is for those who would rather take a sled.
I was trying to give this serpent head a stare-down. It won.
Next was the Folk museum. It had a TON of 1700 and 1800 houses from around the country. I'll show a few pictures. It also had a lot of cultural history about Norway. The Norwegian equivalent of the aboriginals are the Sami. This was a new piece of knowledge for me.
I think this mud hut was a little too small for me.
Norwegian Hobbits?
Low ceilings with floors several feet off the ground make for warm homes.
How do you feel about your house standing on only 4 to 6 tree stumps?
The famed Gol stave church. It's all wood, and completely lined with fire sprinklers in every nook and cranny.
I'd like to note that except for the church, these are all farm houses or sometimes caches, all hundreds of years old. I got a real kick out of the detailed carve work.
This is a barn. The right section is an indoor sheep barn. The farmer was able to live in the lower section of the two story part. I'm guessing hay and livestock food went into the upper section.
From here, we hustled to get to the Fortress/Castle. Here is the opera house that we passed enroute.
Yeah, it was a little colder this day.
This is the main courtyard of the castle in Akershus Fortress. The Fortress has never been taken in its entire existence, so as you can see, many renovations have occurred over time to keep the grounds as modern as was convenient.
While the furniture is not necessarily original, the paintings on the walls are. Some of them date back older than the 1600's.
The royal crypt.
The fortress church, still used weekly by the soldiers stationed in Oslo.
The Royal dining hall, still used for major political functions.
The medieval hall. The stained glass in the window was made by the sculpter Vigeland's brother. The panels were blown in by a nearby WWII bomb. The panels that could be salvaged were put back in place.
Guess what we saw outside?
Three German warships docked (one not pictured here)! It looked like civilians were being allowed aboard, so J and I decided to check them out.
Here's the third one, which turned out to be a supply ship. Imagine if this was your view of the city every day!
And aboard we went!
Here you can see all three of them. The German sailors were quite polite and friendly.
Those are some guns...and missiles.
And off to the supply ship...
This sailor gave us a tour of the bridge. Pretty neat!
Yeah, it's a big ship.
Ooh! Another surprise. We get off the boats, and what do we see next?
BABY CARS!
A whole parking lot of them! They were are electric cars getting recharged. I had heard of this concept, but never realized it was actually being put into practice.
And that was the end of our action packed day! The next day was more scenic.
1 comment:
Amazing pictures!
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