Alcademics

At the end of August 2024, I visited Oslo Norway for 3 days and one evening. For two of those days, I was giving talks on an ice farm and at a cocktail bar (more on that in another post), leaving me with exactly one day to see the city and two evenings to explore its bars.

Here is the epic day during which I visited 7 museums, took 3 boat rides, and saw a ton of the city.

[sorry about any broken links to images, my website host provider TypePad is absolute garbage]

Morning

As I was jetlagged beyond sense, I had breakfast at my hotel (Scandic Byporten)’s associated restaurant Egon. Breakfast opens at 7AM and there are notes all around the hotel on how crowded breakfast can be, so you need to reserve your meal time. They weren’t kidding; it was busy even right at opening.

By 7:30 I was out of there and headed toward Oslo’s stunning opera house. Much like in Sydney, the opera house is a water-side attraction with a view. There is are wide walkways all around it, and you can walk a loop with interesting views. You almost never see it without a few hudred other people there, so I took lots of pictures of it while it was empty.

I then walked with the intention of passing by the old city fortress, but it turns out I went on the wrong side of it and didn’t see much. (It wasn't open at that time of day anyway.) I arrived to the place where there is a public transit ferry over to the Bogdoy museums and hung out for a few minutes to take the first one at 9:20.

I bought an Oslo Pass, one of those things they have in a lot of cities that gets you unlimited local public transportation and museum entry. I maximized the value of that thing, as we’re about to see. The ferry fare was the first thing I used it for.

The ferry takes you to an island where there are 4 museums I visited. The first three are all right next to each other; the Folk Museum is about a 25 minute walk from there.

Fram Museum - This museum is an A-frame building containing the Fram, "the strongest wooden ship ever built and still holds the records for sailing farthest north and farthest south." (After having visited The Vasa in Stockholm I’m a fan of boats-inside-buildings.) The museum was pretty great, though I was there at the same time three tour buses pulled up.

You get to walk through the boat, including on the top deck. Screens around the room play scenes of what sailing on it or being stuck in the ice on it was like. As you walk through there were interesting displays on what the sailors eat and drank, their rooms, etc. As I was trying to hit a lot of things I didn’t read too much signage.

Next up was the Maritime Museum. This seems mostly built for school trips – there is a young kids section, some large model boats in display cases,  and some art. I was in and out in 20 minutes max.

Likewise I didn’t stay long at the Kon-Tiki museum, despite it being another boat-inside-a-building – two boats actually. The tour that was being led at the same time I was there was sounding a bit interesting, and I didn’t really give the museum a full chance, but I wasn’t all that into it.

Next I walked through a neighborhood of gorgeous mansions to the Folk Museum, which is a campus of sort containing lots of building from different eras in Norway. I was only in it for one building though: The Stave Church!

I’ve always wanted to see a stave church in person and finally had my chance. I took a million pictures from every side (after waiting for people to walk out of the frame) and went inside it. It’s pretty tiny in there but I’m glad I did it.

Three More Museums and Another Boat

I next hopped the commuter ferry back to mainland Oslo. From there I headed to my fifth museum of the day (it was about noon by this point), the Astrup Fearnley Museum. This is a modern art museum with two sides. Coincidentally one side was dedicated to an artist from California, Cauleen Smith.

The other side of the museum had a small collection of the greatest hits of popular modern art - Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Matthew Barney. It was cool to see some of the stuff in person but didn't take long. Which was good because I had more museums to hit!

Next I walked to the National Museum. It was huge and incredible and I saw a small fraction of it as I was a bit burned out and tired by this point (1:15 in the afternoon). I would definitely spend more time there on another visit. 

A perfect place to rest for 90 minutes was about a fjord cruise, specifically this one. (Admission price wasn't included with the Oslo Pass but it did get me a discount.) It had nice comfy seating, concessions on board (almost nothing vegetarian so I went for a vegetarian sandwich in the form of a beer), and wasn't crowded. I rested for the first 45 minutes or so and then went outside for the rest. I would say this isn't a crucial tourist item to do but would be great when traveling with older folks and kids as it's comfy and self-contained. I had just seen a fair portion of the journey already that day on the way to the Fram museum.

My final museum stop was the huge Munch Museum. It is a big splashy museum with a bar on top and a great view from up there. Most of the art was on two or three floors lower down. I had no idea how great an artist Munch is - The Scream is so not his best work. 

And by this time it was only 4:30 PM! 

I visited four bars afterward, but that's a story for another post.

So for all the tourist activities I wrote down on my to-do list for Oslo, the only things I didn't actually get to were the old fortress and also the Vigeland Sculpture Park.