Tjuvholmen is a neighborhood in the borough

Majorstuen Majorstuen is a particularly affluent neighbourhood in the Frogner borough in the inner part of Oslo, Norway. Majorstuen is known for its vibrant downtown and especially its shopping area. The area has several elegant townhouses c. 1880–1890. T ...

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

. It is located on a peninsula sticking out from

Aker Brygge Aker Brygge is a neighbourhood in central Oslo, Norway. Since the 1980s and 1990s it has been a popular area for shopping, dining, and entertainment, as well as a high-end residential area. It was previously an industrial area. Location Aker B ...

into the

Oslofjord The Oslofjord (, ; en, Oslo Fjord) is an inlet in the south-east of Norway, stretching from an imaginary line between the and lighthouses and down to in the south to Oslo in the north. It is part of the Skagerrak strait, connecting the Nor ...

. It is located east of

Filipstad Filipstad is a locality and the seat of Filipstad Municipality, Värmland County, Sweden, with 10,644 inhabitants in 2019. Filipstad was granted city privileges in 1611 by Charles IX of Sweden, who named it after his son Duke Carl Philip (1601&n ...

and south of Vika. At the tip of the peninsula, next to the sculpture park, is an outdoor bathing area. The water leads out to the Inner Oslofjord. The area was bought by the shipyard Akers Mekaniske Verksted in the mid 19th century, who planned to build a

drydock A dry dock (sometimes drydock or dry-dock) is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform. Dry docks are used for the construction, maintenance, ...

there. Instead, it was bought by the municipality in 1914, and transferred to the port authority in 1919. They built docks and artificial land, increasing the area from . From the 1960s, Fred. Olsen & Co. rented the docks, and from 1971 Nylands Mekaniske Verkstad had a shipyard on the spot. Since 1982, the area has been used for office space, terminals, and warehouses. The

Norwegian National Academy of Ballet The Norwegian National Academy of Ballet ( no, Statens balletthøgskole) was established in 1979 as a three-year education in ballet. The school was given collegiate status in 1982. In 1996 the National Academy of Ballet became part of Oslo Nation ...

was located there. Since 2005, the area has been sold to private developers, who are conducting an

urban renewal Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...

with housing. The area has about 1,200 apartments since 2012. It is part of the

Fjord City The Fjord City ( no, Fjordbyen) is an urban renewal project for the waterfront part of the centre of Oslo, Norway. The first redevelopment was at Aker Brygge during the 1980s. Bjørvika and Tjuvholmen followed up during the 2000s, while the r ...

urban renewal program. This program has seen the opening of several art galleries, amongst them the

Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art is a privately owned contemporary art gallery in Oslo in Norway. It was founded and opened to the public in 1993. The collection's main focus is the American appropriation artists from the 1980s, but it is ...

and the Gallery Haaken.

Tjuvholmen skulpturpark Tjuvholmen skulpturpark is a sculpture park in the Tjuvholmen neighborhood of Frogner borough in Oslo, Norway. It is close to Aker Brygge. History The park opened 10 August 2012, as part of a £20 million development plan for Tjuvholmen. It con ...

, next to the museum, was created by

Renzo Piano Renzo Piano (; born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers, 1977), The Shard in London (2012), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City ( ...

Geology

The geology of the former islet is of great interest. The German geologist

Leopold von Buch Christian Leopold von Buch (26 April 1774 – 4 March 1853), usually cited as Leopold von Buch, was a German geologist and paleontologist born in Stolpe an der Oder (now a part of Angermünde, Brandenburg) and is remembered as one of the most im ...

visited the area in 1806–07, and he then discovered and described

rhomb porphyry Porphyry ( ) is a textural term for an igneous rock consisting of coarse-grained crystals such as feldspar or quartz dispersed in a fine-grained silicate-rich, generally aphanitic matrix or groundmass. The larger crystals are called phenocr ...

for the first time.

The name

The first element is ''tjuv'' (''thief''), the last element is the finite form of ''holme'' (''

islet An islet is a very small, often unnamed island. Most definitions are not precise, but some suggest that an islet has little or no vegetation and cannot support human habitation. It may be made of rock, sand and/or hard coral; may be permanen ...

''). (The islet was later turned into a peninsula because of

post-glacial rebound Post-glacial rebound (also called isostatic rebound or crustal rebound) is the rise of land masses after the removal of the huge weight of ice sheets during the last glacial period, which had caused isostatic depression. Post-glacial rebound ...

.) Thieves were executed here in the 18th century. An older (Danish) spelling of the name was "Tyveholmen".

References

Neighbourhoods of Oslo Fjord City {{Oslo-geo-stub